Laundry Soap

I decided to write about laundry soap because it's a popular product that is made, but quite honestly I don't think it's as good as everyone thinks. And I want to be able to prove why I believe this.

This is one of the most popular liquid laundry soap recipes found on the internet.
1/3 bar Fels Naptha Soap (new bar is 5.5 oz) or use your own homemade soap which amounts to 1.83 oz of any type of soap.
½ cup Borax (4 oz)
½ cup Washing Soda (4 oz)
A total of 32 cups of water added through out the process of making this soap.

To make this easier, I didn't figure in the 1.83 oz of soap so the total volume of your homemade laundry soap using this recipe amounts of 33 cups of liquid which requires ½ cup per load. So the whole batch makes 66 loads of laundry. If each cup weighs 8 ounces then the total weight will be 264 ounces.

In cutting out some of the math, this means that this is how much of your active ingredient is used.
Borax 1.5%
Washing Soda 1.5%
Soap 0.7%
Water 96.3%

So what does that mean when you add ½ cup (4 oz) to your washer. I'm going to include the weight in ounces and grams. So you need to remember that 1 oz equals 28 grams
Borax – 0.06 ounces = 6 grams (about 1 tsp)
Washing Soda – 0.06 ounces = 6 grams (about 1 tsp)
Soap – 0.028 oz = 3 grams (about ½ tsp)
Water – 3.85 oz = 107 grams


But just to be fair I found another recipe that is for a powdered laundry soap recipe.
2 ½ ounces of grated soap, (suggests to use fels naptha, zote or octagon)
1 cup borax (8 oz)
1 cup washing soda (8 oz)
Use 1 tbs per load.

This makes a total of 18.5 oz of laundry soap.
1 tbs = 1 oz = 28 grams


14% = 2.59 oz soap
43% = 7.8 oz borax
43% = 7.8 oz washing soda

Soap -- 0.14 oz = 3.92 grams (aprox 1/2 tsp)
Borax -- 0.42 oz = 12 grams (aprox 2 tsp)
Washing Soda -- 0.42 oz = 12 grams (aprox 2 tsp)

Do you see that your not adding enough active ingredient to any real cleaning and your basically just washing your laundry with plain water.


Now lets look at washing soda. The instructions on the package say it's a laundry booster. To use the package and website says to use ½ cup (4 oz) washing soda ALONG WITH your usual amount of liquid or powder laundry detergent. For large or heavily soilded loads use 1 cup (8 oz) washing soda ALONG WITH your usual amount of liquid or powder laundry detergent. So now that you know that, why is it that people think that this product can be used alone but reduce the amount down to 1-2 tsp without the addition of a laundry detergent which is what is doing the work of cleaning the laundry.

Now lets look at borax. The instructions on the package says that ½ cup (4 oz) of 20 mule team borax can be added to every load along with your regular detergent to do the following jobs. Improve cleaning power of the detergent, helps remove tough stains, natural alternative to color safe bleach, deodorizes and freshes and naturally softens water. So just like the washing soda who decided that 1-2 tsp could get the job done without the benefit of a laundry detergent.

The soap added which amounts to approximately ½ to 1 tsp really isn't enough to get the job done either, along with the other two active ingredients in homemade laundry soaps. Do you really think that using so little is effective when the two main ingredients say to use much more along with your regular detergent? So admit it, your washing your clothes with a lot of hogwash and water.

Last but not least lets look at what's in a commercial made laundry detergent. Regardless if your buying the expensive stuff or the cheap stuff they are going to contain much of the same ingredients.
The first detergent also known as a surfactant or artificial soap was created during world war II so they have been around for quite some time, and the quality has changed over the years. But to put it in an easier way to understand it has partials that attach themselves to the dirt and grease to pull them away from the clothing fibers and into the wash water. Natural soap does that as well but if you look at the above recipes they don't have very much soap added.

One thing that the homemade laundry soap doesn't have added that laundry detergent has are the other ingredients that are added. They add special ingredients that help prevent the soil that has been sent back into the wash water from going back and settling back onto your clean laundry. So the partials of grease and dirt stay in the wash water and go down the drain when the extra water is spun out. They also contain a number of ingredients that help maintain the color and whiteness of the fabric to some degree. The commercial laundry detergents also contain special enzymes that help break down the stains in your laundry so the detergent can do it's job to remove them. This is why many detergents say to pre-soak heavily soiled loads. Because of the amount of detergent or surfactant used in commercial detergents they also add ingredients to help control the amount of suds you see in your load. So there is more going on than what your seeing by the bubble action. The reason why they add the ingredients to control the amount of suds the surfactant produces is because to many suds can ruin your washing machine, and they are also harder to rinse away.

If you read up on Wikipedia under laundry detergent you will read how modern detergents contain three main components. It also states that “Soap is, by weight, relatively ineffective, and it is highly sensitive to deactivation by hard water. By the 1950s soap had almost been completely replaced by branched alkylbenzenesulfonates, but these detergents were found to be poorly biodegradable. Linear alkylbenzenesulfonates (LABs), however, proved to be both highly effective in cleaning and more biodegradable than the branched relatives. LABs remain the main detergents used domestically.”

50% of the product is what is known as the builder. These are water softeners are combined into several ingredients. Washing soda is one of them, along with zeolites. Their function is to remove problematic ions. Another common builder is sodium triphosphate to help soften the water further.

7% of the product is bleach that are made up of a vegetable origin. Sodium perborate is used to activate the oxygen. Sodium hypochlorite is also used which is commonly known as “bleach” to help with the removal of stains. Another product called tetraacetylethylenediamine is also used as activator for activated oxygen. This helps to release the natural hydrogen peroxide during the wash cycle.

15% of the product that is something often called sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate which is a particular surfactant that is used in laundry detergents. The surfactant is what is doing the cleaning and is a particular ingredient that doesn't function exactly like “soap” does.

2% of laundry detergents are enzymes. These help dissolve and remove the various stains that can be found on your laundry.

What makes up the remaining 26% of your laundry detergents. They include ingredients to counteract the foam produced by the surfactant added. Corrosion inhibitors are also added to prevent damage and rusting of your washing machine. It can also contain an ingredient to help the colors from bleeding out and on to another article of clothing. It contains ingredients that help prevent the dirt and grease from being redeposited onto your clean laundry after they were pulled away into the water. Other ingredients might be fabric color brighteners, fabric softeners along with very particular perfumes that won't affect the coloring of the fabric in the wash.

So by reading that you understand that your laundry detergent is more than just soap. It is a multitasking ingredient that the common man just can't replace with a few teaspoons of soap, washing soda and borax.

Now that you know this, you can see that commercially made laundry detergent is made with very specific reasons. Now you can make your own decision if this is something you want to continue to buy or if you want to risk it and make your own. .