DIY gel air freshener

I use essential oils and fragrance oils around the house for a lot of different things. One of my favorites is country clothesline, which I use for my dryer balls. With 3 dogs, a teenage athlete and lots of cooking comes a smelly house!  I hate it when my house stinks!  Air fresheners are NOT cheap, so I thought I'd try a DIY option with some of the fragrance oils. So, using some gelatin, water, country clothesline fragrance oil and food coloring, I came up with these. 

I recycled containers, for the most part you should use glass because when you pour the mixture into the container it will be hot. I wanted to try this plastic container that was already designed for air freshened with a lid that has holes in it. So far, so good as you can see, no melting. Yet. The color came out a VERY deep purple, which is fine for me, but if you want a lighter color use minimal food coloring. I overdid it just a bit. 

Here is what I used:

The Country Clothesline oil is what I use for my dryer balls, so I had it on hand already. The food coloring I also had. I bought the large box of Knox gelatin at Walmart for $10, and used only 4 packets. 

Bring to boil 1 cup of water.  While waiting for the water to boil, pour about 30 drops of essential oil and a few drops of your choice of food coloring (if you want) into your container. When the water is boiling, whisk in 4 packets of gelatin until dissolved. Then add 1 cup of cold water and whisk. Next, pour into your containers carefully.  I actually poured from the pot into my measuring cup, then into my containers, just because the measuring cup has a wider mouth than my containers and it has the pour spout. Stir with a skewer or chopstick or Popsicle stick...something disposable. And, that's it. Let them cool and firm up, then place them in a closet or small room. These work best in smaller spaces. 

I put this one in our coat closet, and it works great!

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.