In my efforts to make my home 1. more frugal and 2. less toxic, I decided that I needed to try making my own dishwasher detergent.

WHY? Because store-bought dishwasher detergent contains phosphates, chlorine, and petroleum-based products a whole bunch of junk that has been proven to wreck your liver and cause cancer. In fact, cancer-guru Hulda Clark says that if someone in your household has cancer, you shouldn’t wash their dishes in the dishwasher at all.

Hulda is ***OUT THERE*** but, well, I’ve had a child diagnosed with a brain tumor, and that was the day my world stopped and I decided I’d follow Hulda anywhere… 

{Yes, there is Seventh Generation, but it’s a small investment and these are tough economic times, yo}.

So anyhoo. I googled ‘homemade dishwasher detergent recipe‘ and there are, like, a dizzying number of them out there. I decided I had to just jump in and start with one and see how it goes. Ready?

You’ll need only three ingredients: Borax. Baking Soda. Lemonade Kool-Aid.

Stir together 2 cups of Borax, 2 cups of baking soda, and 4 packets of lemonade-flavored Kool-Aid.

I gave it all a whirl in my food processor, because both the borax and baking soda fell out in large, hard chunks that didn’t mix well with a spoon.

And there you have it.

I don’t know if this is the best recipe, or the least toxic {it does have borax in it. Isn’t borax toxic???}

I think the Kool-aid is for the citric acid which dissolves in anhydrous ethanol (76 parts of citric acid per 100 parts of ethanol) at 15 °C melts the grease or something, and the lemonade flavor won’t stain your dishwasher, like, say, if you used black cherry Kool-aid or something.

And so far? So good. We don’t have really hard or really soft water, which I think makes a difference, but as far as I’m concerned this works better than the pricey stuff I had been using.

The pricey stuff had been leaving an oily film and bits of food stuck to my dishes, and this… has not.

And furthermore, it was dang cheap to make. I spent maybe ten bucks on all this stuff, which made … uh… 2 cups times pi carry the 4 multiply by the square of the hypoteneuse… about a quart, and I don’t know how long that will last or how that price compares down to the penny, but I have a whole bunch of borax and baking soda left to make more. It’s a win-win.

Have you tried making your own? How did it work out for you?

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