Your results may vary..... From personal experience, it's not as simple as the cost factor alone. Although this, and similar mixtures (both dry and liquid versions) are generally very cost effective, there are other "costs" you need to take into consideration than just the price of the ingredients due to cause and effect. Not everyone has great results using homemade mixtures, especially the longer you use them and if you have hard water. These are things I experienced when using homemade laundry mixtures on-and-off over the last 25-years, and things I learned when I studied the science of soap and detergents and what was happening to my laundry when using it. Using it for one wash, one week, or even one month isn't a good test. See how things go after using it for 3-months or more. 1. This formula is missing a lot of chemical ingredients you've enjoyed in your commercial detergents, such as: corrosion inhibitors, enzymes, whiteners/brighteners, surfactant formulations that reduce foam, and chelating agents (bind things together) that are found in commercial detergents. What this means is after prolonged use of the homemade mixtures you may find the life of your clothing diminishes, it doesn't clean as well, your clothes are stiff when you line-dry them, and numerous other possible issues. This is why detergent was overwhelmingly chosen for laundry over old-fashioned soap products after WWII when all these chemicals were formulated. Detergents just worked better than soap, and these formulas are changing all the time to keep up with today's laundry needs. 2. $$$ If you use ZOTE (a bar soap formulated for laundry) instead of Fels Naptha, not only will you save money (ZOTE is 90-cents at Big Lots and it doesn't take the whole bar for a batch of laundry soap), it also has some brighteners (bluing agents) in the bar that will aid in keeping whites looking white better than Fels Naptha. Fels Naptha, which once contained Stoddard Solvent - a great cleaning agent, was removed years ago because it turns out it's pretty toxic stuff. Fels Naptha was basically used as a pre-wash (wet the bar and rubbed directly on stains), rather than as a laundry soap. I believe Stoddard Solvent is used in dry-cleaning chemicals. Most people used homemade lye soap for laundry and Fels Naptha for pretreating. 3. The ingredients used in these mixtures may NOT be good for your washing machine, and may actually diminish the life of it. There are reports that washing soda and Borax can damage washing machines. If you have an HE washing machine, check with the manufacturer for information about using homemade laundry detergent mixtures. Some of the bar soap products people use in the mixtures have fat in them that can build-up in the washer drum and cause that awful stinky smell and black mold growth front-loaders are famous for. This happened to a friend who used Oil of Olay in the mixture because she had sensitive skin and it was the only soap that didn't bother her. She had to replace her machine because of black mold. Use of a homemade product may cancel your warranty, so be sure to check. Washing machines aren't cheap compared to the cost difference in soap and detergent. 4. For optimal cleaning performance with homemade mixtures use hot water for the wash cycle to give you the best cleaning for whites and heavily soiled clothes. If you are going back to pre-WWII laundry products, you will get better results using the prescribed hot water that went along with their use, and you may also benefit from soaking some heavily-soiled items overnight. So use the hottest water possible for each fabric type for optimal cleaning. By using hot water, that will increase the cost of utilities, but will also increase the performance of the soap mixture. If you normally use cold water for washing and your cold water is really cold in the winter (65-degrees F or colder), the soap mixture will not activate and clean effectively. Cold water detergents are formulated for use in cold water, and detergent manufacturers define cold water as 80-85-degrees F. Some washing machines actually mix hot water with cold to achieve this temperature for the wash cycle, even when it's set on "cold". Wet clothes aren't necessarily "clean" clothes. Your soap or detergent needs to perform that first 5-minutes of the wash cycle in order to clean well. 5. If you have hard water you may find you need to use more than the normal 2 T. per load to get your clothes clean. More is needed for extra-large loads as well as extra dirty loads. You may need as much as 1/2-cup at times. You may need to add an oxygen-type cleaner (Oxi-Clean or Sun from the Dollar General) to the dry mix or add it to the laundry if using the liquid version, to aid performance. With each add-in or larger amount needed to do each load, the cost increases. 6. You are now using a soap-based product. Soap reacts with minerals in the water and can leave soap scum residue. You may find you need an extra rinse or need to chemically soften your water (Calgon or vinegar in the rinse, or a whole house water softener) in order to avoid soap scum build-up. That adds to the cost of use. Soap scum will eventually cause your whites to yellow or gray, and light colors will look dingy. If you line-dry your clothes they will be stiff because of the soap scum build-up. Dried soap scum build-up is like leaving sandpaper in your fabrics. It will actually be abrasive and reduce the life of your clothing, and can actually cause holes in fabrics. It can also cause skin outbreaks for anyone who may be sensitive to this soap residue in fabrics. If you launder cloth diapers in homemade laundry mixtures, it may contribute to diaper rash and will reduce the absorbancy of fabrics. You may find your clothing doesn't wear well or may wear-out sooner than they once did. 7. When I used these formulas years ago I would have to switch to regular detergent about every 3 months to remove the soap scum build-up and to brighten the clothes again. This is because of our extremely hard water. It worked best when I had a whole-house water softener unit. Eventually I was increasing the add-ins and using softener, so I really wasn't saving money at all. Especially since our clothes weren't lasting as long. 8. Off-season clothing would smell acrid/rancid after being in storage from the fats found in the bars of soap used for the mixtures. All off-season clothing had to be laundered before they could be used again because of this smell. 9. It takes several washings to remove your old detergent from your clothing, and then a couple months of using the homemade version to really show it's true results. I'd give it three months trial and see if you notice a real difference. Keep some "samples" for comparison. Save back a washcloth, a white T-shirt, etc., to compare before and after. 10. If you are laundering baby and children's clothing, homemade mixtures may destroy the fire-retardant coatings on fabrics. Charlie's Soap, which is what I use now, has been shown in testing to improve the the flamH retardant properties after each washing to the point where the fabric would not catch fire at all. No other detergent tested improved the flame retardant properties of children's sleepwear at all. Just some things to consider.... -Grainlady

