If you have any interest in "going green" with anything in your house, I would say ditching your laundry detergent is a must (switching to laundry soap instead).
According to this article on eHow, "detergent is made from petroleum products. It contains many preservatives and antibacterial agents, which do not have an agreeable smell. As a result, detergents usually contain heavy perfumes to counteract the odor."
Detergents contain surfactants, which help to reduce surface tension in water, thus allowing dirt to be removed. They can either be plant-based or petroleum-based. Surfactants are not a bad thing (soap is a surfactant), it's just that most detergents use petroleum-based surfactants.
The companies that make these detergents are not required to list their ingredients on the label. So there's no way of really knowing what's in there.
All this matters because detergents leave residue on our clothes and some gets absorbed through our skin from the constant contact. Read "The Truth About Detergent" (it's a bit heavy on the drama, but it gives you something to think about).
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So anyway. After trying a couple laundry soap recipes and not liking them (because of the ingredients they used, not because of how well they worked) and doing a lot of searching around trying to find the perfect recipe...I decided to make my own. Here's how I picked my ingredients:
1. Castile Soap. Bottom line, what do we need to clean our clothes with? SOAP. And I want one that's 100% pure and natural.
2. Washing Soda. One of its main purposes is to be a laundry booster. It's used in many homemade laundry soap recipes and I want to include it for a little extra kick.
3. Vinegar. Under the "laundry" tab on the 1001 Uses for Distilled White Vinegar, it lists 20 reasons to use it in the laundry (removes stains and odors, reduces static cling, prevents yellowing, attacks mildew, acts as a fabric softener, brings out bright colors, etc.). Seems like a good thing to include.
So here's my recipe (and yes, it's getting my clothes clean):
Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap
1 cup liquid castile soap
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup white vinegar
Heat 2 cups of water on the stove over medium heat. Add washing soda and vinegar and stir until dissolved.
When it has cooled, funnel into a one gallon container (like a milk jug) and add castile soap. Fill the rest of the way with cold tap water.
Use 1/4 to 1/2 cup per load.
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This costs less than half of what we were paying for our detergent (and we always bought the cheapest we could find).
I've been wondering about making my own detergent, especially for my towels/ cloth napkins/ dishtowels etc., because I already have to use vinegar in the rinse sometimes to help fight mold/mildew smell. Maybe I will give this a try for those items.
ReplyDeleteI have been hesitant to try it on my regular clothing, because as I was reading up on doing this, many many people online complained that it makes their clothing look super faded very quickly (lacking the optical brighteners). It sounds like you have started this recently. I would be interested in a 3 month/ 6 month update on how your clothes are looking! We would like to switch to more natural and inexpensive products, but (being pragmatic here) only if they work well!
Also, what kind of washer do you have? We have a new HE one. Would the suggested amount be the same for an HE or conventional machine do you think?
Good luck and thanks for posting! :o)
You're right, I haven't been doing this for very long. So I will surely update as things work or don't work with the recipe I posted.
ReplyDeleteAnd certainly two different people can have different results from the same exact recipe. Water hardness/softness matters, and probably even the level of dirtiness of the family's clothes. So of course everyone will have slightly different results.
About the fading. I actually had not come across any comments about people saying that, but it makes total sense that that could happen since the optical brighteners aren't there with the homemade stuff. I think for me, I'm willing to take that risk, because ultimately I'm looking to get rid of the chemical residue on our clothes that could be absorbed through our skin (yuck!). So I will watch out for fading and make adjustments to my detergent as I need to. And I'll definitely post updates.
Oh, and about the washing machine. I have a regular one from 2003. I have no idea how to adjust the amount for an HE washer (I didn't consider that when I wrote this post, sorry). I know that my homemade stuff doesn't suds up as much as the store-bought, but you still might need to use less than I do (I just took about 5 minutes to try to google a better answer for you and couldn't find anything. But I'm sure the answer is out there somewhere...).