Reader’s Question: Dingy Clothes w/Homemade Laundry Detergent

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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