Comments on: Tightwad Tuesday: Homemade Laundry Detergent

By: Amy Schmidt

Amy Schmidt — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:05:02 +0000

I live in Florida and have not seeing “washing soda”. Could it be under any other name, or brand name? I love the recipe and am eager to try it. By the way, Fels Naptha is a good skin soap to treat poison ivy. Thanks!

By: Cuppie

Cuppie — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:21:29 +0000

I plan to try this very soon. I have been using Dawn as a spot treatment for those oily type stains (think olive oil or mayo or dressing on a shirt) for awhile now and it’s all I use for those. It works extremely well. I don’t use anything else.

By: Peggy

Peggy — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:49:11 +0000

I use essentially the same recipe - skipping the baking soda and adding a generic oxy powder and using Sunlight laundry (bar) soap instead since I can't find Fels Naptha up here. I also use only one tablespoon per load (since that is what was indicated on the recipe I used) and find that the clothes get just as clean as with commercial detergent. I love my homemade detergent! Peggy’s last blog post..getting there

By: Organic Mom

Organic Mom — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:50:58 +0000

I think the whole point of making homemade laundry SOAP is being missed here. The recipes are for SOAP and NOT for DETERGENT. Detergents are chemically based (petroleum) and Soaps are natural. The choice is not limited to saving a little money, but to clean with safe and natural ingredients. Tide and Gain contain really high concentrations of fragrances and other cleaning chemicals that many people are allergic to. If you have tough stains, you can always use extra borax, Dawn dishwashing liquid (original for greasey stains), or even commercial spot treatments on them. One of the purposes of homemade soap is to get away from petroleum-based-laboratory-laundry and use green and natural solutions for everyday problems.

For really white whites, sunshine is the best bleaching agent there is, and it contains no chemicals and is absolutely free. I do a LOT of gardening and barn cleaning, and homemade soap workd great on natural dirt. The red in red clay soil is iron oxide, so you would have to use a rust remover type of cleaner to get it out. It’s probably one of the chemical agents in Tide & Gain, whether you need it or not.

By: Jean

Jean — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:13:28 +0000

I made my own laundry detergent and then spent the day experimenting with several brands to see which one cleaned the best and was economical too. I used white hand towels for the test. I took the towels outside and ground them into the dirt (Georgia red clay!). Then I washed each towel with a different detergent. After washing all the towels I placed them side by side to compare how clean they were. The most expensive detergents were Tide and Gain. I also used home made, Extra, Arm & Hammer, Shaklee Basic L. Tide and Gain cleaned the best and when purchased on sale and with a coupon were quite economical. The home made, Extra, A & H, were not acceptable in cleaning whites. Now, if the load was not noticeably dirty the type of detergent might not matter. I also repeated the experiment using OxyClean with the detergents that needed a boost. The towels still were not as clean as the Tide and Gain towels. I also repeated the experiment using wet towels ground into the dirt. I had the same results. I did not expect to find that Tide & Gain won because I was using whatever was on sale. In fact I hoped they wouldn’t perform better. Now I use Tide & Gain exclusively and have cut out OxyClean. This was my experience with detergents, you might experience something different, especially if you don’t have dirty dirt.

By: a

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:40:07 +0000

I’m going to make two comments.

From the frugality perspective. I’d say rock on. You’ve got some good cost savings. I spent ~$10 on a bottle of detergent and figure its going to last me about 8 months. Of course I’m only one person who doesn’t generate too much laundry. If you had a family and were really cranking out the laundry the little extra effort you spend making your own detergent really adds up to significant savings.

Now onto chemistry. Your recipe lacks any kind of a whitening agent, thus your clothes will fade or dull over time. This may not be an issue for you but it is something to consider when making the trade off between do-it-yourself detergent and store bought. There may also be some other benefits to store bought detergent that are worthy of consideration before you make the jump to homemade.

By: W. Franklin

W. Franklin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:49:04 +0000

For those of you who are having problems finding the laundry soda (sodium carbonate), it is the same thing as PH Up in the pool chemical dept. Just make sure it says 100% sodium carbonate.

I use a homemade powder recipe, it seems to work pretty well…:0)

By: Cheyenna

Cheyenna — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:53:36 +0000

Mine is

3/4 washing soda
3/4 borax
1 bar soap (Ivory/zote/Felsnaptha)

grade soap and melt in 4 cups of water
Add powered ingredients and 6 more cups of water. Boil till dissolved.
Add mixture into a bucket with 1 gallon and 1 quart of water.
I let mine sit for 24 hours, stirring after that. You can fill old containers 3/4 the way full add shake before using.
1 cup large load
3/4 cup smaller loads

I make 2 batches at a time and add one container of regular liquid detergent. It makes a 5 gallon bucket full.
it’s cheaper and saves

If you are worried about your white/whites, add some baking soda to the wash.

By: Cheyenna

Cheyenna — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:47:15 +0000

You can obtain the Washing Soda ( Arm and Hammer) a Krogers, it’s the only place I could find it besides online. I use Ivory ( plain bar) soap but I’m going to try Zote today
It does not suds so is great for the HE washers
and online you can easily find a powered version
I make it 4 gallons at a time and usually add one container of my normal laundry detergent in it too.

By: christy

christy — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:18:24 +0000

You can get Fels Naptha at Ace Hardware. I live in Tx and this is the only place I could find it.