Liquid Dishwasher Detergent

I absolutely love making my own cleaning products for our home. As I've talked about before, we are making a conscious effort to get away from as many of the chemicals, food dyes, and preservatives, that are in the products we have been using. I already posted a recipe for a Liquid Dish Soap and my husband, who is my major pots & pans hand dishwasher, loves it, but for the rest of my dishes? That's what dishwashers were made for. So imagine my surprise when I was grabbing my commercial liquid dishwasher soap and begin reading the ingredients listed on the container. WOW!!! And we're eating our "healthier" food off of these dishes that are coated with this stuff. I was now on a new journey to find a better way.

It's a learning experience too be sure. I knew I wanted to use my liquid castile soap as my base, as well as my citrus essential oils,; lemon is great for helping to cut the grease. I ended up trying washing soda. It's found in the laundry area at the market and is fairly inexpensive. As well as going greener we are also really watching our pennies. So far everything I have made has ended up being less expensive than the commercial brands I was previously using. I was spending $6 up to $16 a month for chemical filled Liquid Dishwashing Detergent. I figured the cost for my homemade Liquid Dishwashing detergent and it came to less than $0.02 a load. That makes me really happy. (Doing the happy dance)

In my large bowl I added 1 cup liquid castile soap and 1/4 cup washing soda.I'll come back to this big error in a moment but let's first talk about Hot water content. I first added 1 cup Hot water to my mixture, and I ended up with paste. Thick, gooey paste. I added another cup and stirred, stirred stirred, then another cup and stirred, stirred, stirred,, and then one more cup, stirred and finally, the consistency I was looking for. For a person that suffers from arthritis, believe me, my poor shoulder was so sore after stirring this for so long. Here's the part about "big error" I mentioned earlier. Clumps, Lumps and me being the Chump. Never, and I do mean never add your washing soda with you soap first, you will have the before mentioned lumps. And a lot of them. When making my second batch I slowly pour 4 cups Hot water into the washing soda and stirred until it dissolves, then add the 1 cup of liquid castile soap. By the time you've stirred all of this together the Hot water is cooled enough for you to now add your essential oils. I used 20 drops of lemon but you can use whatever "citrus" essential oil you want. The citrus helps cut the grease. 

Liquid Dishwasher Detergent

1 cup liquid castile soap 
4 cups hot water
1/4 cup washing soda
10-20 drops of lemon essential oil 

Instructions:

Slowly mix hot water and washing soda until dissolved. 
Stir in the castile soap and then finally add your lemon 
essential oil.  Allow to sit overnight to thicken. I put mine 
in an old recycled commercial liquid soap "squeeze bottle" 
 but you can use a mason jar also.

To use: 

Shake liquid dishwasher detergent before each use. Add about 1 tablespoon
of detergent to dishwasher soap dispenser.

It worked great in the dishwasher, everything came out clean and fairly spot free, as spot free as I think WE will ever see, we have very hard water here. Once it's time to refill the rinse agent I'll be switching to just plain vinegar.  Actually there is only one thing wrong with this recipe, the stirring portion, I want to play with it and see if an emulsion blender will work hence, saving my poor shoulders. 

But for now I'm very happy with my results and my money savings. (Insert one more happy dance)  I've made up a 6x4 recipe card you can download HERE or just click on the card. 

Thanks for checking out my Blog and as always, God bless.