Laundry detergent is not the same as regular soap. There’s reasons for this, and they’re complex, but basically we are not made of cloth. We’re made of leather. Soap cleans leather just fine, but does less of a good job of cleaning cloth. If you want your clothing to be soft, clean, and to last for a long time, regular soap is not going to work. That said, in a pinch, you can absolutely clean your clothes with any regular soap bar. It will be very harsh on your clothing, and difficult to rinse out, so be prepared to do several rinse cycles.
I prefer liquid detergent, but we’ll start with powder because it’s easier.
Ingredients for powder laundry detergent:
- 1 bar Fels Naptha soap
- 2 cups Borax
- 2 cups washing soda
Start by grating up your soap. You want to grate it into very small pieces. You can do this by hand with a regular cheese grater, but it takes a long time. You can also do it in your food processor by cutting the soap into one inch cubes and then pulsing them until they’re in “smaller than pea” size pieces. I prefer to grate mine.
Mix together all the ingredients in a container that’s about 1/3 larger than your batch, and mix it well by stirring with a wooden spoon and shaking it. This is a great project for kids to help with, as you can seal the detergent into the container and then let them toss it around. You need to use a glass or hard plastic container, and not the softer “recyclable” containers you may have on hand. The lid also must seal tightly, or your detergent will clump horribly.
To use, add 2 tablespoons of powder to the drum of your washer (front loading or top loading). Do not add it to the automatic dispenser, as it will clump and block things up. For very large loads, you may need an extra tablespoon. For hand washing, dissolve 1 tablespoon of powder into a cup of hot water, then pour that into your wash water after the detergent has dissolved.
If you would like to have stinky laundry (ie you’re one of those folks who like scented detergent), simply add several drops of your favorite essential oil to the dry ingredients, and stir until it’s all incorporated.
Ingredients for liquid laundry detergent:
- 1 bar Fels Naptha soap
- 1 cup Borax
- 1 cup washing soda
- water
On the stove, heat the water on “low/medium.” Grate your soap and then add it to the hot water and stir until it’s melted. If you wish to use any scents, add them at this point.
Fill a five gallon bucket about half way with water, and add in the borax and washing soda. Stir until dissolved. Add the melted soap mixture to the borax mixture and continue to stir for five minutes.
Top the five gallon bucket off with hot water, put a lid on it, and let it rest for at least 24 hours. When you take the lid off, it should look cloudy and be slightly gelled, and may have a soupy or clumpy appearance depending on the soap you used.
To use, add a half cup per load. Be sure to shake your detergent before use.
Notes:
About soap. The best soap to use for laundry is, in my very strong opinion, Fels Naptha. That said, any hard soap will work for this. Other soaps I’ve used include regular soap (Irish Spring, Dial), several different scents of the Dr. Bronner’s soaps (any castile soap is fine), or homemade hard soap. If you are making liquid laundry detergent, you can also use liquid castile soaps such as Dr. Bronner’s. While it does make it a bit more expensive, you can get scents like tea tree and peppermint, which are good even for many allergy sufferers.
Be aware that melting the soap takes forever. Plan your day around stirring and checking on it. It doesn’t require you to be there for every second, but you shouldn’t let it boil and you should keep a very regular eye on it.
If you use only homemade laundry detergent, your whites are going to become grey. It’s a natural thing. The reason our clothing is so very white is because there are chemical whiteners in your laundry detergent. You can offset this by using something called bluing. It comes in a blue bottle in the laundry section of your grocery store. I have no idea how to make bluing (more on that in a sec), so I store some. You add a little to your wash water. The blue in it helps bring out your colors, including white, and makes everything look brighter. It is not, however, a stain remover.
If you don’t have bluing and you need to bleach or otherwise whiten your whites, you can always do it the old fashioned way… Medieval and colonial folks used uric acid to whiten their linens. While we can purchase uric acid at the store (though it can be hard to find), I have a real problem paying for something that I naturally produce. Yes, uric acid is what’s in urine. To make a usable uric acid for whitening, you drink about 16 oz or more of a high tannin red wine (this is for the ladies only, by the by… men’s pee is for marking territory and keeping out predators, but women’s pee is for whitening whites… I don’t make up the rules, I just inform you about them) and pee in a bucket. Let the pee sit for a couple of days to thicken up (yes, keep it outside, under cover, but not with a lid on it as you want the water in it to evaporate a bit). Soak your whites in the pee for about an hour, and then wash them VERY well.
The Romans would stomp on clothing that had a lot of stains, and the ammonia in the urine would help lift those stains. Be aware, though, that urine CAN contain bacteria, especially when it’s left to sit. If you’re going to agitate the clothing in the urine, wear gloves or some other protective layer so that you don’t get it on you. Never let the urine dry on the clothes, or you’ll never get the smell out, though. Urea forms crystals when dried, and they can cause staining and long-lasting odor. So long as you go from wet pee-pot to laundry, you should be just fine. I usually run mine through a rinse cycle first, THEN wash them with laundry detergent.
What do you do if you’ve no power, though, and your laundry machine isn’t working? Well, you wash by hand. I am not big on using a scrub board, though it’s useful if you have a persistent stain to work at. I will use a five gallon bucket and a clean toilet plunger with holes cut into the rubber plunger. Add water and clothes to the bucket, to the 2/3 point, and then add the plunger and soap, and put the lid on (with the handle of the plunger going through a hole in the lid). Agitate the clothes for 15 minutes or so with the plunger, and by swirling the bucket. Dump out, work on any stains, then add rinse water and do it all again. You may need up to three rinses to truly get all the soap out. Wring your clothes out and hang them to dry on the line.