I have been tinkering with a cheaper, eco-friendly laundry detergent alternative. At first, I just tried cutting a regular power detergent with baking soda, borax, and washing soda. My concoction worked reasonably well, but I wanted to get away from detergent.
After much trial and error, I have something that works really well.
I use
Fels Naptha soap as the base for this recipe. this is normally found on the laundry aisle and is wrapped like a regular bar of soap. Fels Naptha is for laundry, never use it to bathe. It has been made for over 100 years, and it gets out all sorts of stains.
1 bar of Fels Naptha, grated (should yield 3 cups of flakes)
2 cups baking soda
1.5 cups washing soda
1.5 cups of borax
Pour into air tight container and mix.
I use 1/2 a cup for a load of laundry in cold water with about 10 minutes of agitation.
If there are really bad stains, use a little of the plain soap to pre-treat. The stain will be gone. I don't use fabric softener in the summer because I use the clothesline.
This mixture is cheep, and it cleaned some of DH's hardest to clean old tee shirts. I mean clean so that DH noticed!
There isn't much of a "recipie" but I normally mix 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water in a spray bottle with some essential oil to clean pretty much everything else in my home. Tough messes will get scrubbed with a little baking soda, and the sprayed with the vinegar and water.
