A Love/Hate Relationship With Laundry Detergent

About a year ago my skin irritation got really bad and started driving my crazy.  With a capital C.  I started changing the products I was using, thinking that something was making the irritation worse, and the product I had the hardest time with was laundry detergent.

I tried all the free and clear type products I could find.  And I wasn't impressed.  Everything seemed dingy to me.  And the lack of smell just felt wrong, which is completely backwards, I know, but between the dingy and the no smell thing I felt like my clothes weren't clean.  And it wasn't helping my skin!

So I started making my own detergent.  I found the recipe at One Good Thing By Jilly, and it was cheap, and effective, and didn't irritate my skin any more than it already was.  I love my homemade detergent.

But I don't like making it.  It isn't hard or anything.  It isn't even that time consuming.  But I make smaller batches, because I don't have a good place to store it (my laundry room is TINY... I'll post pictures someday.), and it makes a lot of dust and walking into my kitchen after making a batch is reminiscent of having my mouth washed out with soap.

Not that I ever had my mouth washed out with soap.  I haven't.  But if I had, my kitchen after making laundry detergent is what I imagine it tastes like.  Blech!

But I love my homemade detergent!  What's a girl with bad skin to do?

When I got my Get Clean Kit from Shaklee, one of the items was Shaklee's Fresh HE Liquid Laundry Detergent.  According to the bottle, it is nontoxic, natural, fragrance free, biodegradable, concentrated, hypoallergenic, has no phosphates, and is chlorine free.  But does it work?

Yes!  It works well!  No dingy clothes.  Hooray!  And as an added bonus, it acts as a stain remover too.  Here is an example:  Noodle has a shirt that she somehow dropped spaghetti sauce on a long time ago.  I say "somehow" because the splotch was on THE BACK of the shirt!  How does one get spaghetti sauce on the back of one's shirt?  I don't know.  But she did.  And I have washed it many times since then, because she insists on wearing it, stain or no stain.  At least the stain is on the back.

It looked like this:

I think the word you are looking for is SPLORP!

Here is a close up:

Huh.  In the close up it actually looks smaller.  It's not.  It's big.  Just saying.

So, I put a drop of my Shaklee laundry detergent on it, and scrubbed it in.  Kind of scratched it in with my fingernail, you know?  And I let it sit for a few minutes while I put the rest of the laundry in and got things going.  And I meant to let it sit until the next load, but kind of forgot what I was doing and just threw it in with everything else.  Oops.  Then I just washed and dried it.

And I got this:

Well hey now!  Let's look closer:

I'm actually not sure if that is closer or just a different angle, but what I do know is that the stain is gone.  Gone gone.

A stain I had washed and dried multiple times is gone.  I can tell you, that makes laundry a whole lot more bearable, having stains actually go away.

So here is what I know:  I still love my homemade laundry detergent.  I also know I am lazy.  And if I can get a natural, nontoxic, biodegradable alternative that I don't have to mix up in my kitchen, I am all for that.  And because it is super concentrated and acts as a stain remover, I am still saving money.  Win/win!  What's more, there is also a powder version of Shaklee's Fresh detergent, and I am definitely going to try that.  I like powder detergent for some reason.  I'm pretty sure it isn't a rational reason, I just do.

What laundry detergent do you use?

Do you love your homemade laundry detergent but are sick of your kitchen tasting like soap?  CLICK HERE TO TRY SHAKLEE'S FRESH HE LAUNDRY DETERGENT FOR YOURSELF NOW!