how to make liquid laundry soap

for about 6 months I've been using a popular combination online that uses

1 bar of grated Fel Naptha Soap
Borax
Washing Soda

It makes 5 gallons of laundry soap for a cheap price but the texture is bad. Now that my wife and I are making soaps we thought it must be possible to make a liquid laundry soap from scratch that doesn't have a terrible gloopy texture.

Most of the recipes going around for laundry soap, liquid or flaked/granular, call for appallingly large proportions of alkali such as washing soda and borax. At the time soap powder was state of the art for laundry detergents, these would've been considered cheap, low quality formulas that would tend to degrade fabrics unnecessarily. Nothing wrong with adding a little alkali to laundry detergent, just that it shouldn't make up most of the mixture. Laundry soap should be mostly just that: soap.

If you want to make liquid laundry detergent based on soap, you're going to have to avoid large quantities of sodium, which will tend to jel the liquid, resulting in that "gloop". One expedient would be to make potassium soap (into which you can mix a little sodium soap if you want to thicken it -- although I don't see what the objection would be to having it runny -- or to saponify with a mixture of KOH & NaOH to do the same thing) and just add a "builder" such as washing soda to the wash water separately. Otherwise you're going to have to use non-sodium builders that'd be harder for you to find in hobby quantities, such as tetrapotassium pyrophosphate, which was used in Wisk before phosphate restrictions.

One little catch: If you're using a HE machine, I'd recommend against using soap in it for any reason other than as a minor additive for reducing the foam of other surfactants. You can make a low sudsing soap mixture that's a somewhat effective detergent, but only by overloading it with those alkali that are in those formulas I've criticized. Then you're relying on the brute force of alkali to do the cleaning, with a little soap as wetting agent, which I wouldn't recommend for washing cotton, rayon, polyester, nylon, silk, hemp...gee, about the only fabric I can think of that wouldn't suffer is acrylic. If you want to clean with something that actually uses soap to do the cleaning, I'm afraid it'd lather up a HE machine to a degree that would tend to float the articles being washed.

I make the same as you but mine also has dawn dish soap. I actually like mine thicker and concentrated and just shake it up before use.
It's not chunky though.

I know a lot who just use dawn successfully.

My recipe starts with that base but mine is a work in progress. I like where it's going so far. I will say I add 1 oz of polysorbate 20 per gallon of soap I'm making. This really helped with that glop factor. I make it 5 gallons at a time. I stole (oops borrowed) my DH paint stir stick that attaches to the electric drill and my stirring technique plus how I hold my tongue at the time makes the recipe work for me, in my area, for my water condition. I'm sure if I ever move I will have to start all over again. I use my recipe in my HE FL washer and it has never smelled or looked this good. We have hard water.

I suspect that these days Fels Naphtha soap has no significant naphtha in it, and is probably no better than just plain soap for this purpose. If you wanted to use store-bought soap (as in straight soap) for laundry, an all-coconut one like Kirk's would probably be most effective, although Ivory (or Fairy in other countries) or whatever's cheapest (such as grey market Lux or other imports such as the all vegetable ones like Silk) might be most cost-effective.

There are translucent laundry soap bars and noodles sold in the grocery aisles catering to Hispanic Americans that I suspect to be mixtures of soap and nonionic surfactants of the alkyl/alkylphenol ethoxylate type.

Robert you seem to be up on your laundry soap and machines, I do have an HE so do you think I should just keep buying store bought soap or is there a recipe for me!

Mr. Dove, I made a soft laundry soap from a recipe on here, and it's been working well for us for...4 months? It's not a liquid, it's more like...mashed potatoes. I throw a couple of spoonfuls in the HE machine and add vinegar to the fabric-softener dispenser (or use a Downy ball). Even on Gentle cycle the soap gets dissolved (although on the Hand Wash cycle it did not)

Here's the thread (a long one) with a few versions of the recipe in it. I made mine with 100% coconut oil at 0% superfat.
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/f24/natural-laundry-soap-no-shredding-4479/

If you're using an all-coconut version of Mike in Pdx's cocktail, it does have the advantage of not being as high in alkali (in the form of washing soda and borax) as many recipes out there, so I think it'd be good in a top-loading or conventional front loading machine, provided you use enough. The trouble with HE machines is that they use less water and more RPM than the old front loaders -- conditions which are ideal for lathering up anything with much tendency to suds. In fact I saw online a video ad for Samsung HE machines that took seeming advantage of this property, likening the suds it produced at the beginning of the wash cycle (before all the water was in) to a child's bubble bath even with low sudsing HE detergent in the machine, their literature saying the foam wets the fabric faster -- a dubious claim, looks like a gimmick.

