Homemade Diaper Detergent

[MommyMarshall]

I'd like a good homemade laundry detergent. I use pockets and AIOs and have VERY hard water. Any suggestions? Or favorite recipes.

[Mrs.Oz]

From my own experience, homemade detergent plus hard water = trouble. Add synthetic materials from diapers and you're very likely to get constant buildup. The general consensus is that homemade detergent is ok for cotton dipes, but I even had trouble with that.

I used the recipe that calls for grated laundry soap, washing soda and borax, and my laundry water always looked like bath water, and there was always a scummy ring around the inside of my washer. Took quite a few cycles of washing after I stopped using it for the water to look clear again on all our clothes. Even using a water softener and vinegar, it never really fully rinsed out of my cotton dipes until I stopped using it, and our synthetic clothing was the hardest to get it to rinse out of.

I know there's a recipe you can use that's equal parts washing soda, borax and oxygen cleaner and I tried that too. I don't really feel like it got things clean enough. I think you need a surfactant in there to really clean things. I also found some old threads once where some people added Simple Green, so you might want to search this forum for that. I always thought that might be a little harsh on fabrics, but never tried it.

I decided just to go back to using Country Save as it's basically washing soda, borax and a naturally derived surfactant. Sorry if my post isn't terribly helpful, I just found homemade detergent to be more effort than it was worth.