Homemade Laundry Detergent

[Veslemor]

Anyone make and love theirs?

I'm having a few problems.  First of all, has anyone figured out a way to keep liquid from seperating?  If I go two days without using it, it makes a pretty hard crust at the top that can be a pain to deal with.

More importantly, does yours actually Clean clothes?  I have two little boys and a husband who works with fireplaces all day, and the dirt just does not come out.  I can get it out by pre-scrubbing them with homemade lye soap, but if I don't put in that effort, the clothes come out smelling and feeling clean, but you can see all the dirt in the knees of the pants.  Also if my shirts get oil spattered while cooking none of that oil comes out.

The recipe I'm working with uses washing soda, salt, borax, castille soap, GSE, and water.  I've used shredded bar soap before instead of castille, but it was super clumpy and my friend read that it's no good for HE washers due to it causing lots of build up.  I also add vinegar to the rinse cycle.

Just to add one more thing- I'm hoping to set up gray water with the laundry.  Does anyone do this and are your trees still alive?

[JesKace]

I was using a basic recipe for laundry detergent (bar of soap, washing soda, and borax) and had the same problem with the dirt not coming out.  Most of the clothes looked fine and you couldn't tell, but my whites were getting pretty bad.  I felt like the clothes smelled clean, and didn't feel dirty at all, but all the bottoms of our socks were not coming clean and looked horrible.  I also feel like they wore thin faster than usual.  I had just bought new socks and within a couple months they all seemed to wear thin.  Socks usually last me 6+ months.  I tried adding in oxy clean to help lift the dirt, or help whiten it, which didn't seem to help at all.  The only time I use bleach is a tiny amount on our diapers because it's the only way I can keep them from stinking like ammonia so I didn't want to start adding that into the routine for our regular wash.

I haven't messed around with it again to see if I can make it better.. I just went back to the regular detergent.

Mine didn't crust on the top because I kept it in an old laundry detergent bottle and shook it before each use :)

[MedicBaby21]

We make our own laundry detergent with castille bar soap, borax, and washing soda...

When it sits, it ends up separating but we shake it vigarously and it works fine, I haven't noticed any issues with not getting cleaned, but then again we have well water and high iron content and our clothes are alway dingy because of that....