Laundry Soap

[BattleGnome]

Looking at that link... that magical detergent contains sodium oleate - the sodium salt of oleic acid (or possibly just a castille soap)

I use store bought detergent and have some borax. I'll sacrifice some clean clothes and let them soak in borax too see if the stripping does anything.

Another thing (on both links) no one mentioned which washing cycle they used, just what kind of machine. My husband is convinced that a machine without the tall agitator does not get laundry clean (as mentioned between the differences with washing boards and washers). Many he washers not have much of an agitator and many people who diy do it to save money (which possibly means washing clothes on a lighter/"more efficient" cycle than needed).

I'm off to sacrifice my clothes to the borax god, I'll post pics in the morning.

(luviesmom, I'm not trying to discredit your ideas. The article used more emotion based words than evidence and I'm honestly curious if the writer had a sales goal rather than an informative one)

Edit: I've got 2/3c borax (grabbed the wrong cup), my oldest pair of pj pants, two shirt I wear fairly often, and one shirt I don't wear often soaking right now. I'll be out till 9a (work) so I won't be able to stir as suggested.

 

[mommycarlson]

BattleGnome, are you soaking just in Borax? I'm curious how this turns out for you. I already have soft water so I don't know if I need the Calgon water softener? Luviesmom, thank you for clarifying what that is Don't feel bad for bringing this topic up, it's what sparks discussion and it's how we learn! it's been informative

 

[BattleGnome]

I just used borax because that's what I have. 2/3c, four clothing items, no stirring (like was reccomended).

Variables:
1. I won't tell you the last time I cleaned my tub, let's just say it's due
2. Amount of clothing/clothing color. Robin's egg blue shirt, brown tee, medium grey tee, grey fleece pj pants
3. "Additives." I just used the borax because it's what I had on hand.
4. Agitation. I set it up and left for work. The instructions say to stir it around every once in a while.
5. Detergent type. I use Purex clean and simple (the one without scent or dyes).
6. Cat. One of my cats gets locked in the bedroom/bathroom while we're gone. I'm pretty sure he sleeps all night but I don't keep a camera in the bathroom.

Results: (story about the pics, there's really bad lighting)
The water was faintly black on the edges. It looked like when you reuse a water bottle that had koolaid in it and there's still a bit left to tint the water. I'm not sure I would call this a definitive answer. The instructions called for hot water so they dye from one of my shirts could have easily leeched out. I also just grabbed a quick assortment of clothes, we use the laundromat and I definitely don't want to have to do more laundry than I have to.

First pic: with clothes still in
Second pic: immediately after wringing out the clothes

 

[mommycarlson]

Hmm, I wouldn't call that a big deal, seems like it could just be the clothing color bleeding out. I do like your two eared supervisor in the corner there! Thank you for posting your results. I think I'll give it a whirl but I'm going to skip the Calgon since we already have soft water. I'll post my findings.

I did notice in that post with the woman who bashed DIY laundry soap she said "Don't worry if your water is clear when performing this strip, there are lots of things that we can't see that will come out" I'm quoting from memory....but seemed like she was saying "yours may not have any residues come out, but don't worry, it's there". I found that pretty interesting.

 

[earlene]

BattleGnome, I am curious if you felt there was much 'residue' from your soak. Monitors can vary and make photos look so different than the subject of the photo would look to the naked eye, so I'm not sure if I am seeing the same as you saw. To me, it looks like some floaty darkness in the second photo in the area toward the proximal to you and kitty. You did mention some darkness around the edges, but I don't see it in the area of the tub where the light is brighter. So I am wondering how it looked to you in person. How would you interpret the result? What is your personal conclusion?

 

[Steve85569]

Gosh. I knew this would happen if I opened my trap. Calgon is a water softener. Back under my rock. Sorry to stir the pot.

Sounds to me like you have made several of us curious.
The change in towels and sheets that takes place undoubtedly happens over a fairly long period of time and any cleaner will leave residue if the water is hard or the cleaning agent is not rinsed (stripped) from the fabric.

I do have to admit that I also saw the links when I read the post and had the same thoughts as Scooter. I also read some of the comments at the bottom of the page including the bloggers reaction to criticism. That part put me off the worst.

The reminder that we can check just how clean we are getting our clothes using whatever methods we use is a very good one.

Please do come back out from under your rock and join us under the block of soap. There's nothing wrong with provoking thought and learning from folks like me.