Suffice it to say that I think to get good cleaning, the concentration of soap you'd need would impair the washing action in a HE machine, the laundry tending to float on top of the suds instead of being dragged thru the water, and that if you lowered the concentration of soap to avoid that problem, you wouldn't get as good a detergent action in the wash water. There are home recipes that are lower sudsing, but they have so little soap they're relying on alkali for most of their cleaning action, prematurely degrading fabrics. It's not like you're likely to see the difference in one wash, but over the long run I don't think most people using HE machines would be satisfied with the performance.

If the major detergent makers could get away with it, they'd use soap based formulas instead of the alcohol ethoxylates they're using for HE recipes; in fact many of them have used small amounts of soap in liquid laundry detergents to reduce their sudsing, relying on water "hardness" to react with the soap and kill the foam the same way people experience with bubble baths when they use soap in all but fully "softened" water. (I try to always use quotes around "hard" and "soft" when referring to water, because the only truly hard water is ice.) There are also commercial laundry detergent formulas that are the other way around, using large amounts of soap as their major surfactant and a little bit of alcohol ethoxylate to prevent soap scum (plus usually sodium silicate), but they're not low enough sudsing for HE machines.

Hi, Robert:

The laundry soap seems to be working well enough so far; it removes the "delicious scent" from the underarms of shirts! However I don't wash clothes that get truly dirty in this washer. (I usually agitate then soak gardening clothes to dissolve all the dirt, and I don't even know how I could do that with an HE washer. My gardening happens far away, where there's a different washer). I haven't noticed any suds at all with the recipe and amount I use, although I admit I don't sit and watch the entire cycle the way my cat does.

Your caution about high alkali degrading clothes is very much appreciated, I'm used to my clothes lasting forever and wouldn't want to say goodbye to favorite garments because I used a recipe that was too harsh.

soap_rat said:

I haven't noticed any suds at all with the recipe and amount I use, although I admit I don't sit and watch the entire cycle the way my cat does.

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Cat TV!

Has anyone tried using their own soap,either lard or lard and coconut oil for liquid laundry detergent?


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I also use Mike in Pdx's laundry soap (made with lard) with vinegar for the fabric softener in my HE FL. I am quite happy with the results on my clothes.

Robert, thank you for the info about alkalis degrading fabrics. I hadn't realised this before, and my current HM laundry powder contains a lot of alkali! I will cut down on the washing soda and borax in future, and try to rely more on the soap to clean the clothes.

Just last week I made a CP soap using lard (1% superfat), with intentions of it being a laundry soap. I used lard simply because it was cheapest. I hope it works well in HM laundry powder, but if it doesn't it might do well as a "stain stick" or pre-treater.

Back in the day when soap ruled, the king of built soaps, also known as washing powder, was Gold Dust Washing Powder. I found an ancient book with formulations (days before trade secrets were so guarded) and found that it was about 50% soap and 50% sodium carbonate. This is by weight. So you are using a considerable amount of soap and a relatively small amount of alkali.

I tried it recently with some lard soap, and used the food processor to grind it up thoroughly. It produced something that looked remarkably like commercial detergent and foamed and cleaned like crazy. I like it for dishes....a tablespoon of the powder does an almost commercial size sink full of dishes and holds up to the greasy stuff with ample suds.

I made a batch with 100% coconut oil soap, and it cleaned like crazy, but the foam was non-existent in my top loader. Both recipes, I used 1/4 -1/3 cup per full load of laundry in my soft water. Someone who has an HE machine may want to experiment with the coconut oil formula and see what they get. I would start at a tablespoon and bet that it works well.

Edited to add: I have also been experimenting with liquid soap made with KOH and lard and coconut oil. I dilute the paste down 1 part paste to 2 parts water and use 1/4 cup per load. Works very well. You can also choose your additives depending on what type of clothing you are washing. I also tried 100% coconut oil LS....despite the initial blast of suds you get, it doesn't stay foamy so it might be a good choice for HE machines.

MikeInPdx said:

Edited to add: I have also been experimenting with liquid soap made with KOH and lard and coconut oil. I dilute the paste down 1 part paste to 2 parts water and use 1/4 cup per load. Works very well. You can also choose your additives depending on what type of clothing you are washing. I also tried 100% coconut oil LS....despite the initial blast of suds you get, it doesn't stay foamy so it might be a good choice for HE machines.

