Homemade Laundry Detergent

[plansrme]

I know this has been discussed before, and I have completely ignored those posts because you people who make your own laundry detergent are just wacko hippies.  But now, the last store in my area that carries my favorite flavor of detergent (powdered unscented Arm & Hammer) has replaced it with the liquid version.  I googled homemade laundry detergent out of desperation.  After wading through the recipes for a liquid detergent, which sounded messy, plus--I don't like liquid detergents because they drip, and piecing together some tips from Amazon reviews, I made a small batch yesterday.  Geez, people--why didn't you tell me it is so easy???  Is this really going to clean my clothes?  I've used in on three loads so far, and it seems to, but we're not in the heat of the summer yet, so I am withholding final judgment.

 

This is what I did:  Cut up one bar of Fels Naptha soap into about eight chunks, using my very best chef's knife.  Ran it through my food processor until it wasn't getting any smaller.  Then I added 1 cup each of washing soda and borax.  Whirled those through for a couple of minutes because an Amazon reviewer said that makes it dissolve better in cold water.  I dumped the results into an old sugar tin and stuck a tablespoon in there.  I've used 1 T./load in both cold and warm water.

 

If you've used your own for a while, are your clothes clean with just this, or do I need to plan to add something else for really sweaty stuff? (I do wash sweaty clothes in warm or hot water.)

[kewb]

I have made my own detergent.

Our clothes were clean and never rank and smelly. 

The downside was my whites.  Without the artificial brighteners and whiteners my whites eventually all seemed dingy.

[UmMusa]

oh my goodness I was wondering the same thing because I've been using that exact recipe for a month and each time I put the soap in the tray I wonder 'is this really going to clean my clothes'.! The blog post I got it from said to use half a tablespoon, but I put just less than S full tablespoon. Our clothes are clean and not stinky ( I checked the athlete's armpits). I think this dry version beats the pants off the liquid kind I made five years ago. That made our clothes dingy. Enjoy it!

Edited April 28, 2016 by UmMusa

[JustEm]

I have been using it for years, same recipe. And our clothes are always clean. Sometimes I have to spray a bit of vinegar and water on the armpit areas of dh's work t-shirts, he's a martial artist. But the normal summer sweating does fine without spraying with my vinegar solution

[Lady Marmalade]

I know this has been discussed before, and I have completely ignored those posts because you people who make your own laundry detergent are just wacko hippies.  But now, the last store in my area that carries my favorite flavor of detergent (powdered unscented Arm & Hammer) has replaced it with the liquid version.  I googled homemade laundry detergent out of desperation.  After wading through the recipes for a liquid detergent, which sounded messy, plus--I don't like liquid detergents because they drip, and piecing together some tips from Amazon reviews, I made a small batch yesterday.  Geez, people--why didn't you tell me it is so easy???  Is this really going to clean my clothes?  I've used in on three loads so far, and it seems to, but we're not in the heat of the summer yet, so I am withholding final judgment.

 

This is what I did:  Cut up one bar of Fels Naptha soap into about eight chunks, using my very best chef's knife.  Ran it through my food processor until it wasn't getting any smaller.  Then I added 1 cup each of washing soda and borax.  Whirled those through for a couple of minutes because an Amazon reviewer said that makes it dissolve better in cold water.  I dumped the results into an old sugar tin and stuck a tablespoon in there.  I've used 1 T./load in both cold and warm water.

 

If you've used your own for a while, are your clothes clean with just this, or do I need to plan to add something else for really sweaty stuff? (I do wash sweaty clothes in warm or hot water.)

 

If the homemade detergent works with your water, it definitely cleans well!  When I was using the homemade detergent, my recipe was similar to the one you used, though I also added some powdered Oxi-Clean to the mix.   DH works in construction, and always does his laundry separately from anything else, and would use two scoops for his work laundry, instead of the one I used for regular everyday stuff. 

 

I also usually use plain vinegar in a Downy ball for my fabric softener all the time- regardless of the detergent I use.  

[eternalsummer]

We found that it worked okay; our clothes don't get *that* dirty (except in mud season).  I have abandoned it now that we cloth diaper, though.  Cloth diapers just need that extra level of cleaning than an actual detergent, with the dreaded chemicals, supplies.

[plansrme]

I have made my own detergent.

Our clothes were clean and never rank and smelly. 

The downside was my whites.  Without the artificial brighteners and whiteners my whites eventually all seemed dingy.

 

Hmmm, this is good to know.  Our whites are all kind of dingy anyway.  Maybe I should plan to bleach them every once in a while or at least throw in some OxyClean with white loads.  I'll keep an eye out.

[G5052]

I did for a year, and our clothes got progressively stinky. We're on well water, so that may have been a factor. They were clean, but...

 

I shared this with a friend, and she gave me some Charlie's Soap. Relatively cheap, lower-additive than some, and no stink! That was several years ago, and we've never looked back.

