A couple days ago on FaceBook I promised a friend my recipe for dirt-cheap, clean-green laundry detergent. (You can view the whole recipe here.) Then another friend inquired about how well it worked, and I was stymied. See, I know how to make homemade laundry detergent. I think it’s a good idea. But I have four boys. And I live in red clay. I’m a double-dose of Tide with Febreeze and a heaping helping of color-safe bleach girl, myself.
Still, it seemed hypocritical to pass on a recipe I hadn’t tried myself. So I gathered up my supplies and the pre-pre-pubescent boys (Jamison couldn’t be bothered), and decided to test it out.
All you need is borax,
some sort of organic soap,
and washing soda. (Not to be confused with baking soda. Although if you’re desperate, you can bake baking soda in a 400 degree oven for two hours, and it will turn into approximately the same thing.)
Lazy bloggers like me, take note–Blogger’s photo uploads are way better than they used to be, but they still won’t let you rotate your pictures once you’ve imported them. Humph.
The time-consuming part of this recipe is grating the soap. You can cut the soap in chunks and stick it in your food processor, but alas, I have never owned a food processor, and our last blender bit the dust years ago. So, we resorted to shredding the soap with a cheese grater.
Isn’t Carter adorable, even when he’s sideways?
Anyway. Shredding soap with a cheese grater takes a long time.
Eventually, the boys got impatient, and attempted to karate chop the soap. It did not end well.
Neither did their taste-test of the soap flakes. I mean, it LOOKED like shredded coconut. And the wrapper said it was made out of 100% pure coconut oil. Talk about deceptive advertising.
Still, we got it done. We grated the soap, mixed it with the washing soda and borax, and decided to put it to the ultimate test–the kids blue jeans!
I popped the jeans in the washer, put 2 Tbsp. of the detergent in the soap dispenser, and some white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser to remove any soapy residue.
The result? *drumroll…*
Um…
Well, they were clean. And they didn’t stink. But they looked just a touch dingy, and didn’t exactly have that chemically-enhanced fragrance we’ve all come to know and love.
Of course, any kid clothes coming out of my washing machine without a double-dose of Tide with Febreeze and color-safe bleach usually wind up a lot worse than these did. I tried Gain for a while, trying to save money, but all I was left with was pajama bottoms wafting the fascinating aroma of tropical breeze and pee. Not to mention a nifty rash.
So, I think this homemade laundry detergent deserves another try. Next time, I’ll try three Tbsp. of the concoction, and see how it goes.
I’ll keep you posted.
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