DIY dishwasher detergent tabs

I tried these a couple of month ago and love them!  Dishwasher detergent tablets are way too expensive in the store.  After browsing Pinterest, I saw a few posts about the DIY version.  I tweaked a few ingredients, and here is what I came up with-

1 c Borax

1 c Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

1/2 c Lemi Shine Original 

3/4 c lemon juice

Mix the dry ingredients first, then add lemon juice-carefully. It will look like this

Do not be alarmed, it will thicken up and be less foamy. Keep stirring slowly to make sure all of your dry ingredients are saturated with the lemon juice. It should have the texture/consistency of sandy dough, not too wet, not too dry. It should form easily into a ball, like you used to do when you played with Pla-Dough. 

Then, spread a sheet of wax paper on your work space, and moving kinda quickly start forming balls and mashing into squares or rectangles. Keep in mind the size of the soap dispenser in your washing machine, you'll want these to fit. **As a side note, I saw several people use ice cube trays as molds for these, you can choose to use them, or a candy mold or whatever.  I chose to free-hand 1-because it was free, and 2- because I'm impatient and I didn't have anything to use as a mold on hand. 

If you choose the free-hand method, you'll likely end up with something like this. This recipe made 40 tabs, mind you they're not very consistent in size-my hubby helped and his idea of small and my idea of small are slightly different, but oh well. If you find you've made your tabs too big for your soap dispenser, don't try to break them, they're tough little jokers. Just toss them in the bottom of the dishwasher, they'll still work just fine. 

Allow them to dry completely, usually 3-4 hours, but if possible leave them overnight. Store them in an airtight container, and treat yourself with the money you saved going DIY instead of buying pre-made. 

Yup, I re-used the Cascade canister. 

I've made 2 batches of 40 each of these now, and I still have enough ingredients to make at least 4 more batches. With the exception of the Lemi Shine, I'll have to buy more of that before I do the other ingredients. 

These work super well, dishes are nice and clean. The dishwasher even looks and smells cleaner. The box of Cascade that you see cost me approximately $23, so that's about .27 each. My DIY version cost me .06 each. May not seem like a big difference when you look at the per piece price, but when you think of it like this, 85 for $23 or 85 for $5.10. Almost $20 in savings. Well worth it for me.