I am looking to make a laundry soap bar to use in my homemade laundry soap. I have seen various recipes using either lard, coconut oil, or olive oil. With a few using combinations of lard and coconut oil. Is it better to use just one oil or a combination. My husband works in construction, so I would like it to be tough enough for that type of laundry.
Laundry Soap Bar Oils??
- Thread starter Hawkqueen
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You will get the strongest cleansing soap if you make it from 100% coconut oil with a very low or zero superfat. Coconut oil soap will also function better than soap made from other fats if you are washing clothes in cool or cold water. Soap made from other fats need hotter water to dissolve and clean effectively.
Lard and mixed "household grease" were traditionally used for laundry soap was because these fats were cheap (or free) back in the day. My grandmother used 100% lard for her laundry soap. That was in the day when butchering a fat hog yielded way more lard than could be used for cooking in a reasonable time, so she made the extra lard into soap.
I don't know that I've heard of olive oil used to make laundry soap, but if olive is cheap and plentiful in a given region of the world, I'm sure people probably use it.
Lard and mixed "household grease" were traditionally used for laundry soap was because these fats were cheap (or free) back in the day. My grandmother used 100% lard for her laundry soap. That was in the day when butchering a fat hog yielded way more lard than could be used for cooking in a reasonable time, so she made the extra lard into soap.
I don't know that I've heard of olive oil used to make laundry soap, but if olive is cheap and plentiful in a given region of the world, I'm sure people probably use it.
I’ve used both lard and CO for laundry soap. For cleaning power, the CO wins hands down. It also hardens faster than soap made with most other oils (hours as opposed to days), which means it can be shredded or ground up into laundry powder much sooner. It also makes great stain sticks for whites.
I've seen olive oil stain removing sticks in shops here in EU, but I think it was mixed with terre de somières, which is a stain removing clay. I also know people who use Marseille soap (mainly palm based these days) for laundry, probably because true soap isn't that easy to find around here. If you can choose your base oils, I'd definitely go with what @AliOop and @DeeAnna said and use CO. Also, if you're not averse to animal products (which I'm guessing you're not) you could look into ox gall soap - it's the stuff grandma's used to use for stain removal.
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