DIY Dishwasher Tabs---Recipe courtsey of Kiwanna's Kitchen on YouTube

As I have stated in past videos, I have been helping with my gram this past summer and fall.  She has a dishwasher and since I don't have one at home, I was completely floored and damn near passed out when I saw the price of them pretty commercially purchased dishwasher tablets. Them things are expensive.

So I was pleasantly surprised when one of the YouTube channels that I follow posted a video on how to make your own.  Now, I am a skeptic and just had to try them out for myself.  The ingredients were pretty simple, it didn't seem to take an overly long time to make up, but they did have to sit for a day or so to harden up.  That I could handle.  So I went to the store and purchased the ingredients, along with ice cube trays to use for these only (gram's fridge makes ice cubes automatically so I didn't have any here laying around), and got to work.

I wasn't sure how many I would get out of a full batch of the mix so I purchased 2 2-packs of ice cube trays from Walmart, the cheapest ones they had.

Aren't they pretty...so new and fresh like that....next it was time to mix up the ingredients so I could get those pretty things dirty. 

Here is all the dry ingredients in the bowl...don't worry I will put a list of ingredients at the bottom and the link for the original YouTube video so you can check that out too.

Next it was time for the liquids....in this case lemon juice.  Now the original recipe called for 3 cups of lemon juice.  I added about a cup at first, watching in fascination as it foamed up, like in my picture, then stirred until it was combined.  In total, I added about 2 cups of the lemon juice. In hindsight it probably would have been better to add more.  It would of given me more time to work with the mixture and probably easier to get the mixture into the ice cube trays...but I didn't.  I added lemon juice until I got to a thick paste consistency like in this next picture.

 Then I spooned it into the ice cube trays as quickly as I could.  Just a word of advice though, initially I only added about 1 cup of it and realized as I spooned in the first couple of cubes that my mixture was way to thick and then I added more lemon juice to give me more working time.  If I had been smart and added in all 3 cups of lemon juice, I would have had more working time and they would of been easier to get into the trays, but the may have had to sit longer as well so that is a double edged sword there.

The mixture was enough to fill 3 of the trays fully, plus 3 additional cubes in the fourth tray.  I let them sit overnight (the video said 24 to 48 hours) because mine were rock hard the next morning.

Here is a close up view of the finished cubes.

It did take a bit of work to get the cubes out of the ice cube trays, as you can see from the powdery mess around my bowls, but I was completely satisfied with them.  In total, I was able to get about 45 cubes (each ice cube tray held 14 cubes).  You may get more or less depending on the size of your ice cubes.

I test the cubes out last night on their first trial run through the dishwasher....I was impressed.  The dishes were clean, with no spots, and no left over food on any of the dishes.  I say this is a score and will be reusing this recipe again and again in the future.

Ingredients:

2 cups of Borax  (laundry isle)
2 cups of Washing Soda  (laundry isle)
3 cups of Lemon Juice (I used bottled from the juice isle)
1 cup Kosher Salt  (baking isle)
1 cup Baking Soda  (baking isle or laundry isle)

Here is the original video that I found on YouTube...love her channel and she has some amazing recipes on here as well.