Affordable alternative to Finish Pods?

[jnw]

They really went up in price at 18 cents per pod.  $18 for 100 pods.  Seems a bit expensive no? Or am I being too picky?  I think they were $14 just last year.

Just wondering if there is something every bit as good for say 12 to 14 cents per load.  I read somewhere, I forget where, that if you put 3 drops of regular dish soap in the tray along with 1 tbsp of baking soda, it will come out just as clean.  I am not sure.  I get zero spots with the finish pods.

[Morning Glory]

I have the store brand from Costco which seem exactly the same.  Not sure what the price is now as I've had the same container for over a year. I don't know any substitution hacks for those.

[CNM]

I think you're talking about dishwasher pods.  If so, I'd recommend switching away from pods altogether.  Anecdotally, I have had worse cleaning results using pods and more clogging.  Now I use store-brand liquid dishwashing detergent and it's cheap and works great.  Here's an article about the drawbacks of pods:
https://www.thekitchn.com/dishwasher-mistake-how-much-detergent-to-use-266361

[Brystheguy]

Let's say you wash 400 loads a year. The new price means you'll be spending $16 more a year. Sorry, but if you like their performance, that's not even worth thinking about. Worry about the big things!

[K_in_the_kitchen]

They are closer to $14 if there is a sale at Costco or Sam's Club.  I do like them and we also get consistently clean dishes without any spots.  But we've decided to stop using them once we get through what we have, because of the plastic entering the environment.  We're hoping to find a tablet that doesn't have plastic (or any dissolvable polymer coating) or a good powder, in a fully recyclable paper or cardboard box.  It would make sense to switch to hand washing with a brush and bar of soap, but we still have young adults living at home and find that the best system is the one they will actually use.

[yachi]

I'm actually quite happy with storebrand or Cascade powder in a box, but we were picky on the dishwasher we bought when we replaced the 1985 model.  It does great on the dishes.  We sometimes have an issue with a residual smell in the summer.  When we have that, I add about a 1/4 cup of bleach to the bit of water that hangs out in the dishwasher after we run it.  That seems to make it go away.  I'm not convinced using the pods would alleviate that part anyway. 

Sometimes we add a bit of citric acid powder to clean any minerals that build up in the dishwasher (I'm careful now to use the bleach and acid separately so the bleach doesn't off-gas)

[nereo]

Welcome back @JenniferW

[Cranky]

We've got a Bosch dishwasher. In our old house, the repair guy told me to only use the Finish in a Bosch because the sensors were very sensitive and anything else was likely to upset them.

I don't know if that's true buy I buy them on sale from Amazon and it doesn't seem worth saving a few bucks a year to have a possible dishwasher malfunction.

[Mr. Green]

We use regular Cascade dish powder. It's shocking how small of an amount you're supposed to put in per load. A box of detergent lasted us an entire year, easily 100+ loads and I think it was $5. We've had no issues with dishes getting clean. To me, the pods are just one more example of companies repackaging a product and selling a second's worth of convenience for huge profits.

[K_in_the_kitchen]

We've got a Bosch dishwasher. In our old house, the repair guy told me to only use the Finish in a Bosch because the sensors were very sensitive and anything else was likely to upset them.

I don't know if that's true buy I buy them on sale from Amazon and it doesn't seem worth saving a few bucks a year to have a possible dishwasher malfunction.

This is good information to have, as we also have a Bosch, and I would rather spend money on Finish than have to get a new dishwasher.  Although I would rather not replace it when it stops working and is no longer reparable, I would like it to last until the young adults are out on their own, and who knows when that will be.

[ChickenStash]

After using a few brands over the years, I'm a big fan of the Finish Quantum pods so I'd say just stick with them if they are doing a good job.

But, if you really want to switch you'll probably need to run your own experiments to see what works best for you. Not every dishwasher works the same and not every family does their dishes the same way so what works for one person might be junk for another.

[CNM]

We've got a Bosch dishwasher. In our old house, the repair guy told me to only use the Finish in a Bosch because the sensors were very sensitive and anything else was likely to upset them.

I don't know if that's true buy I buy them on sale from Amazon and it doesn't seem worth saving a few bucks a year to have a possible dishwasher malfunction.

