Homemade Laundry Detergent Results

I’ve now washed several loads of laundry using the batch of homemade detergent I made.  (If you would like to see the recipe, go here.)

Results are in!  (Drumroll, please!) 🙂

It’s worked great for coloreds and did fairly well on some very dirty jeans, but when I did a load of whites it didn’t work so well.  I picked the dirtiest sock I could find.  Now this sock is not representative of how they always look – sometimes they’re worse!

What I did for this load of whites was to use 1/2 cup of homemade detergent and 1/2 cup of 3% hydrogen peroxide.

Before the wash.

AFTER the 1st wash – not so good.  The dirt is still there.

For the 2nd wash I used 1/2 cup of my homemade detergent and regular bleach.  Much better results.

I read that if you have a real dirty load to throw in a scoop of Oxy-Clean.  That appears to be a very good suggestion based upon my findings.  I am also curious if my whites will get dingy over time using the homemade detergent.  I’ll need to keep an eye on that.  My next test should be to soak my whites in 3% hydrogen peroxide before they are washed and see what results I get.