How to make laundry detergent at home

Looking at prices, I want to make detergent with my own hands and do not go to a household chemistry store at all. And, indeed, the cost of powders is growing steadily, and one has to wear off often. How can you save a little family budget? The answer is obvious, partially replace the expensive washing powder with a home-made analogue. How to prepare at home powders for hand washing from soap and other ingredients and how to make powder for an automatic washing machine, read in this publication.

What ingredients come in handy?

Recipes home washing gels and powders today offer many information sites. Some recipes are really worthwhile, while others are invented at random and are not at all effective. What is the mistress to do? How to choose from the entire array of recipes the best option for yourself, how not to run into an unreliable recipe? We recently asked the same questions and decided to conduct a series of experiments. To begin with, we selected the most common components of home powders and decided to study their beneficial properties.

Homemade powder consists of cheap and relatively safe household chemicals, but the word “relatively” confuses us a little.

• Laundry soap, toilet, children's. This is the main component for most households. gels and powders. It is soap that helps soften the fibers of tissues, and its components, reacting with stains of dirt, help remove them. From the point of view of removing dirt, 72% household soap is better suited, but it gives an unpleasant odor. It is better to use baby soap, it also removes dirt and smells much nicer.
• Sodium tetraborate or simply “borax”. A chemical that acts very effectively on stains of any origin, helping to remove them from the laundry. Buru can often be found in modern detergents and cleaners. In addition, this substance also disinfects well, so any housewife should have a bag of borax and keep it in her pantry. Unlike laundry soap, the drill does not harm the washing machine, which is very important for us.
• Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). This substance is available in every home, but few use it as a cleaning agent in vain. Soda can clean the pan, stove or sink, but in our case, soda is interesting as a component of homemade powder. Soda as well as borax reacts with dirt and helps to remove it from the laundry.
• Soda ash. Like baking soda, soda ash removes dirt from things and makes it many times better. But the problem is that entering into an overly violent reaction, fractions of soda ash can harm things, so before using it you need to dissolve it well and do not exceed the maximum concentration. Both baking soda and soda ash can be used in the washing machine.
• Various essential oils. To make homemade powder leave a pleasant smell on clothes, you need to add a small amount of essential oil to it. This will be especially effective if you do not prepare dry powder, but a washing gel. You can choose an essential oil with any flavor and add it to the homemade product a little bit, just a few drops - the effect will be amazing.
• Mustard. Dry mustard has a disinfecting effect and copes well with various contaminants. As a component of homemade powder, mustard is also sometimes used, but only for hand wash powder. Pouring mustard into a semi-automatic washing machine, or even less into a washing machine, is strictly not recommended.

Mustard powder in hot water swells quickly, and mustard masses clog hoses and pipes, which can lead to damage to the washing machine.

• Salt. Ordinary salt can also help in the fight against pollution. If used in combination with other components, it can be very effective. Salt is absolutely safe for the washing machine.
• Lemon acid. Lemon has an excellent cleaning effect. It will not only help in removing various types of dirt from your laundry, it will soften the fabric and give it a pleasant smell.
• Table vinegar. This component is placed in a home detergent mainly to soften the fabric and give the linen a fresh smell. It is not recommended to pour vinegar into the washing machine.

For hand wash

Despite the abundance of automatic washing machines, modern housewives continue to wash some things on their hands. There are many reasons for this: the thing is very expensive and you want to save it longer, the fabric is delicate, the thing does not combine with the rest of the laundry in color, for example, we erase a mountain of colored linen in the machine, and we wash two or three white things with our hands so as not to restart the machine. In general, there are always many reasons to wash by hand, but you don’t want to buy hand-wash powder separately.

Let's not buy, but make a good washing powder with our own hands. We just have excellent recipes on this subject, which we tested during the experiments. The first recipe is soap powder for hand washing. To prepare it you need:

1. 300 g of soap shavings;
2. 200 g of soda ash;
3. 100 g baking soda;
4. 250 g of borax;
5. About 10 drops of your favorite essential oil.

If you make powder for hand washing baby clothes, you can do without essential oil. In this case, the powder will be hypoallergenic.

Preparing such a powder is very simple. First, mix soap shavings, soda, borax, and then pour the resulting mixture with 10 drops of essential oil. We spread the mixture near the battery or in the sun to dry, and then pour it into a dry sealed container. Before use, the powder must be thoroughly dissolved in a basin with water, and then lay the laundry. Do not lay laundry in a basin with powder.

How to make a washing powder for hand washing is understandable, but you can also prepare a gel for washing from the above components. Moreover, it will be almost more effective than powder. How is the gel prepared?

• Pour soap shavings into the pan.
• Pour about 1 liter of hot water and put the pan on the stove.
• We heat the mixture over low heat, not bringing to a boil, and stir constantly until the chips melt.
• Pour soda ash into a hot soap (it is possible up to 300 g), and we will not add any food at all.
• Add some hot water and stir again until the soda dissolves.
• Now pour in the borax and again add some water to maintain a gel-like consistency.
• Stir again and wait for the borax to dissolve.
• When the borax dissolves, you can pour 10 drops of essential oil and remove from heat.
• Cool the gel and pour it into bottles.

Machine washable

We have already decided that some of the above components are not suitable for preparing homemade powder for a washing machine, which means that our powder should be without soap, mustard, and preferably, without vinegar. You can find good recipes for homemade powder for automatic washing in the article, how to replace washing powder for a typewriter machine. In this publication, we talked about such recipes in detail, and we will not repeat it.

The only thing I would like to draw your attention to is at what point. Despite the environmental cleanliness and considerable effectiveness of home washing powders, they are not recommended to be used constantly, especially in a washing machine. The best option is to alternate home remedies with ordinary powder and then the washing result and the technical condition of the washing machine will always satisfy you.

To summarize, we note that there is nothing complicated in the preparation of home washing powder. Each housewife is able to easily find all the necessary components and make a detergent, but you still need to use it correctly. If you do not abuse homemade powders, you can save money and get a high-class washing result!