bumblebeez - Doing laundry is a lot like cooking and baking. There are a lot of "rules" and a lot of "science", then there's what everyone actually DOES! From habit, experience, science, or without a clue - we all seem to do things a little differently when it comes to laundry. If I say you MUST use hot or warm water with homemade laundry soap mixtures, there will be 10 people chime in to say they only use cold water with it; so you'll have to work this out for yourself, according to YOUR results. Hot water has always been suggested for removing dirt from heavily soiled items, until we decided to "save the planet" by only using cold water. Cold water washing works best with detergents designed to be used in cold water - Gain may be and that could account for your satisifaction with the product. If you want a good test to see how well your detergent has been performing in cold water, wash a load of towels with nothing added to the washer but hot or warm water and see if there are a lot of suds. I'd also say it will take 2- to 3-months of continual use of homemade laundry soap to see if your whites are dingy from hard water soap scum. It will take several weeks to rid your laundry of the accumulation from the Gain. I got my best results using the hottest water I could for the fabric types being laundered. Hard water requires more soap or detergent, as a general rule, so you may have to alter the amount of homemade laundry soap you use depending on the hardness of your water. Whites may turn gray if there isn't enough soap (or detergent) used, or if clothes are not thoroughly rinsed. To get clothes white again, this is a procedured to follow from a Cooperative Extension Service laundry guide sheet: *Wash the clothes again in HOT water. *Add enough water softener to make the water feel slippery. *If the water becomes sudsy, the clothes were not rinsed enough. Wash them again adding only water softener. *If the clothes do not whiten, add soap or detergent and rewash. I've also used Cascade Dishwasher Detergent in hot water and a good soaking to remove the dingy gray hard water mineral deposits from white clothes washed in homemade laundry soap. If you've always used cold water, I was wondering why you want to add Oxi-Clean to the mixture? Oxi-Clean works best in warm to hot water, not cold. So once again, that's wasted money in your homemade mixture. Most people who use homemade laundry soap mixtures don't recognize the principal difference between a soap and a detergent - which is primarily the behaviour in hard water. Soaps tend to get together with the metal ions in hard water forming a scum, while detergents do not. As chris8769 pointed out, soaps are not suitable for use in acidic conditions, and there is all kinds of molecular information on the subject when you study soaps VS detergents. When you switch from a detergent (Gain in your case) to a soap-based mixture, you find the mixtures lack enzymes to attack stains, builders to soften water and assist surfactants, optical brighteners to make clothes look whiter, and a long list of other things. Good luck in your trials with homemade laundry soap. It may suit your laundry needs, and budget, perfectly. If not, you can always go back to detergents. Here's a new combination I read recently: 1 T. Simple Green and 1 scoop washing soda (sorry, they didn't say how large a "scoop"). We're all getting creative trying to save a dollar these days. -Grainlady

Was it this? Powdered Detergent 2 cups finely grated soap 1 cup washing soda 1 cup borax 1. Mix well and store in an airtight plastic container. 2. Use 2 tablespoons per full load. Care2 has more on the wonderous cleaning power of washing soda, and TipNut has a few more variations on the above recipes. Happy cleaning. This was posted on another forum: 1 Large Bar Laundry Soap - 79 cents (found in the laundry detergent isle) 1 Box 20 Mule Team Borax - $2.99 per box (cost is 75 cents to use ¼ of the box) 1 -4 pound bag of generic detergent (or Laundry Soap) - $2.99 per bag (cost is 75 cents to use ¼ of the bag, if that much) Food Processor OR Cheese Grater Large mixing bowl Measuring Cup Directions: In the large mixing bowl, measure 3 cups of generic detergent and 3 cups of Borax. Grate the whole bar of soap into small pieces. This sounds hard, but the soap is very soft and easily grated. Place into the mixing bowl and mix all ingredients well. That is it! Now you have some very inexpensive laundry detergent to use.

I don't mind most scents in products, but with clothes nothing beats the smell of clothes dried outside on a clothesline. I guess I remember my mother hanging sheets and other items outside. And they didn't smell like fresh linen or fresh cotton artificial scents. Persil is very expensive around here at the grocery store. I tend to get what is on sale. If Tide is on sale I snatch it up. It cleans most consistently especially whites. I still wear white undershirts under dress shirts and don't like them getting dingy.