Home Made Laundry Soap for Tough Stains
A quick search of pinterest will show that make it yourself laundry soap is everywhere. It's easy to find and it's easy to make. After reading up on a couple of the recipes out there, for the most part they have got it right. There are a couple things that I do differently for our family laundry soap - so I thought it was worth sharing.
I modify my homemade laundry soap for two reasons. The first is my kids. We play hard.
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| We like paint supplies... |
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| and food... |
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| and dirt! |
With the other recipes I found they worked great as long as the clothes weren't too saturated in kids messes. The second reason I modified is that the hubs runs restaurants. This mean there isn't a day where he comes home without some type of stain....typically grease. Because of this our family needed a laundry soap that could get those deep stains out.
Home Made Laundry Soap for Tough Stains
Both borax and washing soda in laundry soap will produce the same results of oxyclean. Because of this it really doesn't take much and isn't really necessary. I add it because borax works best in hot water and I wash most of our clothes in cold. Since borax works the best in hot water I use it as a boost for the oxyclean.
Oxyclean is a sodium percarbonate. Without getting into too much chemistry, it is the exact same thing as washing soda with hydrogen added. If you wash your clothes in hot water, skip the oxyclean. There is no purpose for it. If you are a cold water user, this is a great way to boost your stain fighting.
However, none of those chemicals are designed to cut through grease. This is what your choice of soap does. You could skip grating a bar of soap and just use dawn if you wanted. I add dawn to mine because it is the best soap out there for cutting through grease. I don't use it entirely because the couple of times I have made a batch with just dawn it left a film on the clothes. Also it caused my little guy to get a rash. So instead I use a bar of Dove for sensitive skin and a little bit of dawn. I have found that about two tablespoons is enough to cut through the grease stains without giving him a rash.
When choosing the soap you want to use, any soap will technically work. I would however stay away from any soap that includes essential oils. They smell great and it will work. But, it will cause your laundry soap to break down over time.
So instead of using an essential oil to make my laundry soap smell good, I use Downy Unstopabbles (or whatever is on sale).
Hope this helps answer some questions for anyone out there who is trying to make their own laundry soap!