We use DIY lye soap and Borax mixed 50:50. Like I stated before I use sodium citrate to treat some of the minerals in our hard water in nearly all of the soap that I make so it's in the laundry soap.
We do run small loads of laundry with lots of rinse water to make sure the soap is no longer in the washed clothes. If we start to get "off" smells we will run a little bleach through the laundry in a load of whites. We don't use bleach very often or much because it kills the good bugs in the septic system and drain field.

 

[Scooter]

The reminder that we can check just how clean we are getting our clothes using whatever methods we use is a very good one.

Please do come back out from under your rock and join us under the block of soap. There's nothing wrong with provoking thought and learning from folks like me.

Really good points Steve. I know I have mentioned this before, as have others, but if there is one place where YMMV generally applies it is in how we formulate our recipes for soap and in how we get things clean.

 

[earlene]

Looking back again at the instructions how to do a laundry stripping, I have to point out something about it that has niggled at my mind for some time, and seems to me more than a bit odd. And that's the formula in option #2: Washing Soda, Borax, Calgon

What is different between this formula and what I now & in the past used when washing my laundry? Soap, Oxi-clean, (and occasionally Detergent, which I sometimes use when traveling or when using up what in-laws left behind after moving into nursing home)
n.b. Calgon is not needed where I live, as we use a water softening system in our house.[/I]

What is the same? Washing Soda, Borax were/are in both formulas I use/used for the past couple of decades.*

So what this is telling me is either one of two things:

1. What I've said all along, that it's an insufficient rinsing of laundry after washing that is the real issue. Not the soap itself. I already used two of those 3 ingredients and I don't believe that I need Calgon because we have a water softener system in our house already. So effectively I already included the required ingredients every time I washed my clothes in the wash cycle. Theoretically, anyway. Then I ran two rinse cycles with plain water, so that's the difference. I did not soak the laundry because my HE washer never lets me soak laundry. But before the HE washer I did used to soak sometimes, and I would see that dirty looking water, but that was with dirty clothes only. I never did soak clean clothes. It would not have occurred to me to do so. So that part probably doesn't count.

Or...

2. Maybe I don't have enough data because I haven't really done the strip test.

But....

3. Maybe neither soap nor detergent is needed at all and all you need is Washing Soda, Borax and soft water.....

4. Maybe a washboard would do a better job than an automatic washer - okay I'm going overboard. Forgive me. :think:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

* When I made my own DIY dry powdered laundry soap the ingredients were Washing Soda, Borax, Oxiclean & grated bar soap (my choice varied from Fels Naptha to any old syndet bar I had available). If I remember correctly (don't want to search for my recipe just now), the proportions are about 25% of each in volume measure, but I know for a fact that 1 cup of Washing Soda weighs significantly more than 1 cup of Borax, so I don't really know the true percentages in weight. I still have some of that powder and do use it occasionally. (Easier to carry on an airplane, for example.)

Now I use laundry butter and the composition (not counting the water itself) is 45% Washing Soda, 27.5% Borax and 27.5% Soap. (This is actual weight percentages.) Water is also used in order to turn these dry ingredients into a 'butter', but I didn't include them in the percentages as I just didn't want to go there right this minute.

 

[SheLion]

Earlene, I like your suggestion of testing with a control item vs. soiled items. It doesn't need to be three different garments though. Two would suffice I think because the only way to insure that the two soiled items had the same level of dirt is to take the worn item and cut it in half. Granted, that sacrifices the piece of clothing but if I were going to do this, I probably just pick up a couple of cheap t-shirts anyway. So you wear one of the shirts, cut it in half vertically (you want an armpit in each test-usually the area that gets soiled the most, I think) and now you have identically soiled items to test.

At any rate, I was skeptical at the beginning of the article, starting with the clickbait-y title. Before I even read the article, I read her 'About' page because I always want to know someone's creds when I'm being exhorted to do or not do something. I quickly skimmed the science-y bits because from the title, I'm already expecting an angle and I'm curious what it is. Though I did pause when she said that our skin is a smooth surface. Uh, not really and it especially is not non-porous. :wtf: When she then said that the ingredients for stripping are the same ones in the homemade soap we're supposed to stop using, I thought, "Ummm..." Then she shilled her Young Living product. And there you have it. Any credibility completely lost and I dismissed her post as more cyber noise.