[Katy]

I used it for years, but everything started seeming dingy.  The small container of super-concentrated All Free & Clear was $4 at my local walmart and you use like 1T per load, so I got some.  Everything came out so much cleaner and smelling better that I switched back. I didn't know things weren't clean before.  Especially the whites.  I'd been using the whitest white cycle on my washer, but switching the detergent (still using the oxyclean I used before) made a huge difference.  Dingy, 3 year old boy's undershirts that were hand me downs and on the verge of being thrown out came out almost as white as the brand new, unwashed ones in 1 cycle.

[shawthorne44]

We were able to use the homemade stuff even with cloth diapers.   But, every cloth diaper had a type of pre-treatment done to it during changing.  Before the pre-treatment method, washing the diapers took more effort even with store detergent.    Ammonia-remover is an amazing thing for cloth diapers.   You get it in the fish section at the pet store, put some in a spray bottle and dilute it with distilled water (or any clean water) our water was nasty where we lived and distilled was cheap.   Then you spray that on the pee area of the diaper.   When the pee turns into ammonia that stuff takes care of it.   What it turns into is mild and easily washed away.   For poop, we kept a spray bottle of ezyme pre-treatment that started breaking down the organic material right away.    With those pretreatments, we didn't use the lid on the diaper bucket.     We also never had to strip the diapers again.  

 

 

I also found an excellent way to prepare the homemade laundry detergent.   I started with the recipe on ICanTeachMyChild, but I think that is a standard one.   I add extra Borox because my water was nasty when I first started making this.    Then instead of making up the big batches of liquid detergent, I put the powder in a ziplock bag.   Then I make the liquid detergent in small batches in misc glass jars, e.g. iced tea containers.   I put two cups of water in the container then I use an iced teaspoon to add in a heaping spoonful of detergent.   Microwave for 2 minutes, stir.  Microwave for another minute, stir.   Drop iced teaspoon into container.  Let cool.   Before using, give the container a shake and the spoon rattles around in there and helps to stir.   

Before the glass jar method, I tried using the old detergent containers but that was a MESS.  

[Carrie12345]

I've been doing liquid for a few years now.  I have to make sure my washer gets cleaned regularly to prevent any smells (I don't add scents.)  I also add Oxyclean to my whites or they DO get dingy.

[Kathryn]

I was like you! I've been using it for a year and haven't noticed any difference in the cleanliness of our clothes. DH does his work clothes (he works in a filthy, grungy environment) and he uses somewhere between 2 and 4 tablespoons, but his nasty work clothes get just as clean also.

[Miss Peregrine]

We have hard water and it didn't work for us.

[ktgrok]

I have made my own detergent.

Our clothes were clean and never rank and smelly. 

The downside was my whites.  Without the artificial brighteners and whiteners my whites eventually all seemed dingy.

 

Same here. Worked great at first but I think in our hard water it left a film after a while. The only thing that works here is Tide. 

[regentrude]

May I ask a dumb question? WHY are you all making your own detergent? Why do you find it worth the hassle? To avoid the environmental impact of the packaging? To avoid certain substances?

[kewb]

I was doing it to save money. Homemade detergent lasted longer and cost pennies compared to commercial detergent.

[regentrude]

I was doing it to save money. Homemade detergent lasted longer and cost pennies compared to commercial detergent.

 

is that really significant? The store bought laundry detergent I use costs $1.99 for a bottle that is nominally good for 32 loads which I can easily stretch to 64. It lasts me at least two months... so if the home made detergent were completely free, I'd save maximum one dollar per month.

[Lady Marmalade]

is that really significant? The store bought laundry detergent I use costs $1.99 for a bottle that is nominally good for 32 loads which I can easily stretch to 64. It lasts me at least two months... so if the home made detergent were completely free, I'd save maximum one dollar per month.

 

Whoa! Lucky you that you can use such an affordable detergent!  If I could use detergent at that price, it definitely wouldn't make sense to use homemade.

 

I don't use homemade anymore because it doesn't work with our water.  That's definitely to our detriment, because we have skin issues and allergies to scent, so I need to use allergen friendly/free of dye and scent detergent.  I was so thankful when All Free & Clear came out because it works for us, and it's more affordable than the Ecos or Seventh Generation that I was using before. 

[kewb]

is that really significant? The store bought laundry detergent I use costs $1.99 for a bottle that is nominally good for 32 loads which I can easily stretch to 64. It lasts me at least two months... so if the home made detergent were completely free, I'd save maximum one dollar per month.

 

The dollar alone may not be substantial but when combined with other cost saving measures the dollars add up to the difference between fresh produce and not.

