Adventures in Domesticity

I've been pinning (Pinterest) quite a few recipes to make various household cleansers naturally. I try to live as green as possible (which is REALLY REALLY hard) and I thought making my own laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, and other various cleansers was something I could easily commit to. So far all I have tried to make is powdered laundry soap. Which left something to be desired. The Beej and I are both big on laundry smelling good which I'll talk about more tomorrow. (I made liquid laundry soap today but it has to gel for 24 hours and I want a picture of that step before I post).

Today I made powered dishwasher detergent and it was SUPER easy. I modified two recipes to create my own; this one I found on pinterest and the other I found by googling around. Just happened to be by the guy who posted the powdered laundry soap.

I didn't want to make a huge batch because the person who wrote the first recipe mentioned that the soap tightens up after you make it. I knew if I made a batch this size it would clump up really bad seeing that FL is humid all the time. And I didn't want to make a batch as small as the second one.

My modified recipe was this:

3 cups of borax

3 cups of washing soda

3 packages of no sugar added lemonade (or you can use citric acid -- it is worth noting that I've read that the drink mix will stain your detergent cup in your dishwasher)

1 1/2 cups of epsom salt

Here's my ingredients all gathered together. I used a different size of lemonade packages, but made sure I had the correct total amount per the first recipe. I used a 3 gallon bucket to mix the ingredients. You definitely don't have to use something that big for this size of a batch but I know what a klutz I am and knew I wouldn't spill any while stirring if I used the bucket.

I measured all the ingredients into the bucket.

Then I stirred it all up which was really easy. Nothing really clumped too much except for the borax. Next time I whip this up I will definitely de-clump the borax as I pour it in the mix. I didn't quite get rid of all the big clumps in this batch.

Then I just poured this into a drink storage container for storage and easy pouring. One recipe says to use 1 tbsp per load while another says to fill your detergent cup with it. I will probably try out the tablespoon first and go from there.

It's worth mentioning that this is way cheaper than buying the store made stuff too. There are price breakdowns all over the internet and I think the first recipe has one written up. I bought 2 boxes each of borax and the washing soda. I have now made the powdered laundry soap, the powdered dishwasher detergent, and the liquid laundry soap and still haven't gone through the first boxes. The powdered laundry soap lasted us 2 months even with me using 3 tablespoons instead of one. I can only imagine how long the powdered dishwasher detergent and liquid laundry soap will last! This was another reason I was so determined to find recipes that work for us and that we're happy with. We need to skrimp every penny we can to save for our move!

EDIT 11/08/11: After using this a few times... I must tell you that you will NEED a rinse aid using this. I tried putting just white vinegar in my rinse aid dispenser but no dice. I started adding LemiShine (just 1 tbsp sprinkled in the bottom) and everything is coming out gorg. I picked mine up at WalMart (evil). I think I may try to figure out the measurements for adding LemiShine to the overall recipe for the next batch.