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Is that dilution by weight? I just mixed up a 50/50 batch of coconut/lard using KOH. I was trying for a soap that would dissolve better in a liquid laundry soap. I was not expecting the paste that formed. It is pH neutral when checked.

OverUnder said:

Is that dilution by weight? I just mixed up a 50/50 batch of coconut/lard using KOH. I was trying for a soap that would dissolve better in a liquid laundry soap. I was not expecting the paste that formed. It is pH neutral when checked.

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Sorry...I should have clarified that...I do everything by weight rather than volume.

Oh yeah....KOH gives you soft soap that's a sticky paste....just dilute it with boiling water, keep it warm and covered, and reheat as necessary. It will eventually dissolve. If you get a crust on top despite your best efforts, you need a bit more water. Keep adding it a tiny bit at a time, and wait for it to dissolve. Once you have no crust, you should be good. That much coconut will probably give you a thin soap, but it can still be fairly concentrated.

MikeInPdx said:

Back in the day when soap ruled, the king of built soaps, also known as washing powder, was Gold Dust Washing Powder. I found an ancient book with formulations (days before trade secrets were so guarded) and found that it was about 50% soap and 50% sodium carbonate. This is by weight. So you are using a considerable amount of soap and a relatively small amount of alkali.

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And I would say 50-50 is near the high end in terms of alkali for quality products when it comes to laundry. It's a pretty good compromise when you want something for scrubbing stains out of the sink (in which case you could go even higher in Na2CO3) that you could also use for laundry, but for a laundry product alone if you had to use sodium carbonate as the sole "builder", I'd want at least 75:25 soap to builder. The weight of washing soda used could be greater in consider'n of washing soda's waters of hydration (10 moles of water to 1 of Na2CO3, so washing soda is only 37% sodium carbonate). Products that used more sodium carbonate (usually in the form of soda ash) did so to cheapen the product, it being less expensive than soap.

Even a century ago it was recognized that sodium silicate was a better builder for soap-based laundry detergent than is sodium carbonate, but hobby recipes call for sodium carbonate and/or borax because those are widely available in grocery stores. Sodium silicate kept being used, albeit in small amounts, in laundry powders a long time after "the day when soap ruled", because it was found to inhibit corrosion of washing machine parts.

Robert said:

And I would say 50-50 is near the high end in terms of alkali for quality products when it comes to laundry. It's a pretty good compromise when you want something for scrubbing stains out of the sink (in which case you could go even higher in Na2CO3) that you could also use for laundry, but for a laundry product alone if you had to use sodium carbonate as the sole "builder", I'd want at least 75:25 soap to builder. The weight of washing soda used could be greater in consider'n of washing soda's waters of hydration (10 moles of water to 1 of Na2CO3, so washing soda is only 37% sodium carbonate). Products that used more sodium carbonate (usually in the form of soda ash) did so to cheapen the product, it being less expensive than soap.

Even a century ago it was recognized that sodium silicate was a better builder for soap-based laundry detergent than is sodium carbonate, but hobby recipes call for sodium carbonate and/or borax because those are widely available in grocery stores. Sodium silicate kept being used, albeit in small amounts, in laundry powders a long time after "the day when soap ruled", because it was found to inhibit corrosion of washing machine parts.

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I totally agree. I keep the washing powder on hand for some really foul clothing, and I like it for greasy (non-aluminum) pots and pans, and heavy duty cleaning overall.

Nowadays, I usually use my own liquid soap in the laundry and use my own additives depending on what I need....maybe some washing soda for greasy dish towels....and occasional chlorine bleach for whites. Works much better than trying to create an all-in one wonder cocktail.

I use a recipe of 1/2c washing soda, 1/2 cup Borax and either the Fels Napth, Zote or 1c of my own liquid soap. I found so far that using the Fels Naptha and my soap together give it a consistency I desire. It dose get goopy at first but after I stir it up a bit it all settles out quite nicely. I can even dispense it from one of those 2.5 gallon slim line containers with the spout from Walmart with no problem. Works great in my HE washer, no issues. Clothes come out clean every time.

Just about every laundry detergent/soap recipe I've seen says they'll "gel" or become goopy and requires a bit of a stir.

whitetiger_0603 said:

Just about every laundry detergent/soap recipe I've seen says they'll "gel" or become goopy and requires a bit of a stir.

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This was one of the reasons that liquid laundry detergent is a relative newcomer to the scene. Manufacturers had the same problems trying to formulate a liquid detergent that cleaned well and didn't congeal, separate, etc...

They really didn't get it completely right until the mid 80s and Liquid Tide. Other liquids existed, but their cleaning power was pretty mediocre. Tide changed that.