Cheap Homemade Laundry Detergent

buy generic or find a place that sells it in bulk

there's a discount place nearby where you can get generic stuff in 5 gallon buckets

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Add two of these and I literally use your pic for six months of detergent. Perfect recipe.

>>1147654
Another part of me is just wondering if it makes economic sense to make it myself...

>>1147655
Sorry, zote flakes

>>1147656
About 52 dollars a year is better than 5 jugs of Tide. You probably use more than that

>>1147657
Do you have a specific recipie?

Detergent companies are playing mind games with you. That fucking scoop they include? Most people put the whole thing in every load. Look at the lines on the thing. Chances are the 'normal load' line is like half an inch from the bottom. A full scoop is like twice as much then you should use on a heavy load.

Generally, 'normal load' is about 1/4 of a cup. You'd be amazed how long your detergent lasts when you aren't wasting half of it.

Trisodium phosphate

>>1147648
my mom gave me a bucket of some dry mix she made. had powdered oxyclean and grated felsnaptha, possibly borax and/or borax instead of oxyclean.

shit lasted a while.

You need to add back in the phosphates they banned from household detergents about a decade ago. Nothing has ever been clean since.

You want to add TSP to the detergent, maybe a teaspoon or so per load to the washing machine and dishwasher. You can find it in the paint isle at Home Depot or lowes.

You can make washing soda by heating baking soda in a steel or glass skillet until it's very dry and grainy. It isn't much more expensive than baking soda but everybody has baking soda anyway so it's convenient.

Polysorbate 80 or 20 are incredibly powerful surfactants (detergents) that are also cheap... think of how much Dawn foams and multiply that by about 100. I haven't tried it for laundry detergent but it is some wicked powerful shit as far as surfactants go, and very safe!

>>1147648
Waste of time and effort. Just get some plain bar soap and use a cheese grater to grate some into hot water. Let it melt and pour into the washer. I use the same thing for my dish soap.

Those mixes can eat up your clothing after a few washes. You may not notice it for a month or so, but then suddenly the clothing will want to rip when it was fine before.

>>1147692

Why did they ban them in the first place? I just wanna know if it's dangerous or not.

>>1147713
This is true. If you are old enough you'll remember that clothing was a lot cleaner and bright looking back in the day. Same with your dishes.

>>1147731
There's nothing wrong with it. You can thank lobbyists.

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>>1147731
Algae blooms. They love phosphates and it is hard to get completely out of water even in a water treatment plant. While modern water treatment plants generally have the capability most older plants don't and the retrofit/continued processing is an extra cost most municipalities don't want to pay for. It basically goes right into the local river or lake. Picture related then happens. The phosphates themselves are pretty harmless and are basically plant fertilizer. Alge blooms, on the other hand, are toxic. They kill fish, make water unfit for human consumption, can make people sick, and are very ugly. Really kills local tourism. You don't fuck with the tourist industry. So, phosphates were banned in laundry detergent decades ago and dishwasher detergent about 8-10 years go.

>>1147735
>You can thank lobbyists.
Basically this. There were a string of national headlines 40 years or so about all these local tourist spots that basically didn't want to upgrade their infrastructure. As the population increased and washing machines became more common in the 50's and 60's the amount of phosphate being used increased. Bam, algae blooms.

Later, as the dishwasher also rose in popularity, it started happening again. This was about 20 years ago. So, they banned phosphates from dishwasher detergent. While many blame environmentalists (aka the boogie man ruining 'Merica) they are a scapegoat. While all 50 states ban phosphates from laundry detergent only 18 states ban it from dishwasher detergent. Most of them in the midwest and northeast. Lake Erie famously went green a while back from one. California, the great Satan of the environmentalist movement, has not banned from dishwasher detergent. Only 4 western states have and 2 of them are Red states.

>>1147735
Loaded statement, anon. Maybe your eyes were a little younger back in the day as well? Saw things easier/better?

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I recommend all anons reconstitute their laundry and dishwasher detergents with sodium tripolyphosphate or trisodium phosphate. Without these vital ingredients you pretty much cannot have clean clothes or dishes.

>>1147731
It's not dangerous. In fact, trisodium phosphate is a food additive.

>>1147748
Algae blooms are the result of fertilizer runoff from farms. You should direct your impotent rage at them. Households using a tiny amount of it for dishwashing is barely a contributing factor, never mind the culprit.

>>1147749
You don't need to remember how much cleaner things were before environmentalists ruined these products. You can either add the phosphate back into the crippled products we can find in stores, or you can order products that manufacturers renamed or shuffled to the professional/industrial market to experience the difference first hand.

https://www.amazon.com/Cascade-Phosphates-Professional-Fryer-85-oz/dp/B00VHD3LGO/

>>1147775
Wow, what the fuck. How does America survive without phosphates? We have it in pretty much all cleaning products, even shampoo.

>>1147659
the pic plus zote flakes. literally, buy those products and in those proportions. mix in one big bucket and use the lid from the crystals container as you measurement. one scoop per load.

>>1147749
Dude, do it your self with a pair of white/bright color socks you've owned for a year or so. It is fucking amazing.

>>1147748
20 years later algae blooms are at all all time high.

Check this out,

https://www.google.com/search?q=algae+blooms+chart+frequency&tbm=isch

Pretty much every chart has a steady increase of algae blooms on the curve. It is currently on the down hill side since 2011 but should be spiking again fairly soon.

So, you have spikes occurring every few years and the spikes are getting worse and worse, but it isn't from clothes/dish washing at all.

1 cup washing soda $4 for 3 lbs 6 cups = $0.66 per cup
1 cup borax $4 for 4 lbs 10 cups = $0.40 per cup
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap $2 5.5 oz bar = $2 per bar

makes about 50 loads. add bleach or oxyclean white for extra bright white loads. each batch costs $3, making each heaping tablespoon per load about $0.06.

i made my own for a while but now I use roma/foca. they really are good enzymatic laundry soaps and they are very cheap. i prefer them because they are made by Fábrica de Jabón la Corona in Mexico City. I always prefer to buy American, but Arm and Hammer is the only decent american company in the DIY soaps and they dont make a laundry detergent. Borax and Fels Naptha are both Henkel brands, based in Germany. Dial and Purex were both bought by Henkel. Persil was also bought by Henkel. Even Sun, which owns Wisk, was purchased by Henkel last year. at least Meyers is made by SC Johnson, an American privately held company, but they have their own issues and their shit is very expensive by comparison.

Roma/Foca: $0.7
Purex Liquid: $0.7
Wisk: $0.14
Persil: $0.20
Meyers Clean Day: $0.21

>>1147748
Except for the fact that household phosphate use has been calculated to amount to less than 1% of all phosphate input into the water system.