[JustEm]

I use homemade over store bought because I do a lot of laundry, cloth diapers plus 6 ppl worth of normal laundry, so that 1.99 detergent would not last me as long as you so it does save money. Maybe not a significant amount but I've made tons of little easy changes and it has shown in our monthly budget. We also try to limit the amount of waste we produce.

[AmandaVT]

I used it for years, but everything started seeming dingy.  The small container of super-concentrated All Free & Clear was $4 at my local walmart and you use like 1T per load, so I got some.  Everything came out so much cleaner and smelling better that I switched back. I didn't know things weren't clean before.  Especially the whites.  I'd been using the whitest white cycle on my washer, but switching the detergent (still using the oxyclean I used before) made a huge difference.  Dingy, 3 year old boy's undershirts that were hand me downs and on the verge of being thrown out came out almost as white as the brand new, unwashed ones in 1 cycle.

 

This was us. We switched to it and loved the homemade stuff until I realized it wasn't doing a good job at all of getting stains out. So I washed a load of clothes with stains (nothing huge, just a splash of food or something) in some all free and clear and was amazed at how much cleaner they were when they came out. We were getting incrementally dirtier and I hadn't noticed. 

[plansrme]

May I ask a dumb question? WHY are you all making your own detergent? Why do you find it worth the hassle? To avoid the environmental impact of the packaging? To avoid certain substances?

Because my grocery store stopped carrying the one brand I liked, and no one else carries it. I want a powder with no perfume, and they literally carry nothing that meets those criteria any more. Nor do they have anything as cheap as what you have described. I already regularly shop at at least five stores to get groceries; I am not adding another just for detergent.

[Katy]

We started using the homemade as an experiment but stuck with it several years because we tried coldwater tide and all got super itchy.  The only thing that had changed was the detergent.  We used regular tide and were still itchy, and they we started getting a rash.  We switched back to homemade and the rashes went away.  I've never seen multiple members of the same family develop a detergent allergy simultaneously, but we did.  And when I read the reviews of coldwater tide, it seems many people developed allergies to it.

[hornblower]

Whoa $2 for 32 loads is crazy cheap. Nothing like that here. 

If anyone is looking for a new eco detergent, I'm using these strips now. They come in the mail & because they're so light, if you buy a certain amount the shipping is free. They just come in a big envelope. 

http://mydizolve.com/

you can set a part of purchase to donate to a fundraising campaign. 

The fragrance free ones really are fragrance free. Both fragrance free & fresh linen work well.

 

[regentrude]

Whoa $2 for 32 loads is crazy cheap. Nothing like that here.

Aldi, store brand

[PixieLittle]

I use Charlie's powder too. About 5 years ago I recall calculating the cost of making your own detergent vs. buying ready-made and it was cheaper per load to just get a giant tub of Charlie's from Amazon. It lasts for several years even though we do 1-3 loads a day. It's no fragrance. I use it on all our laundry, including cloth diapers (cotton) and baby clothes. Seems fine to me but maybe I don't know any better :)

[kewb]

I have been debating buying charlie's. Glad to see such a positive review.

[Catalytic]

you people who make your own laundry detergent are just wacko hippies

 

I have tears of laughter.  

 

(We've made our own, DH hates it, and since he does all the laundry and I don't have to touch it...I buy him whatever the h*ll he wants to clean it with  :rofl: )

Edited April 28, 2016 by Catalytic

[LucyStoner]

Dissenting voice here. FWIW, I probably AM pretty much the crazy hippie you think of when you heard about this. And I do not reccomend homemade "detergent".

 

It's not actually detergent. It's generally a mix of soap (like zote, fels n or other bar soaps that appear in the laundry aisle), boosters (like biz or oxi) and water softeners (baking soda, borax). Homemade laundry soap does not contain what distinguishes soap from detergents. Soap cleans surfaces well. Clothing is porous and tightly wound threads that hold in body oils, dirt and whatever else. Detergents contain surfactants which pull away the crud on your laundry and allow it to be rinsed away. Most of the recipes are MOSTLY boosters and softeners and not anything that gets at dirt. There not that much soap in each load. There are zero surfactants.

 

Soap is easier rinsed from flat, nonporous surfaces than from fabric. It is why when hand washing laundry the old fashioned way they scrubbed it on a rock or hard, bumpy surface- to get everything worked in and why they then rinsed it like 4000 times. Soap scum can, and does, build up on clothing over time. Machines are designed for detergents, not soap. So unless you are manually rinsing it all out (with a crap ton of water), your machine, especially your HE machine, isn't getting it all out.

 

I have extremely sensitive skin, which is why homemade laundry soap appealed to me. I thought the homemade "detergent" was working because fresh from the wash since the little bit of scented ingredients in the mix smelled ok and temporarily masked what it wasn't cleaning. No. It was not actually getting clean. I found that after one wear, my pants needed to be washed again because they smelled vile. With a regular unscented detergent my jeans can be worn several times before landing in the laundry pile. Also, it didn't hack it for activewear at all. Wearing dirty clothes was also not good for my crazy skin. My brother used it for a long time and his clothes were filthy and his towels were barely absorbent anymore. He switched back to detergent and his clothes were noticeably cleaner, brighter AND his towels didn't become practically water repellant.

