Running your dishwasher saves water and energy over doing dishes by hand. But what are you spending on dishwasher soap? Commercial detergents cost as much as 30 cents per load. If you run your dishwasher every day, that adds up to $110 per year.
Homemade dishwasher detergents, made with common ingredients found in your grocery store, can cost as little as 4 cents per load, which adds up to only $15 per year with everyday use. The only tough-to-find ingredient is citric acid, which you can order online.
My Homemade Tests
I decided to set up a test of everyday ingredients to see how they’d clean, using easy recipes I found online. Here’s what I started with:
- Borax: $8.75 for a 76-ounce box
- Washing soda: $5 for a 55-ounce box
- Baking soda: $2.75 for a 4-pound box
- Citric acid: $5 for a 4-ounce bottle
- Kosher salt: $2 for a 26-ounce bottle
- Coarse or sea salt: $3.50 for a 17.6-ounce bottle
- Vinegar: $3 for a 1-gallon bottle
- Unsweetened lemonade mix: $1.55 for 5 packets
The Experiment
Before trying each recipe, I smeared oatmeal on a clean, clear pot lid, let it dry for an hour, then put it in the center of the top rack of the dishwasher.
I washed my first load with a commercial detergent made by Seventh Generation. The pot lid came out looking like this:
The pot lid didn’t get completely clean in the dishwasher alone. There were still a couple of spots, but they came off easily with a little scrubbing by hand.
Recipe #1
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
One-half cup citric acid
One-half cup kosher salt
Mix all ingredients together and store in a tightly sealed jar. Store in a cool, dry place. Use 1 tablespoon per load. Makes 48 loads.
Cost per load: 12 cents
Effectiveness: I noticed a few spots left on the pot lid after the dishwasher finished. They easily lifted off with some scrubbing, but the detergent didn’t get rid of all the spots by itself.
The rest of the dishes were fairly clean, although there was a slight film on my silverware. This detergent clumps after a while, particularly in warm temperatures, due to the salt in it. It’s easy to pulverize the clumps, though.
Recipe #2
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
One-half cup kosher salt
5 packets unsweetened lemonade mix
Mix all ingredients and store in a tightly sealed jar. Use 1 tablespoon per load, or 2 tablespoons for extra-dirty dishes. Makes 42 loads.
Cost per load: 8 cents
Effectiveness: The pot lid came out remarkably clean with this recipe. There were a few faint spots and one stubborn piece of oatmeal stuck to the right side (which took a fair amount of scrubbing by hand to remove), but overall it was pretty clean.
The rest of my dishes came out cleaner with this recipe than they did with the first one. There was no film on anything.
Recipe #3
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
2 gallons of vinegar
Combine the borax and washing soda and store in a tightly sealed jar. Use 1 tablespoon per load. Add 1 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. Makes 32 loads.
Cost per load: 23 cents
Effectiveness: The pot lid came out with a few smudges, plus an oatmeal flake that stuck to the glass. Again, the spots came off with a little scrubbing.
Recipe #4
1 cup borax
1 cup baking soda
2 teaspoons citric acid
34 cups of vinegar
Combine the borax, baking soda, and citric acid, and store in a tightly sealed jar. Use 2 teaspoons per load. Add 1 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. Makes 34 loads.
Cost per load: 21 cents
Effectiveness: There were still some spots on the pot lid, particularly around the edges. The rest of my dishes were pretty clean, but a couple of glasses had some cloudy spots, and the silverware was slightly filmy.
Recipe #5
1 cup washing soda
One-quarter cup citric acid
One-quarter up coarse or sea salt
24 cups of vinegar
Mix the washing soda, citric acid, and salt. Store in an airtight container. Use 1 teaspoon for average loads, and 1 tablespoon for extra-dirty loads. Add 1 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle. Makes 24 loads.
Cost per load: 32 cents
Effectiveness: Again, there were a few spots left, and they were all the way around the perimeter of the pot lid instead of just a spot here and there.
Recipe #6
1 cup borax
1 cup baking soda
Combine ingredients and store in an airtight container. Use 2 tablespoons per load. Makes 32 loads.
Cost per load: 4 cents
Effectiveness: Terrible! The pot lid was still spotted and crusty, and the rest of my dishes were a filmy mess. I ended up running the dishwasher again with a different detergent, just to get everything clean.
The Verdict
None of the six recipes got the pot lid perfectly spotless, but the one that came the closest was recipe #2. To be fair, dried oatmeal is a tough job for a dishwasher alone, and under normal circumstances I’d have pre-rinsed the lid first.
Recipe #2 is identical to recipe #1 except that it calls for lemonade powder instead of citric acid. Both serve the same function: They add a citrus taste to drinks, but they also serve as cleaning agents in homemade cleaners. Something about the lemonade made it more effective. Bonus: Lemonade packets are much cheaper than citric acid, taking the cost per load from 12 cents in recipe #1 to 8 cents in recipe #2.
So I’ll stick with recipe #2 but do a pre-rinse on any dishes with caked-on crud. I’m already excited about all the money I’ll save.
Related: