[Sihaya]

I am trying to transition to using baking soda as laundry detergent. The recipe I found here is 1/2 cup bs, 5 drops tto, and possibly vinegar in the rinse cycle. The thing is, I have been using Borax as a laundry booster as long as I can remember (my mom used it, my grandmother used it, etc.) and I still have two full boxes of the stuff, which will not get used up very quickly just with the little bit we use in our dishwasher soap recipe. I have noticed that if I do not add borax when using regular detergent (Tide Free) or "green" detergent (Method Free & Clear), the clothes come out feeling grimy, so I'm a bit reluctant to use just baking soda without that extra boost.

Can/should I add borax to the baking soda/tto mix? Or can/should I use borax instead of bs? Does anyone have any experience doing either of those things? Should I just use up what I have and wean myself off it or is it okay to keep using it indefinitely (it is likely the most toxic thing in our home and I plan to keep it safely locked up when babe arrives)? TIA!

 

[eden/averymum]

there are easy recipes for making detergents here but what I find is really best and simple is a tsp of washing soda and a tsp of borax per load.

I just buy equal parts and stir it up in a bucket and dump a few spoonfuls in each laod

 

[Sihaya]

Thanks, Kristen. The thing is, I already have 50lbs of baking soda and two boxes of borax. It seems kind of silly to me to go out and buy washing soda at this point.

My concern is whether I should be using the borax in my laundry or not. If it reallly is tough on clothes and doesn't "boost" the cleaning power of the bs as much as I thought it did, I can stop using the borax and just use the bs w/tto. I just wanted some opinions from people who use bs as laundry detergent who have knowledge/opinons on borax.

 

[GenB]

We have very hard water where I live and so I've always used borax as well. I think it makes the clothes cleaner than just baking soda. I use BS as a softner/smell disenfectant more than just detergent. Just my 2 cents....