Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Powdered DIY Laundry Detergent Recipe for Hard Water

Laundry soap is very personal and depends on the type of water you have. I've tried several kinds ofver the years and I either had to use too much or it didn't continue to work on our clothes for a longer period of time. I love this powder. Super simple to mix together, no boiling and no grating. I'm all for ease! There is quite a bit of powder kick back into the air, so you might want to wear a mask and not have the littles nearby when you are dumping the ingredients into your bucket.Our water is pretty hard and since we are on public water so there is some chlorine in the water- which bleaches out the whites more than on a well. This is a the recipe I am trying out. It wad to to me by a friend. I'm not sure where she got it. If it looks familiar to you I'd love to give credit where credit is due.  I've been using it for 3 weeks and it's been great in our hard water so far.So far we've used I've filled my 16 oz jar 3 times. We still have A LOT in the frosting bucket (not sure if it's a 2 or 3 gallon bucket). Will we keep to this recipe?? I don't know.  I think it takes 2-3 months to really find out if the detergent is a keeper and if it keeps the white clean looking and smelling and leaves no build up.

As far as cost I'm not sure how much this cost me, since I had quite a few of the ingredients. I'm thinking it was around $22. We have no dollar stores that carry Oxiclean like some of my friends do in other areas. SO if you can get your Oxiclean cheaper or get your Epsom salts at Costco it would save you money. Still $22 for potentially 3-6 months detergent is a great deal. We'll see how long it actually lasts us. I do a lot of laundry. 2 loads a day M-F and 1 on Sat. If you don't wash that much then yours will last longer. I'm super excited that this is working in our hard water!! Fingers crossed that it's good long term!!!  I did tweaked it a bit- more Borax and more Epsom salts. They are both water softeners and we have really hard water and no softener. Here it is:
Hard water powder detergent:
1 1/2 boxes Borax ( 76 ounces each)
1 & 1/2 box Washing Soda ( 55 ounces each)
2 cups of baking soda
1 largest you can find containers of any Oxiclean (I used the big box at target that is around $12- think it’s 128 oz?)
2 1/2 bags Epsom salts (64 ounces each) (Costco- drug stores have them but the cheapest I found was Costco)
Essential oil  (I used 30 drops of lemon)

Add the Essential oil  directly to the salt prior to mixing salt into laundry mix. Mix it all together and use 2 Tablespoons for each load. The Oxiclean came with a scoop that was ever so slightly bigger than 2 scoops- so that's what we use.
I store it in a Frosting bucket I got for free for the asking from the bakery at a grocery store. I put half the contents in the bucket and rolled it around and then added the rest of the contents in layers and rolled it around.

Hope that helps you with your laundry dilemma!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment