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Washing Soda
No. Just no. Sodium carbonate, you americans!
probably most everything is a scam if you look close enough.
Asking because I honestly don’t know, for the laundry detergent recipe, does it matter that I was always told to get HE detergent? I was under the impression that the soap for “high efficiency” washers was different somehow than normal soap. I am ready to admit I was conned by the detergent industry and this is just marketing speak, but I also don’t want to fuck up my washer, it cost a lot of money I don’t have to replace it.
It’s worse. Fabric softener is composed of an anti static oil. When you run it in the laundry, it coats all of your clothes with a very thin layer of oil.
Which is why towels dried with fabric softener and dryer sheets don’t absorb water anywhere near as well as plain towels dried without it!!
My mom complained to me for years that I wasn’t “doing it right” by not using fabric softener. But her towels are useless compared to mine! She continues to spends $100/ year on fabric softener while on social security. Over the year she has spent thousands and thousands of $$$. 🤦♀️
It also makes the clothes extremely flammable.
Fabric softener kills elastic and lots of clothes (including even jeans) have elastic in them. Yeah, you can do separate washes, but ain’t nobody got time for that.
Not heard of that one. The main one I know is it makes towels less absorbent, my partner’s mum uses it and it’s like trying to soak up water with a plastic bag.
Yeah when you coat all the fibers of the towel with slightly modified rendered animal fat, then they won’t absorb water. The long hydrophobic tail on the tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride molocule really doesn’t want to mix with water. It’s almost completely insoluble in polar solvents like water.
Why make things soft by addressing the initial problem(residues and hard water salts in deposited in the fibers when the clothes dry) when you can just coat the whole thing in fat and call it “clean” and “soft”
I’ve read that the homemade laundry soap is actually soap, not detergent, and that it will over time ruin your machine.
So, I’ve just continued buying laundry detergent and have just used a fraction of what the instructions advise. It’s worked for me. I don’t buy softener or sheets. Couldn’t afford it if I wanted to. But I do have oxyclean on hand only for when I’ve forgotten a load in the washer until it’s stinky or when I wash the dog bed covers or whatever.
For those rare times I forget a load in the washer and it sours, I generally use a little vinegar.
Yeah… Especially if you have a high efficiency machine. Washing machines use a lot less water than back when these “recipes” were actually practical. So if you utilize shaved bar soap and borax, you’re not only going to be leaving residue to build up in your machine, you’re going to have it build up in your clothes as well.
Also, a lot of people are sensitive to borax. The reason they don’t use it in regular detergent as an agitator is because it can cause rashes for a large percentage of the population.
Edited: spelling corrections
Regular laundry detergent leaves residue as well, that’s why a lot of washers have self clean cycles.
Vinegar will cut most residues from a washer. It’s one of the reasons it works as a softener, it removes detergent residue and minerals from hard water to make your clothes soft. As a side note a lot fabric softeners does the same thing by coating this fibres of the clothes in refined beef fat.
If you want a really clean machine (specific to most HE washers) put half a teaspoon of TSP(trisodium phosphate) in the empty drum of the machine and another half teaspoon where you put your detergent, fill the bleach cup and the fabric softener cup with vinegar. Set the machine to run a pre wash cycle then a heavy duty cycle on the hottest water temp(if there is a hot tap that is after your clothes washer in the pipeline, you can run that tap until it gets hot before starting the washer. HE washers use a lot less water so most of the time they are filling with cold water before the hot water rescues the machine) and as many extra rinses as your machine will allow.
After the TSP removes most of the residue, it’s rinsed away and then the bleach cup of vinigar is released with the next rinse cycle. Since TSP is basic and the vinegar is acidic they react and the TSP is neutralized, this may lead to some deposits of various salts(depending on the exact reaction ratio, if there is an excess of vinigar then the acidic solution will help prevent the salts from depositing.
When the fabric softener cup of vinigar is released in the next rinse we ensure that all acidic solution is flushed through the machine. This again will help with any salt deposits and help clean any of the remaining residue that reacts better to the acidic solution.
Any extra rinses after that help make sure that anything that can be washed away will be. Your washer will be very clean inside.
TSP can be purchased at the hardware store for cleaning surfaces before you paint them, just make sure it’s actually TSP and not a TSP replacement. Half a teaspoon of TSP in with your dish soap will make you love your dishwasher again. A little goes a long way, and using less TSP is more likely to give you a good result than using more.
That enormous rant aside, I have used homemade laundry soap recipes in several HE machines including two combination washer dryers(where the washing drum is the same as the drying drum, looks like a single HE machine, not a stacked washer and dryer) and in general those machines have more residue problems. I haven’t really had any issues. That might be related to the fact that I do not put an excess of soap or detergent into the machine, again often less is more, and if you need better cleaning it’s better to do a prewash cycle than add more detergent into the main cycle. More detergent =/= better cleaning, just more residue. Try washing a dish by hand with only liquid dish soap, no water, no damp sponge, just soap and a dry brush or dishcloth. While this is an extreme example, it does help illustrate that detergents or soaps allow grease and grime to be dissolved into water, and that’s what allows it to clean effectively, the soap or detergent is just there to get stuff into the water.
Borax sensitivity is a legit concern.
I used it for about 10 years. I didn’t notice any difference in my clothes or machine.
Fiance is fussy and wants Tide, so she pays for it.
