Homemade Dishwasher tablets

I don't know about you, but no matter how many times I've gone to buy dish-washing tablets, I'm horrified by the price. They are so expensive that sometimes I feel like I should hand wash dishes just to avoid the cost of tablets. Yes, I've gone to the bargain places and found them cheaper but they're still not THAT cheap. So I finally got online and found a few recipes online, most of which are quite similar. I thought to start that I'd only make a half batch, which ended up making 28 tablets, tablespoon size tablets. 

I found that I could buy almost all the ingredients required for my local supermarket, I had to go to the hardware store to buy the Borox. 

So here we go: 

You will need - 

• 1 cup Washing Soda
• 1 cup Borox
• 1/2 cup Epsom Salt
• 1/2 cup Vinegar
• 15-20 drops Lemon/Lime Essential Oils

Mix the Washing soda, Borox and Epsom salts in a large bowl until everything is well mixed together. Then add the essential oil and mix through. The final step is to add the vinegar (it will foam a little at this stage, due the vinegar reacting with the washing soda), mix together until this reaches the consistency of wet sand and clumps together when you squeeze some together in your hand. 

The next step is to press the mixture firmly into clean and dry ice cube trays. I was lucky enough to find perfectly sized ice cube containers from Woolworths for $2.00 each that i will keep specifically for this use.

I found that the mixture dried perfectly within about 2 hours, but i would suggest leaving it overnight if you can. I'm just the worlds most impatient person, so I removed them from the tray the second I felt that they were dry enough not to crumble. 

I have to say I'm very impressed, they are comparable to the store bought tablets. I also add 2-3 drops of regular dish-washing liquid to the top of the tablet before putting it into the machine (don't use more than this as dish washing liquid will foam and this isn't good for your dishwasher) and 1/2 cup of white vinegar to the bottom of the machine to stop your dishes becoming cloudy. 

If you try this recipe leave me a comment about what you think! I hope you have as much success with them as I have.