I always use vinegar in the rinse dispenser, which seemed to counter the tendency of the homemade stuff to cloud up the glasses.

The longest I’ve used the homemade stuff was three months, and it handled the job OK.

DO NOT overuse the dishwashing liquid in a dishwasher or you’ll have suds all over your floor. 2-3 drops are plenty.

I totally agree with the commenter who said use half the amount. that works for me with laundry.

Our money saving tip that we learned from the $200 visit from the septic man – if you have a septic system don’t use any powdered soaps. The residue builds up in the pipes leading to the system and clogs it up. The only real way to get it all flushed out is having a sucker truck hooked up to your outflow, fill all the sinks in the house with hot water and try to flush/drain/suck it out all at once.

So if I used powders over the course of a year it would end up costing me an expensive septic visit! ;)

I love making our own detergents because I know exactly what is in it, and we stock up on the individual ingredients when we are at stores that carry them (Walmart has the fels naptha soap for 0.99 and borax for around $3 I think, Krogers has the Wash soda for about $3)

We always have the ingredients on hand so when we run out we just make up some instead of having to run to the store. Love the results and the convenience, and the savings!

So we decided to try home-made dishwasher detergent (borax, washing soda and salt). The white dishes came out clean but were marked with rust stains wherever the plastic was worn out in the dishwasher. It’s a 25-year old dishwasher – so there are a lot of bit of metal showing. We’ve switched back to standard dishwasher detergent and the stains on our dishes have started to fade… Maybe we shouldn’t have used the salt…

Maybe there’s borax in the commercial stuff, I don’t know..maybe there’s stuff in the bought soap that’s even worse, hard to tell.

I thought about making my own dishwasher soap, but the borax was one thing I couldn’t reconcile, personally. I tried a couple of different commercial varieties, and ended up sticking with the one highest rated from consumer reports, because it actually got all the gunk off the dishes. The lower priced brands left gunk behind, ew.

I also tried the laundry soap recipe from this site. Even after some adjustments it still didn’t do well enough getting out our particular stains and smells. Even the lower priced commercial ones can’t overcome that, so I’m back to Tide. It saves me time and effort re-washing stuff, and saves me embarrassment about the state of our socks, sheets, shirts, and undies..

I am all for frugal living and highly recommend folks to try something different and see if it works. But I am also for observing the evidence and choosing the method that works best for my situation.

Personally I don’t feel like a failure giving up on the less effective method for me. I am perfectly content to pay for performance in areas that are important to me. I am also a member of two different CSAs so I can get organic vegetables and sustainably grown meat. I have a vegetable garden in the back yard, and will be planting some fruit in the back yard too, to go along with the pecan tree.

None of it is especially cheap, but money for health and skills is a trade I’m willing to make.

Highly recommend everyone to find their personal favorite ways to be frugal and be happy in that. Don’t feel guilty that you don’t like someone else’s favorite frugal ways.

shris

It’s clear that he’s using a dishwasher. See the paragraph which begins “I tried out this low-end detergent and found…”

I did some of my own calculations:
$13.00 for a box of dishwasher tabs @ 60 washes per box = approx 0.22 cents each. I don’t cut them in half but it’s still pretty cheap.

For me, this is about pennies rather than dollars and it isn’t worth it to make my own detergent (for anything).