I grew up watching my Mother make “laundry soap” from scratch as a kid. She would make a batch every fall from basically the tallow from the cow we home butchered for the winter and lye. I still remember that brown colored hard lump of soap and the wringer/washer she had. She would carve thin pieces off into the tub while it was agitating wait for a few minutes, then toss the clothes in to wash tub. There was no fancy detergent metering devices or small amounts of water. Even her first modern “spin dry” washer didn’t have detergent dispensers. You simply poured the detergent directly on top of the clothes in the tub.
Modern washers are designed specifically to use liquid soaps or the pods. Though when using powders by pouring them directly into the tub won’t cause anymore harm to the machine than any liquid will. Though you should probably use a longer wash cycle to make sure the powder dissolves completely. Back in the day, wash cycles were noticeably longer.
I’m lazy enough to pay a lazy tax on it.
I’m not sold on that homemade detergent. Soap tends to leave insoluble residue, especially when you have hard water. There is a reason why almost everything uses synthetic detergents (though it might also be because those are cheap).
Yeah, I’ve never understood the point in using a different soap as the base of a different soap. I make my own laundry soap out of basic shit I get from Walmart, and it works great.
Is it actually cheaper than buying dry detergent for cheap?
Good question, but I’ll admit I’ve not actually run the exact figures. I’m actually doing this for health reasons rather than monetary, since one of my partners is allergic tio life.
But to your question,I might have spent the cost of 1.5 large boxes of laundry detergent ($30) for the 4 items that go into it (Baking soda,Epson salt,washing soda,sea salt), but given the fact I can buy in bulk, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being cheaper. In the last 6mo I’ve made the laundry soap twice and haven’t put a huge dent in my ingredient stock. I wouldn’t be surprised to find I get more than 200 washes out of the base ingredients, which would definitely be more economical than the premade stuff.
I buy a Eco friendly and very affordable detergent from Costco. I need to use such a small amount even for a large load the jog lasts seemingly forever. So I don’t feel the need to do up a homemade detergent.
When it come to softener though. Vinegar. It works, it’s cheap, I can also use it for other household cleaning. Cooking and baking as well of course. You can’t use if for loads that need bleach and use with fabrics that have a lot of elastic material can decrease it’s life span. Overall though it works great dissolving soap and detergent residue that can make clothes feel stiff and scratchy, and less prone to lint and pet hair cling. Can help with odor and colour brightening too.
I will happily continue to be a millennial who ruins industry on that front.
Am I the only one who likes fabric softener? For me it was a game changer to go from wrinkly, stiff clothes to softer, less wrinkled clothes.
I definitely don’t use it every wash, but I do think it makes a real difference.
I wouldn’t be caught dead using dryer sheets, though. That’s a scam.
IDK anything about it, but I’ve read “softener bad” a few times so I’ve just stopped putting it in and honestly haven’t noticed.
My partner does though so now when she sees or hears me doing laundry she reminds me to use the softener.
Many clothes, especially athletic/athleisure fabrics, should not be washed with fabric softener. Check the label to be sure.
athletic/athleisure fabrics
I really don’t understand the point of that trend. Unless you’re competing at a high level, your clothing doesn’t matter at all.
That said, it makes average women’s bodies look incredible. So maybe that’s why.
Sounds like maybe you do understand the point.
I like both softener and dryer sheets ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t, but dryer sheets are incredibly cheap too.
How do I make my own fabric softener tho? One of the things it does is condition the fabric like you condition your hair, to keep its strength and retain its shape. Like if your shirt’s neck has become a little stretched out, wash it with some fabric softener and it usually fixes that shit.
I’d DIY my own if I could. I’ll probably start using this detergent recipe, too.
Wait can it fix crew necks that get a little shitty?
usually they advise vinegar.
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how much vinegar do you use for a normal load?
Just finely crush about a half a bag of salt and vinegar chips and then toss 'em in
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i use vinegar, but it’s not the same. softener contains some oily component that stays in the fabric after washing and makes it more fluffy. vinegar doesn’t do that.
Tumblr is such a nice place.
You know, when it is.
Haven’t used it for years
Yeah I’m not putting all that effort and potentially ruining my washing machine to save me a few cents per wash. That seems ridiculous.
You don’t even have to buy the fancy, expensive, in a pod detergent or anything, considering they always contain the same stuff that comes in a box/bottle. Just buy whatever’s cheap.
Yea, making your own laundry detergent from grated soap and borax is something people with money do to convince themselves theyre frugal. When in reality there is no way in hell youre making a commodity cheaper than GreatValue ™
Yeah, the cheap standard powder detergent would probably be less expensive. The volume you’d need to make to beat it is huge. Like, maybe five years’ worth.
I am also laughing at making washing powder in the oven to save money. The amount you’d spend on electricity would put you in the red, unless you live in a petrostate with free electricity or something.
Lol yeah I didn’t even consider that. At this point it almost feels like some of that has to be trolling. Either that or there is a large detergent hobbyist community out there that I have just not been aware of.
The amount of free time you’d have to have, as well, to even consider baking the powder for an hour per round to make it usable… After a certain point my time is valuable to me and I’d rather just pay a dollar or two extra to not have to worry about all this mess.
Indeed. Or working for prison slave wages.
Not just the effort, but by the time you buy all those ingredients, you’re probably paying more than you would for normal laundry detergent.
And if you use Dr. Bronner’s bar soap as recommended, you’ll be paying out the ass.
Not to mention the gas to go to the three separate stores you probably need to buy that shit from.
Eh, all of that stores really well, so buy in bulk.
