Selfsufficientish.com

Hi all,

Does anyone use anything other than dishwasher tablets in their dishwasher? They are so incredibly expensive I was wondering if anyone uses some kind of alternative? I've considered just squeezing washing up liquid over it all and running it without a tablet, but not sure if that's going to work

Any suggestions would be great.

Dont know if soapnut would work Dont see why not really...maybe someone who supplies them will advise. keep us posted as this is something I was thinking about too! Once we have replaced the dishwasher as it fuses all our electrics if we use it

You could try this - I found it online and I've used it a few times when I've run out of tablets.

1 cup borax - you can still get borax on fleabay. Or, the replacement stuff is sold as Limescale Preventer in T£sc0.
1 cup baking soda
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup citric acid
30 drops citrus essential oil (I don't bother with this - it tends to make the mixture go hard)

Mix thoroughly. Put a tablespoon or so into each cup of your dishwasher.

I put white vinegar in the rinseaid bit.

I'm the only dishwasher in my house!!! pbf.

Hi Grubbysoles (I would love to know the reason for the name...or would I??)
I did a bit of investigation and found this;

Did you know you can use soapnut shells in the dishwasher?

Just put 3 shells in the bottom of the cutlery holder and some vinegar in the rinseaid dispenser and your glasses and plates will come out sparkling clean (they can't quite cope with baked on food, i.e casserole dishes.)

Sounds like it would need a bit of Maggies recipe at times!

Just as an aside to this thread, if anyone on here has a caravan/camper then dishwasher tablets are great in the toilet cassette and a fraction the cost of usual stuff

Thanks for the replies - I'll definitely try out the magic brew and the soapnuts! The vinegar seems to be the way forward for the rinse aid...

Ruth - grubbysoles came about when I went through my barefoot phase a few years ago. I went barefoot everywhere for about 3 years so the soles of my feet were always really grubby. I still loathe wearing shoes but I got fed up with all the broken glass everywhere and gave in.

Hi Grubbysoles, can you explain why my sons and their family very rarely wear shoes (or they wear flipflops) in Thailand but their feet are always clean looking whereas when I go my feet look permanently grubby!! Why did yours not become dirt repellant like theirs?? That was my theory but now you have blown it out!! I shower just as much as them by the way!!
Completely off the subject, of course

Ruth, I have no idea! My 3 years of barefoot-ness were mainly at university - maybe campus was just REALLY dirty from all those grimey students?! But I would happily re-try barefootism in Thailand for a comparison My feet did get very tough, though, the skin was like leather, and I could tell the temperature by my feet. Seriously. I could go down to 3 degrees (celsius...) then I needed shoes, but I could always work out to within a degree or two the temperature, based on how my feet were feeling. An alternative life-skill of mine!

Soapnuts work just fine in the dishwasher =). Put about 5 in the utensilsbox.

An energy-saving tip for those with both dishwashers and solar hot water in summer: get a plumber (or diy) to fit a tap where you can manually swap between the hot and cold supplies to the dishwasher. If you've bags of solar hot water, feed that to the machine.

You might even fit some kind of thermostatic mixing valve, to save having to swap manually.

A dishwasher only uses hot water during its operation, so if you have 'free' hot water, use it!

There's lots of advice on the soapnut tried and tested...verdict topic, hopefully this is the right link
http://www.selfsufficientish.com/forum/ ... 21&t=12685
HTH