I'll keep using my homemade laundry soap (now with homemade soap instead of Fels-Naptha even!) and not worry about soap scum build up in my washer.

 

[SheLion]

Variables:

6. Cat. One of my cats gets locked in the bedroom/bathroom while we're gone. I'm pretty sure he sleeps all night but I don't keep a camera in the bathroom.

Well of course you didn't get definitive results with that kind of shoddy science! :mrgreen:

Edited to add: I love that you listed the cat as a variable. My kind of humor.

 

[Robert B]

The reminder that we can check just how clean we are getting our clothes using whatever methods we use is a very good one.

I personally have hesitations regarding the outcome of the research in the blog post but what Steve says sums it up for me....as well as others. It is good to see an active and cordial discussion.

 

[BattleGnome]

BattleGnome, How would you interpret the result? What is your personal conclusion?

Color wise was very similar to putting a single drop of food coloring in a few cups of water. There was a tint to the water that I could tell there was a result but it was in no way as dark as any of the pictures in the links. There is another variable that I forgot until now. My tub is fairly small (at least compared to what I've come to assume is a "normal" sized bathtub). The optical illusions created by tub shape/depth as well as available light and clothing color definitely skew results.

As to my conclusion: there's too many variables to be certain the results are because of detergent type or wash cycle. To tack yet another variable on, the laundromat we usually go to has he, front loading machines. We usually use warm water with an extra rinse and often add the heavy soil option. The four items I used were not "freshly clean" and I know the blue shirt was not washed with the other three items (I honestly don't know the last time I wore it as it's more of a summer shirt and it's currently winter). If we're going truly scientific, does sitting in a wooden dresser effect any residue?

All I can conclusively say is that there will probably be residue no matter the clothing/detergent used. Chances are some of the results can be from the specification of hot water and the habit hot water has of leeching dyes

Edited to add: I love that you listed the cat as a variable. My kind of humor.

This is the cat that has almost learned to like water. If I'm in the tub he thinks he can trap me for some one on one time.

Attached: two seconds after the tub had fully drained

 

[mommycarlson]

What a handsome boy!

 

[shgcphilly]

This has peaked my interest as a great discussion!
First, I have only so far done very basic CP bar soap for body (personal use only), about 4 years and really wanted to dive into laundry next. Always finding more to read, I like to get to know many angles before taking the plunge.

The "laundry stripping" pics/examples mostly show fels naptha as the only cleaning agent mixed with washing soda and borax (water softeners). Considering fels naptha is suppose be a pretreat-stain stick or detergent booster that also contains salts (water softeners), doesn't seem like nearly enough cleaning power for a whole load of laundry. Plus, does anyone have an idea as to what % superfat might be used in a commercially made product like fels naptha, compared to most homemade recipes posted on SMF that are -2 to 0% Superfat? Just curious.





Quote"earlene, post:

What is the same? Washing Soda, Borax were/are in both formulas I use/used for the past couple of decades.*

So what this is telling me is either one of two things:

1. What I've said all along, that it's an insufficient rinsing of laundry after washing that is the real issue. Not the soap.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
* When I made my own DIY dry powdered laundry soap the ingredients were Washing Soda, Borax, Oxiclean & grated bar soap (my choice varied from Fels Naptha to any old syndet bar I had available). If I remember correctly, the proportions are about 25% of each in volume measure, but I know for a fact that 1 cup of Washing Soda weighs significantly more than 1 cup of Borax, so I don't really know the true percentages in weight.

Now I use laundry butter and the composition (not counting the water itself) is 45% Washing Soda, 27.5% Borax and 27.5% Soap. (This is actual weight percentages.) [/QUOTE]





I really liked Earlene's thought on the extra rinse. I also use an extra rinse (and finally no longer use fabric softeners). But for those that do have water softeners or soft water already, What is the need for such a high ratio of water softeners:soap? How is that expected to clean much?

 

[soapmaker]

I just came across this post today. It is very important that you have soft water. Clothing will become dingy looking using soap in hard water. Soap forms a scum when combining with the minerals in hard water. I don't think any amount of rinsing would take this off your clothes. Think about the scum in your tub and how you have to scrub it off, it doesn't just rinse away. I like homemade laundry soap using plain 0% SF coconut oil soap but we have a water softener. At our last home we didn't have particularly hard water but it was hard enough that after repeated washings the clothes looked dull.