a transverse member 48 is preferably included to physically stabilize the positioning of the baffles as shown in fig2 the surfaces 50 of the baffles 44 have a louver like appearance this being conducive to efficient and intimate contacting of water and detergent since the corner portions 52 presented by such construction tend to create turbulence such construction further tends to reduce caking the number of baffles employed is not critical generally from 3 to 6 baffles suffice and are positioned to provide from 2 to 5 co equal sections for receiving detergent flange plates 54 and 56 provided with openings 58 enable attachment of the container 10 to an external supporting surface which may be the washing machine itself or a structure closely adjacent thereto the perforated plate 20 in conjunction with the sidewall 14 which includes the flange 24 volume of the container 10 into a detergent retaining zone 60 thereabove and a liquid reservoir portion 62 therebelow in the embodiment illustrated the uppermost boundary of the detergent retaining zone is coterminous with a horizontal plane taken through the topmost portions of the baffles 44 while the bottom portion 16 defines the lowermost boundary of the fluid reservoir portion whether or not baffles are present the upper boundary of the detergent retaining zone 60 should be distanced vertically from the outlet port 46 by a value corresponding to about 2 to 20 of the.