 

Borax, oxi and laundry soap (which is sold as a pre treatment or stain product now) aren't free. By the time I add up those ingredients and factor in washing more often I don't really see the savings over going to a discount store like Big Lots and getting whatever is cheapest (for non HE machines, they generally have something in the $2 range and I've bought HE unscented/free and clear detergents there for as little as $4 for 1.5 to 2 months worth) or buying a dirt cheap detergent like Foca or Sun. I can't use most cheap detergents or things like Tide because of the perfumes but most people can. I usually buy the arm and hammer unscented liquid on sale. It's not too expensive and it gets our clothes clean.

Edited April 29, 2016 by LucyStoner

[Upptacka]

I made my own for a while. Not to save money, but to see if less additives would mean happier skin for my kids with eczema. I tried a number of "recipes" and settled on one that I LOVED it at first......it was easy to assemble and it had simple ingredients (I can't remember exactly off the top of my head, but it was soap, washing soda, baking soda. No borax. It probably would have performed better with our water using borax, but I wasn't comfortable using it). Anyway, it seemed to be working well, and seemed to agree with our sensitive skin. I was sold. But after about a few months of use, I noticed stuff really wasn't getting clean. It just took a while for it to build up enough for me to notice, I guess. Bad smells, stiff towels (residue/build up) and my younger two started getting rashes again (either from residues or because their clothes weren't truly getting clean). And that was washing on hot with double rinses, too.

 

We are happily using store bought detergent again! At least I tried. ;-)

[Ellie]

Dissenting voice here. FWIW, I probably AM pretty much the crazy hippie you think of when you heard about this. And I do not reccomend homemade "detergent".

 

It's not actually detergent. It's generally a mix of soap (like zote, fels n or other bar soaps that appear in the laundry aisle), boosters (like biz or oxi) and water softeners (baking soda, borax). Homemade laundry soap does not contain what distinguishes soap from detergents. Soap cleans surfaces well. Clothing is porous and tightly wound threads that hold in body oils, dirt and whatever else. Detergents contain surfactants which pull away the crud on your laundry and allow it to be rinsed away. Most of the recipes are MOSTLY boosters and softeners and not anything that gets at dirt. There not that much soap in each load. There are zero surfactants.

 

Soap is easier rinsed from flat, nonporous surfaces than from fabric. It is why when hand washing laundry the old fashioned way they scrubbed it on a rock or hard, bumpy surface- to get everything worked in and why they then rinsed it like 4000 times. Soap scum can, and does, build up on clothing over time. Machines are designed for detergents, not soap. So unless you are manually rinsing it all out (with a crap ton of water), your machine, especially your HE machine, isn't getting it all out.

 

I have extremely sensitive skin, which is why homemade laundry soap appealed to me. I thought the homemade "detergent" was working because fresh from the wash since the little bit of scented ingredients in the mix smelled ok and temporarily masked what it wasn't cleaning. No. It was not actually getting clean. I found that after one wear, my pants needed to be washed again because they smelled vile. With a regular unscented detergent my jeans can be worn several times before landing in the laundry pile. Also, it didn't hack it for activewear at all. Wearing dirty clothes was also not good for my crazy skin. My brother used it for a long time and his clothes were filthy and his towels were barely absorbent anymore. He switched back to detergent and his clothes were noticeably cleaner, brighter AND his towels didn't become practically water repellant.

 

Borax, oxi and laundry soap (which is sold as a pre treatment or stain product now) aren't free. By the time I add up those ingredients and factor in washing more often I don't really see the savings over going to a discount store like Big Lots and getting whatever is cheapest (for non HE machines, they generally have something in the $2 range and I've bought HE unscented/free and clear detergents there for as little as $4 for 1.5 to 2 months worth) or buying a dirt cheap detergent like Foca or Sun. I can't use most cheap detergents or things like Tide because of the perfumes but most people can. I usually buy the arm and hammer unscented liquid on sale. It's not too expensive and it gets our clothes clean.

 

I'm a member of a FB page called Laundry Love and Science, and they agree with you. The point out that the amount of actual cleaning product in the two tablespoons you're supposed to use is approximately 3/4 of a *teaspoon,* diluted in a big ol' tub of water--hardly any cleaning going on.

 

I've never been tempted to try it because (1) Mr. Ellie is allergic to every detergent on the market, but he can tolerate Amway products, so that's what I use (happily, for almost 40 years), (2) Amway products are biodegradable, so I'm being kind to the environment, and (3) they are economical. So there you have it. :-)