This is good information to have, as we also have a Bosch, and I would rather spend money on Finish than have to get a new dishwasher.  Although I would rather not replace it when it stops working and is no longer reparable, I would like it to last until the young adults are out on their own, and who knows when that will be.

My old house also had a Bosch.  I had to have the pump replaced twice.  The repair guy said it might be because of the pods not dissolving all the way.  (I was also using Finish brand at the time.) *shrug* Maybe it's because we tend to have hard water here?

[chemistk]

Just a friendly reminder that dishwasher pods are generally an inferior alternative to regular dish detergent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

TL;DW - Nearly every dishwasher has a spot for you to add a bit of prewash detergent. And if it doesn't, unless the instructions explicitly say not to add any prewash, you can add ~1tbsp of detergent right to the bucket. The prewash cycle does the heavy lifting of the biggest crud off your dishes and detergent goes a long way to help that process.

Detergent pods are as big as they are to account for the worst case scenario water (the hardest of the hard stuff). The detergent needs to condition the water to allow the soaps to be soapy and the enzymes to be chewy. This is why most modern dishwashers have you add so little even with a full bucket.

Nearly everyone would be just fine with standard boring powdered dishwasher detergent - the pods are, at best, a marketing gimmick.

[jnw]

So I went to the Dollar Tree and bought a 708 gram box of dishwashing machine detergent for $1.25.  It came to $1.36 with tax.

I watched a youtube video StashingAway here on the forum shared with me and the guy in the video said the cheap Great Value powder does a good job, so I figured maybe this even cheaper stuff does as well.   In the video he uses 33g of detergent per load.  Video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll6-eGDpimU&t .

So I just washed a load of dishes in our new Bosch Series 100 we bought earlier this month, with this Dollar Tree detergent.  I measured 33g which is 2 lightly rounded soup spoons.  (I poured the box of detergent into a Lock & Lock container and threw in a soup spoon as a measuring device for each load.)

The dishes came out clean and spot free.  I'll alternate back and forth between it and the Finish and report back after a while. 

The finish was costing us 19.4 cents per load with sales tax.  This box of DT detergent contained 708 grams; at 33g per load it will give us 22 loads per box.  $1.36 / 22 = 6.2 cents per load.   6.2/19.4 = 32% the cost of the Finish pods.

At 19.4 cents per load, one load per day, the Finish costs $71 per year.  In contrast, the DT detergent is $23 per year; a savings of $71-23 =  $48 per year.

I also bought a box of cascade powder from walmart and it's around 11 cents per load with tax; I'll try it out as well.. it's a lot cheaper than the pods but the DT is super cheap lol.    (I would of got the GV powder he mentions in the video at 5.2 cents per oz but my Neighborhood Walmart didn't have any.. I'll have to keep an eye out for it.. will probably switch to that from the Dollar Tree detergent then.)

I'll look into the sensor thing more.  I think a lot of the problems people have with the Bosch dishwashers is that they don't clean the filter perhaps?  I am cleaning it once per month.  Really easy to do.

[Cassie]

A dishwasher repair guy told me to stop using pods as they cause many problems that need to be repaired..

[jnw]

If the powder causes problems with the sensor, I imagine we could get a replacement Bosch sensor for $15 and install it ourselves.  We are going to save $48 per year by going with the powder vs pods, so that's a lot of sensors.   Perhaps the sensor won't break though.  I dunno.  I guess we'll risk it for that kind of savings.

The savings in the detergent over say 15 years will cover the entire cost of the machine -- ~$750.  EDIT: or about $1100 if the money is invested with an average return of 6%.

[snic]

The savings in the detergent over say 15 years will cover the entire cost of the machine -- ~$750.  EDIT: or about $1100 if the money is invested with an average return of 6%.

...or <$750 if inflation stays above 6%...

[feelingroovy]

@JenniferW that was a real Amy Dacyzyn-esque experiment. You should be proud.

[Josiecat22222]

I just posted this in much more detail on the "what did you do today to save money?" thread, but:


4 simple and easily sourced ingredients can be mixed up in a kitchen bowl and make your own detergent in less than 5 minutes, and far cheaper than any store bought product.  Link below:

https://www.thespruce.com/dishwasher-detergent-recipes-1387928