I have never made my own laundry detergent. I have heard a lot about it over the years, but I have never tried it myself. My reader Vickie sent me a link to an article about the laundry soap the Duggar family makes. Check it out and let me know what you think! (Not about the Duggar family, but about the laundry detergent.)
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Lauren says
i used to make my own laundry detergent using a different recipe and the soap got really thick after like 2 or 3 days and didn’t get the clothes clean if they were like denim or something. I thought it worked fine or towels and sweatpants etc. The other downside everyone knew it has homemade so they felt they needed to use more so it actually cost more
Tricia says
I have never made it but i gave the recipe to my mother in law and she makes it for everyone. I like it. It works really well. The only cons are clothing softness, and no clean smell. I found the fabric to feel rough. I have not been able to get over the no smell too. I use it mostly on linens and it gets them cleaner than anything else. It does get stuff clean well.
M says
It’s the added fragrances that make your clothes appear to smell clean, not the laundry detergent itself, you can add scented oil to your homemade laundry soap to make your clothes smell…
Dawn says
I have been trying this recipe for the last couple of months and the other day I just couldn’t stand that my laundry didn’t smell “clean” to me. It didn’t smell dirty by any means, but I was used to it smelling like Tide or Gain, you know fresh. With the homemade stuff I just wasn’t getting that, so I just went to my local Dollar General and bought some Gain and I like the way my clothes smell now! It was definately worth a try, but I don’t think I’ll try it again.
bluejn says
I have been using a similar recipe for 1 and 1/2 years. its great!! It cleans our clothes better than tide, and it only takes a few minutes to make and lasts for a looonnnggg time. Not to mention the money we save!
Beth says
I have never tried making my own detergent, but I have read extensively that you do not need as much detergent as you think. I have a front loading HE machine and I mix 1 box washing soda and 1 box of powdered detergent, (the “small” size-32 loads I think it says), and spit the mixture between 2 large plastic coffee cans. I use 1/8 cup per load. I have 5 children and do about 15 loads of laundry on a normal week. It lasts me about 2 months. Cost for me for the “ingredients” is about $5-6. (I live in rural NY, so things can be pretty expensive around here), so that’s about 5 cents per load. Not bad! I also rarely ever use hot or warm water because hot water can set many stains and I have always used stain sticks for tough stains, but I have had a really hard time finding them recently so I have resorted to buying a small packet of oxy clean at the local laundry mat and mixing it with water in a spray bottle. It has lasted forever it seems, so I don’t really have a price on that yet. The packet was $1. For fabric softener, I have some softener in a spray bottle, (the kind you get in the health and beauty section of the dollar store), and spray 3 sprays on each side of a washcloth. It works GREAT!!! Better than a dryer sheet! That tip came from a comment on another Couponing to Disney post, and out of all of the softener stretchers I’ve tried, this works the best by far.
Jenn says
I used this recipe for quite a while but then was finding such great deals on laundry detergent it was cheaper to buy the store stuff!
Jennifer says
I have made the Duggar recipe in the past and used it for quite a while. I made the liquid form (I believe they post both a liquid and dry version on their website). My personal feeling is that it didn’t get the whites clean enough. I have a friend who makes the dry version and has tweeked it slightly uping the borax and Fels Naptha to help with the whites. I used a HE front loader washer and it worked just fine. The recipe is definitely low sudsing. If you like a smell to your laundy you’ll need to add in dryer sheets or fabric softner for aroma (and touch… the laundry wasn’t very soft after washing) It was a fun family thing to do, though.
Jen Beedie says
I made my own with a recipe I got from tightwad gazette back in 1997ish, it is the same as theirs. I felt it worked fine and I scented it with essential oils (clear ones only). The recipe made a ton too, lol.
Michellyn says
I have been making this for a while now & think it does a better job than the store bought stuff & since I get migraines from the smells in the store bought stuff, the not having a smell, just a clean smell, is a plus! I use a different recipe tho & I use Ivory soap instead of the one they use (and there are coupons for the Ivory soap).
I use 1 bar of Ivory soap, 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Washing Soda, & I add 1 cup of Oxy Clean to 2/12 — 3 gallons of hot water. It works great! And it is SUPER cheap.
there are a variety of recipes on this website…
http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/
Michellyn says
It is low sudsing. From what I have read, you can use the homemade in the HE machines, but you don’t use as much as you would in the top loading machine & you want to make sure it is mixed up well…
Mendy says
It’s my understanding that you can’t use homemade detergent in HE washers…it suds too much.
tanya says
I was glad to see this post, as I have some interesting insight.. My son actually did this as a science project last year. He compared home made detergent to Gain liquid detergent. He compared prices, and then how well it cleaned. He made the detergent as per the recipe, and we bought brand new white tee shirts. we stained them both with ketchup, mustard, bbq sauce, and mud. trying to make the stains as identical as possible. we then wrote Gain on one and HM on the other in sharpie so it wouldn’t wash out. we washed them in hot water with no spot cleaning beforehand. we used the same amount of each detergent to make it equal.
The results were: the Gain cleaned all the stains out. the shirt looked good as new.
the Homemade detergent cleaned all the food stains out but left a hint of the mud stain. My conclusion is, I would use the Homemade detergent for towels, or even my own clothes, but maybe not my son’s clothes since he is a boy, and his clothes get absolutely filthy :)
katie says
I actually just bought the washing powder tonight at the grocery…we found a box of borax at my hubby’s grandmothers house and I thought I’d try it. The borax was unopened but it could be years old? Don’t know if it matters or not, but I am going to try it.
Amber B says
My mom and I both tried using this last month. Although I have heard great things about it, we both felt our clothes weren’t getting very clean (we especially noticed with the whites). Maybe I didn’t do something right.
April says
YES MA’AM!!!!! I have been using this recipe since November and we looove it! It doesn’t make the clothes smell good – so I do use fabric softener or dryer sheets. My husband usually has his uniforms washed through his work, but needed something immediate the other night so we washed a load of his work clothes. He even commented how clean his clothes are – he is a mechanic and his clothes can get pretty nasty. We give this two thumbs up!