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Homemade Dishwasher Detergent And Our Low Stress Holidays

December 4, 2012 By Frugal Babe

I finished making ornaments for our nieces a few days ago.  Here are the last two, ready to be packaged up and mailed:

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Once I completed the ornaments, I was all finished with holiday gifts.  I had already made and ordered a digital scrapbook for my mother in law, and that’s all we do as far as gifts.  Everything else we do for the holiday season is all about people and fun.  We have a dear friend who will be turning 91 this month, and we’re going to take him to a college basketball game a couple days after his birthday, to celebrate his big day and the season in general.  We’re also going to take our boys to the big city to go to the science museum one day this month, and we’ll be having friends over for dinner at some point too.  We’ll also have my family join us for Christmas dinner.  I’d say it’s going to be an excellent month!

On a totally different topic, I finally got around to making my own dishwasher soap last week, and it works great!  I used this recipe, and it took about 2 minutes to mix everything up and label it.  We have hard water, so I’m using the version with citric acid in it – but I took care to follow the directions about keeping the citric acid in a separate container.  Here’s my new detergent, all ready to go:

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I use three teaspoons of the washing soda/borax/salt mixture, plus one teaspoon of the citric acid, and our dishes are perfectly clean.  I already had a large container of citric acid (I use it for canning tomatoes and for soaking seeds before I sprout them), which is the most expensive part of this detergent.  The other ingredients are all pretty inexpensive, and the total cost is a lot less than the fancy, “natural” dishwasher soap I used to buy.  I have tons of all the ingredients left over, so I’ll be able to replenish my detergent supply for quite a while before I have to buy anything else.  Definitely a big thumbs up for this DIY project!

Coming soon… a post about the new mouthwash I made last week.  It’s a lot less expensive than the one we had been buying, and again, it took only a couple minutes to make. 

What’s your favorite homemade alternative to a fancy (expensive?) store bought product?

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