Delightfully scented with lemon and lavender essential oils, create your own dishwasher detergent tablet for easy, homemade, and non-toxic cleaning of your dishes! Here’s the simple recipe for you to use.
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Lemon and Lavender DIY Dishwasher Detergent Tablet Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup Borax
1/2 cup epsom salt
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup lemon juice (fresh is best but bottled works well too)
8 drops lemon essential oil
10 drops lavender essential oil
Tip: Lemon essential oil is a degreaser.
Instructions:
First, mix dry ingredients together then slowly add in a little lemon juice at a time. Incorporate juice into dry mixture well before adding more juice.
Juice will cause a fizz which is why you need to add it slowly, steady and a little at a time then mix it in well.
Next, add in 8 lemon essential oil drops and 10 lavender essential oil drops and stir in well.
Now, pack mixture into ice cube tray tightly with fingers. Push down hard to pack the mixture into each cube.
Note: There may be extra that does not fit into this one ice cube tray. Consider using a second tray or just using the crumbles as “powdered” detergent in your next couple of loads in the dishwasher.
Let cubes sit for at least 8 hours to dry before using. Best results come from leaving tablets to set overnight.
After tablets are fully dry, pop out the cubes and store in an air tight container such as a gallon glass jar with a lid.
Recipe Notes:
- Makes 16 cubes using a traditional ice cube tray.
- It is possible you could get a smaller ice cube tray to experiment with this recipe. Perhaps it’ll then fit into your dispenser cup.
- Rinse aid: use white distilled vinegar for a rinse aid especially if you have hard water. SEE BELOW FOR A RESEARCH ARTICLE ON HARMFUL RINSE AIDS!
- It’s actually way better to use fresh lemon juice, but I do know bottled lemon juice works well too.
- Occasionally a dish or glass will have a white residue on them if I do not open the dishwasher to allow that final air drying stage after shaking the racks to allow water puddles to run off. I am okay with this as this is a salt-based detergent and contains no harmful chemical residue. I will simply rinse this particular dish by hand.
- I generally use the Sanitize setting on our dishwasher for even hotter water.
These tablets are BIG. How do I use them in my detergent dispenser?
These DIY dishwasher detergent tablets are likely to be larger than your dishwasher detergent dispenser. All will be well, though.
Simply place the tablet on a rack where it will stay.
Depending on the size of the ice cube tray you used to make your DIY dishwasher detergent tablets, the tablet may be too small to sit on a rack without falling down.
If this is the case, set the tablet on top of a dish.
Additionally, if you used a smaller ice cube mold, you may consider using 2 tablets per load for effective dish cleaning.
How to reduce white film on glasses
Because this recipe is a DIY non-toxic detergent, you will NOT find harsh, harmful chemical cleaning and sparkling agents like pretty much all the ones on the market currently.
To help reduce the white film of your glass items like drinking glasses and Pyrex bowls, use 1/2 cup of distilled white vinegar in the rinse aid dispenser.
If you are looking for CLEANer cleaning without toxins, take a gander at this new research regarding Rinse Aids!
After learning the damage to the gut that can be done with rinse aids, I think a little haziness on my drinking glasses is just fine to me.
How often will I need to make dishwasher detergent tablets?
This will depend on how often you use your dishwasher.
For our family, we use the dishwasher every single day.
We are an ingredients home so we make 2-3 meals a day. We aren’t huge fans of disposable plates and utensils so that makes for a lot of dishes to wash every day. Between hand-washing what isn’t dishwasher safe and running the dishwasher daily, we wash about 4 loads of dishes daily.
If your family is like ours, you will need to make this recipe about 2 times a month unless you double this recipe. Then you can make it monthly or every 6 weeks.
KNOW YOUR APPLIANCE
Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, chemist, or doctor. This is simply me sharing one of my favorite non-toxic cleaning recipes I use regularly in our home for over 3 years now. This is a salt-based recipe that I am comfortable using in my 2 year old stainless steel tub dishwasher. So far we have not noticed any issues with the dishwasher itself nor our plumbing. I will state for the record that you need to know your appliance and decide the risks versus rewards of using a DIY dishwasher detergent tablet like this.
See my Disclosure Statement for good measure.
If you like non-toxic cleaning, try these:
Laundry Detergent (powder)
Because lemon is life, here are a few more lemon-inspired homemade recipes:
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Lemon Lavender DIY Dishwasher Detergent Tablets
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl
- 1 mixing spoon
- 1 cup measuring cup
- 1 ice cube tray or 2 trays
Materials
- 1 cup Borax
- 1/2 cup epsom salt
- 1 cup washing soda
- 1/2 cup lemon juice fresh is best but bottled works well too
- 8 drops lemon essential oil
- 10 drops lavender essential oil
Instructions
- First, mix dry ingredients together then slowly add in a little lemon juice at a time. Incorporate juice into dry mixture well before adding more juice.
- Juice will cause a fizz which is why you need to add it slowly steady and a little at a time then mix it in well.
- Next, add in your essential oil drops and stir in well.
- Then pack mixture into ice cube tray tightly with fingers. Push down hard to pack the mixture into each cube.
- Note: There may be extra that does not fit into this one ice cube tray. Consider using a second tray or just using the crumbles as “powdered” detergent in your next couple of loads in the dishwasher.
- Let cubes sit for at least 8 hours to dry before using. Best results come from leaving tablets to set overnight.
- After tablets are fully dry, pop out the cubes and store in an air tight container such as a gallon glass jar with a lid.
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