Reader’s Question: Dingy Clothes w/Homemade Laundry Detergent
October 6, 2009 by Jenn @ Frugal Upstate
Filed under General Frugality
Dear Frugal Upstate,
I’m using you laundry detergent recipe but, my whites are getting dingyier and dingyier. I live in North Carolina and have 2 boys aged 7 and 9. They stain everything in the red clay here. I’ve tried bleach in with the detergent on the long soak cycle but, still dingy wash. What would you suggest?
Mary
Mary,
I’ve been using my homemade laundry detergent recipe for years and have never noticed that particular problem with my clothes~the homemade has always worked fine for me~so I don’t have a really good answer for you. First and foremost, if you are saving money but you aren’t happy with the quality you are getting then you should consider switching back to store bought laundry detergent. Just shop the sales and cut your coupons of course.
I think if I had some OxyClean at home I would experiment with throwing some of that in each load and see if it helped. I haven’t tested it myself so I can’t swear to the effectiveness of it in this particular situation, and of course you’d have to figure out the change in the cost per load with using the OxyClean to see if it continues to be cost effective compared to store bought.
Readers-help Mary out! Have any of you had this problem? What have you done to fix it?
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I used to make my own laundry detergent as well. Though, I found that:
- the clothes never seemed as clean. sometimes I had to rewash (which isn’t saving anyone money)
- they couldn’t sit in the washer for any amount of time before they started stinking.
- even when they were taken directly to the dryer, sometimes they would come out “stinky” – my family would yell “mom, I have stink shirt!” Which is telling me they weren’t fully clean before being dried.
Everyone has a different experience with it. I’m wondering if it has something to do with hardness/softness/composition of your particular water?
I went back to store bought detergent. With coupons, sales and grocery games, I pay less than when I was making my own homemade.
I like the idea of the more “natural” soap, but it just didn’t work for us.
Good luck!
I did have this problem with liquid homemade laundry detergent, and I switched back to store-bought, for the time being. Perhaps it could be a difference in the water- hard or soft? I’m on well water with a water softener myself.
I know we have really hard water here, and it causes our whites to be dingy if I don’t combat it. Is there a way to test the water and see if it needs a softener?
I found this….
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080304172755AAL43h0
and this
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=gmail&rls=gm&q=Get%20clay%20out%20of%20clothes
I’m in Nebraska and my grandma used home made soap to get clay out – Fals Naptha (which I use on my son’s white game pants) or castile soap.
One thing you can do is find the old fashioned small blue bottles of blueing and whiten your whites and light colors the old fashioned way. I’ve found bluing (spelling???) at WalMart in the past, but you may have to look around to find it. You just put a little bit in the wash, and it makes the whites much brighter. We have quite soft water where we live, and I have a friend who still does that several times a year to whiten her whites and light colored clothing. But if we had hard water and couldn’t afford a decent water softener, I think my friend would probably use the bluing a lot more often.
I have a problem w/ hard water, and use cloth diapers, which I have had major troubles getting clean and white. One thing I read somewhere that helped is that bleach and detergent sort of counteract each other. I have found that if I start the washer with just detergent, then add a splash of bleach in the rinse cycle, it gets my whites much whiter. Of course, since they are diapers, I do another rinse, b/c bleach residue breaks out my kids’ bottoms. So that might not help you, if you have to do another rinse. But it might help someone. Also, Jenn is right. Oxyclean does wonders, but it also fades colored clothes over time, if you use a lot of it (I see that in play clothes and my husband’s work clothes, which get washed in Oxyclean often.)
I’ve got a great tip that I learned a couple of years ago. I’ve made my own detergent for a while and have run into the same problem. Fill the washer enough to cover the whites and to let them move around in the water. Then add a half of a cup to a cup (depending on load size) of peroxide to the water. Close the cover to swish it around a bit, then let it soak for a couple of hours. I’ve even let things soak overnight for super dingy stuff. You can usually get a bottle of peroxide for about $0.30 to %0.50 on sale and one bottle will do 4 to 5 loads so it’s very economical. It’s still necessary to spot treat though, as peroxide is not a stain fighter, just a whitener.
Good luck!
Peroxide or Bleach is likely more harsh than you need. Said dinginess is likely from hard water… white vinegar is an easy, inexpensive and eco-friendly way to beat it.
How about a soak in BIZ? This works for me sometimes!
http://bizstainfighter.com/
Same problem here. My whites and kids’ clothes were always looking dingy. I tried making the detergent more concentrated or adding OxyClean to each load, both without success. So I finally gave up on it and switched back to storebought.
Try adding extra washing soda to the formula, then add 1 to 1 1/2 cups of cheap white vinegar to the rinse. This will remove hard water scale.
I soak my daughter’s dingy whites in oxiclean or Clorox Ultimate Care bleach before running it through the regular wash. Usually does the trick every time!
I add baking soda to my laundry detergent recipe… helps remove odors. And of course washing in the right temperature is important. My whites are doing well!
I haven’t tried homemade laundry detergent yet as I have a nice collection of near free detergent from sales and coupons.
I too am in NC and red clay is well a pain! For me it is my second hardest stain – the first being marinara sauce on my kids clothes (and always the good ones at that!).
I don’t have any great solutions as I haven’t tried making my own yet, but I do know that before I got a front loader if I let the wash start and then stop it and let it soak overnight and then get going again it worked wonders on some of the stains! That said I can’t do that now with a front loader and so now I’m back to looking for a great way to get marinara stains out without rewashing.
I haven’t tried this but I read in another blog that if you soak clothes 24 hours in oxyclean it will take out any stain.
Peroxide is the same thing as Oxi-Clean, just in a different format. (Well, and Oxi-Clean now has that blue junk in it, too, whatever that is.)
Your reader probably has hard water. Hard water doesn’t allow soap to “dissolve” well (that’s not the correct scientific term); detergent was developed specifically for this reason. The soap doesn’t rinse well, so it’s not really that the dirt doesn’t get washed out, but that the soap doesn’t get fully rinsed out. Adding a water softener like baking soda might help, and/or using an extra rinse. But with really hard water, or hard water + tough dirt, it may be necessary to just go back to using detergent rather than soap.
(We’ve had hard water in two different homes, and used homemade detergent with differing results. I think that HOW hard the water is has made a difference.)
I would really like to try making my own laundry detergent with Castile soap. Has anyone tried this?
I have used both castile and fels naptha, I prefer the Fels Naptha. I too am having a hard time with dingy whites, I will try the vinegar rinse, because I have heard that this works. Good Luck..