Americans do a lot of laundry — two to five loads a week on average. Using store-bought detergent costing about 50 cents per load, that adds up to $52 to $130 per year.
If you’d rather save money and spend it some other way, try making your own detergent. It’s a fun, easy project, and your laundry will cost only pennies per load.
Bonus: Homemade detergent smells like soap, not the artificial scents added to commercial detergents. That means it’s good for people who are allergic to or dislike fake scents.
But which recipe works best? Here’s what we found.
The Experiment: Commercial vs. Homemade Liquid vs. Homemade Powder Laundry Detergents
To test each detergent, I cut an old T-shirt into four strips and smeared each strip with mustard. Then I washed each strip with a regular load of laundry, in cold water, on a normal spin cycle. I didn’t pretreat the stains.
The first rag went in a load washed with a commercial liquid detergent made by Method. It came out looking like this:
That stain is still pretty bright. I didn’t expect it to come out completely — after all, that’s a tough stain — but the detergent didn’t do much to fade it. The rest of my laundry came out perfectly clean and smelling fresh.
Ingredients for Homemade Laundry Detergent
I easily found all the ingredients for homemade laundry detergent at my local grocery store.
- Borax: $8.75 for a 76-ounce box
- Washing soda (chemically similar to baking soda): about $5 for a 55-ounce box
- Fels-Naptha bar soap (in the laundry section of the store): $1.20 for one bar
- OxiClean: $6.38 for 1.3-pound box
- Baking soda: $3 for 56 ounces
Recipe #1: Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
One-half cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap
3 gallons water
5-gallon bucket with a lid
1. Using a box grater, grate the entire bar of Fels-Naptha soap. You’ll end up with a pile of little soap curls.
2. Pour 4 cups of water into a large pot and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat until it’s simmering. Add the entire pile of grated soap, handful by handful, and stir with a wooden spoon until it’s all dissolved.
3. Pour 3 gallons of water into your bucket. (Make sure the bucket is clean first.) Pour in the borax, washing soda, and pot of soap. Stir until dissolved.
4. Cover the bucket and let the mixture sit for 24 hours.
The mixture will be a little clumpy, so give it a good stir before using. The globs will dissolve in the washing machine anyway. Use 1 cup of detergent per regular-size load. Makes 52 loads.
Cost per load: About 4 cents
Effectiveness: The detergent didn’t get rid of the mustard stain, but it did a better job than the commercial detergent.
But the rest of my clothes are perfectly clean. Minor stains on other garments are gone, and everything smells fresh.
Recipe #2: Homemade Powder Laundry Detergent
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
Container with air-tight lid
1. Grate the entire bar of soap using a box grater.
2. Pour the grated soap into a blender; blend until the soap is chopped finely. (You may want to blend in smaller batches.)
3. Pour the mixture into the container, and add the borax and washing soda. Mix it all together and seal tightly.
Use a heaping tablespoon of detergent per regular-sized load. Makes about 40 loads. Add the detergent as you fill the washing machine with water, before you add clothes.
Cost per load: About 7 cents
Effectiveness: The mustard stain is still very visible, and somehow some reddish spots appeared. But the rest of my clothes are still perfectly clean.
With homemade powdered detergents, it’s important to add detergent before adding clothes to the machine, to make sure all the detergent dissolves in the wash. If you don’t, you may end up with some undissolved powder on your clothes post-wash, but it’ll rinse right off.
Recipe #3: Homemade Powder Laundry Detergent with OxiClean
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1 cup baking soda
1/2 bar Fels-Naptha soap
4 ounces OxiClean
Container with airtight lid
1. Grate half the Fels-Naptha soap bar, then put the grated soap into a blender or food processor and blend until it’s a fine powder.
2. Pour the soap into the container, then dump in all the other ingredients. Mix well.
Use 1 tablespoon per load; 2 tablespoons for extra-dirty clothes. Makes about 60 loads.
Cost per load: About 6 cents
Effectiveness: The stain is still there — less visible than the rag that was washed with commercial detergent, but more visible than the stains from recipes 1 and 2. The addition of OxiClean doesn’t seem to have made a difference.
Again, as with the other homemade detergents, the rest of my clothes are perfectly clean.
The Verdict: Which Is the Best Homemade Laundry Detergent?
The winner is the homemade liquid laundry detergent!
It caused the stain to fade the most. As for the cleanliness of my clothes in general, it’s a wash (pun intended). Everything came out clean and fresh, regardless of which detergent I used. Other small stains are gone, as well as any dirt or grime.
Interestingly, all three homemade detergents did a better job of fading the mustard stain than the commercial detergent. None of them got the stain all the way out, but mustard is a toughie to get out without pretreatment. The liquid homemade detergent seems to be more effective than the two powdered recipes.
So, I think I’ll stick with recipe #1 for my homemade laundry detergent, but I’ll also invest in a pretreater in case I ever get attacked by a mustard bottle.
Related: