DIY laundry 'detergent' can RUIN your washing machine:
The same soap that builds up in your textiles is also building up in your washing machine. This can cause in mold or mildew to grow inside your machine. And, this is the real problem I have with homemade laundry 'detergents' – they will void your machines warranty.
While store-bought detergents contain chemical ingredients to assist with rapid and effective rinsing, homemade detergents are free of these chemicals. It's always good to use fewer chemicals on your clothes, but that means an extra rinse cycle is sometimes needed if you're using homemade detergent.
Clothes are much happier with the gentler ingredients found in all-natural detergents. All-natural ingredients can help reduce the wear and tear on fibers, reduce color fading, and keep clothes looking newer, longer.
Use Vinegar and Baking Soda as a Laundry Detergent Alternative. When you wonder what you can substitute for laundry detergent for your heavily stained or soiled clothing, reach for the vinegar and baking soda. Baking soda is also great for smelly clothes like your kids' sportswear.
Though dish soap is great as a stain pretreatment option, it's not meant for direct use in a laundry washing machine. That's because dish soaps are uniquely formulated to break up grease and stuck-on food particles with foamy suds—something you don't want to happen in your washing machine.
Liquid detergents tend to be more effective on greasy or oily stains. However, it's easy to use too much per load in your washing machine. Powdered detergents are typically the least expensive and very effective on mud stains or ground-in dirt. If you use cold water to wash clothes, powder may not dissolve completely.
Plant-based ingredients also tend to be a more renewable source than petroleum-based ingredients, making them a better choice for the earth. And biodegradable enzymes allow for washing at a lower temperature, reducing energy consumption.
You won't have to worry about compromising tough stain-fighting ingredients, either. Purchasing a plant-based laundry detergent will make a huge difference. You will protect you and your family from possible skin rashes. It's also a safe and effective way to help the environment and local water sources.
As blogger Julia from Simply Living Well explains, borax can be a safe yet powerful natural laundry booster (as long as you're not planning to eat or inhale the powder while washing your clothes). It can also be used for other cleaning.
For an HE washing machine, halve these amounts. Both the Sal Suds and Castile soap biodegrade readily and are safe for septic and greywater systems. For the inevitable ketchup/grass/last night's dinner on clothing, I pre-treat the stain by dabbing a small amount of Sal Suds directly on to it before washing.
Top loading HE washers work well with powdered, liquid or single-dose tablet homemade detergent. Whichever format you have made, just add it directly to the washer drum before loading clothes.
By paying only 1 cent per load (not including equipment costs), homemade laundry detergent is at least 10 times cheaper than buying cheap store-bought laundry detergent (11 cents a load).
During reformulation of a liquid laundry detergent, an undesirable color change was observed: the normally blue color of the formulation was found to turn green when exposed to elevated temperatures during accelerated stability testing.
The cleaning agents in the ARM & HAMMER™ Liquid Detergents are biodegradable and safe for septic systems.
Seventh Generation, and many other eco-friendly detergents like the Puracy Natural Laundry Detergent, are biodegradable. This means that once they re-enter the environment in wastewater facilities, they will naturally break down in a manner that doesn't pollute the earth.
The Pros of Laundry Pods
Jennifer Ahoni, principal scientist at Tide, takes that one step further and says pods not only perform better because they are measured correctly, but also because they have more concentrated cleaning ingredients.
Pods are best for people who tend to have the same size loads all the time and have laundry that isn't very heavily soiled, according to Johnson. They're also the least messy and easiest to transport, which is why they're a good pick for people using communal laundry rooms.
At home, pods may have a small advantage in some households where overdosing on liquid or powder detergent is a common problem. It may be cheaper in the long run to use pods that are already measured out to avoid overdosing on other types of detergent. Lightweight to carry or ship and require very small storage space.
Baking soda can effectively replace laundry detergent to remove stains and odors. You'll need four tablespoons of baking soda per glass of water.
Yes, you can use shampoo as a laundry detergent. However, you shouldn't make a habit of washing clothes like this, and you should never, ever, put shampoo into a washing machine. If you plan on using shampoo to clean your laundry, you should only hand wash the items with shampoo.
Washing with laundry balls is as effective or less effective than washing without detergent. Their observed cleaning effects can largely be attributed to the mechanical interactions with the laundry or to using hot water instead of cold.