The longest of the nine label recipes, and the only one that needs heat. Washing soda, baking soda, salt and soap, at half a cup per load.
This is the most involved recipe on the label and the only one that asks you to boil anything. It makes roughly a gallon of liquid detergent, which at half a cup per load is a lot of washing.
Laundry Detergent: Boil 4 cups water, dissolve ½ cup washing soda, ¼ tsp baking soda, ¼ tsp kosher salt. Cool, add 12 cups water, stir in 1 cup soap. Store in a resealable container, shake before using, ½ cup per load.
The sequence is not arbitrary. Washing soda needs hot water to dissolve properly. Add it to cold and it settles at the bottom of the container as grit. The soap goes in last, after the mixture has cooled, because pouring soap into boiling water produces a foam volcano and degrades it.
So: boil, dissolve the three dry ingredients, cool, dilute with the remaining twelve cups, then stir the soap in gently.
Washing soda (sodium carbonate, not baking soda) is the water softener. It is doing most of the real work, particularly if your water is hard.
Baking soda helps with odor and mild alkalinity.
Kosher salt helps keep the mixture from gelling as it sits.
The soap is the surfactant that lifts the dirt.
This is the single most common message we get about this recipe. A soap and washing soda mixture thickens as it cools, and depending on your water and how cold the room is it can set into something closer to jelly than liquid. It still works. It is the normal state of the mixture, not a mistake you made.
Three things make it easier to live with:
Half a cup per load will overshoot the maximum line on many high-efficiency machines. Use less: start at a quarter cup, or fill to your machine's line, whichever is smaller.
A smaller dose in an HE machine is not weaker washing. These machines use very little water, so less detergent reaches the same concentration. Too much creates suds the machine cannot rinse away. Check your manufacturer's guidance on non-commercial detergents as well.
There are no enzymes here, no optical brighteners and no synthetic stain removers. Protein and oil stains want pre-treating. A dab of undiluted soap rubbed in before the wash works well. Whites will not get the artificial blue-white that brighteners produce, because nothing in the mixture produces it.
The soap itself is biodegradable, which for something that goes down a drain in this volume is the point.
Yohan & Alex
Co-founders, Whole Naturals
For external use only. Keep out of reach of children. Discontinue use if irritation, redness or discomfort occurs.
