I search and tested for over a year to find a homemade dishwasher soap that truly cleaned my dishes and left my glassware sparkling. Along the way I discovered that even though we have city water is still rather hard and this made the whole process even more difficult. All I wanted was a really cheap, easy-to-make dishwasher soap that truly cleaned. I didn’t care if it was a powder or not, in fact I figured that tablets would be way too hard to even attempt. Then I ran into an article about making bath fizzies. I have no desire to make fizzies but it made me realize that making tablets wouldn’t be hard at all.
My recipe at the time was for a powder and it was almost perfect but it was leaving my glasses a bit cloudy and it wasn’t quite able to cut through the grease so my dishes never got totally clean in one go round. I decided to take my basic recipe, kick-it up a notch and see if I could turn it into tablets.
To kick it up I decide to stop using lemon juice or anything like and use citric acid instead. It can be harder to find but it works much much better. I also decided to add oxyboost to the recipe to amp up the cleaning power. I will admit that in my area I was not able to find either of these anywhere local. Thankfully I was able to find them both at Amazon for very reasonable prices, especially when you consider how many batches you can make from each.
Just so you know, I am all about the bargain. I hunted long and hard both online and off to find the very best price for these. If you happen to find a better deal please share it with me!
My first attempt at molding the tablets came out pretty good but the tablet were pretty fragile and crumbled easily. My hubby and I cut plastic wrap and wrapped each square like little pieces of candy so we could put them in the jar without them falling apart. In spite of their fragility they cleaned like a champ. My dishes were squeaky clean and my glassware was absolutely crystal clear.
Our second attempt came out perfectly. The trick was adding the just the right amount of water, which will vary a little each time due to humidity and air temperature. The first time we used too much and that made the tablets so crumbly. Add water very slowly and in small and amounts and mix well. Use the very least you can. It will actually look a little too dry. We also ended up leaving the tablets in the molds for a couple extra days. I am not sure how much this extra time helped but they are very solid and they still clean like a little beast.
[cooked-recipe id=149]
