Homemade Laundry Detergent

[autowasherfreak]

A while back there was a thread about homemade laundry detergent, and would like to try this sometime, but I need the recipe for it. If anyone has it could you repost it or email it to me.

Thanks,
James

 

[launderess]

Goggle It

It's all over the Internet.

 

[bobbyderegis]

Launderess,
Is it good, or not worth the effort?
Bobby in Boston

 

[launderess]

PhillyGirl swears by her formula, and others have reported various levels of sucess on the Web.

Thing to keep in mind is basically one is going back to the way our grandmothers and great-greatgrandmothers did laundry.

Soap, washing soda and borax will indeed get one's clothing clean, but the formula lacks modern chemicals that were the reason women dropped pure soap for laundry once detergents came upon the scene.

Lack of optical brightners can lead to whites and colours turning tattle-tale grey. Certian stains simply cannot be shifted without enzymes. Pure soap is hard on many washing machnes, and will cause gunking up and mould problems unless the chemical mix of water softeners is in measure to soap.
Without "washer protection agents", certian parts of the machine could suffer with repeat and or exclusive use of homemade brews.

Soap needs warm, to hot to boiling water to really work well, and several hot or at least warm rinses to get the stuff out of fabrics.

Being as all this may, there is no harm in whipping up a batch and giving it a go. Personally recommend reducing the amount of washing soda and borax in favour of phosphates. Even back in the day, vintage laundry manuals advised housewives of the benefits of using phosphates over washing soda.

Finally, if one is going to go this route, vintage Fels Naptha is the soap to use for all but delicate textiles. The small amount of petrol (Naptha), helps shift soils and grease, while it also contains OBAs and other goodies that made it the "detergent" of it's day.

Next in line would be Kirkman's Borax Soap. No longer made, but have a nice sized stash, however one can often find bars someplace. The borax in this soap gives laundry a fresh clean scent, and it shifts soils well.

L.

 

[sudsmaster]

I had some success grating various types of soap - plain white Ivory bar soap works well. I would add about 1 oz or two of STPP with 10% sodium silicate to the wash water, then add enough of the grated soap to form a thin layer of suds. For a front loader, one needs to be a bit conservative with the soap because as it dissolves and the water warms up, more suds may form. The results were pretty good but after a while I noticed that whites were tending to be a bit yellowed, probably from soap residue build-up. So I switched back to a modern detergent spiked with STPP.

The sodium silicate is added to protect washer parts. Don't know if it's actually needed along with STPP, and it probably makes the wash water a bit more alklaline and harsh than with just STPP. But better safe than sorry. A modern powder detergent will already contain sodium silicate to protect the washer, so when I spike a modern detergent I add just plain STPP.

If you really want to get into it, you can mix together washing soda, STPP, sodium silicate, a little table salt, and then add a synthetic surfactant (available from chemistry shoppes) to "taste". The benefit of grated bar soap over synthetic surfactant is that it acts as its own fabric softener.

 

[launderess]

I just skip all the palaver and add a touch of grated soap to unscented detergent wash.

Get the fresh scent of whatever soap one uses, and the benefits of modern detergents.

Besides leaving laundry "softer" soap is still one of the best things around for getting out oils and grease. Lightly soiled things like bed linens come out a treat with a bit of soap.

L.