DIY Laundry Detergent

For most of my life, I used Tide laundry detergent.  I grew up on it, my mom still uses it. I never questioned it because of this.  I have used powder and liquid, and they both worked just fine.  I had to change to unscented once I had our son, so he wouldn't break out in a rash.



Here is the list of ingredients in Tide liquid detergent:


water
alcoholethoxy sulfate
linear alkylbenzene sulfonate
propylene glycol
citric acid
sodium hydroxide
borax
ethanolamine
ethanol
alcohol sulfate
polyethyleneimine ethoxylate
sodium fatty acids
diquaternium ethoxysulfate
protease
diethylene glycol
laureth-9
alkyldimethylamine oxide
fragrance
amylase
disodium diaminostilbene disulfonate
DTPA
sodium formate
calcium formate
polyethylene glycol 4000
mannanase
Liquitint™ Blue
dimethicone

Then I switched to Purex.  Actually, my fiance has used this as long as he can remember(what his mother still uses), and I did notice it was much cheaper than Tide.  So I have used it for the past three years.  I have only used the liquid version.



Here are some of the ingredients in Purex liquid detergent.

Water

Sodium Laureth Sulfate

Ethoxylated Alcohol

Sodium Carbonate

Sodium Dodecybenzenesulfonate

Sodium Chloride

Polymer

Fragrance

Sodium Edta

Brightener

Preservative

I ran out of Purex and decided to make my own detergent.  I opted to make the powder detergent since I had most of the ingredients already.  The recipe listed below is pretty standard and you can find this all over the Internet.  I have used it for over a month and it works great!  It smells nice too.

1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 Bar of Fels-Naptha- grated







Mix and put into a jar or a plastic container with a lid.  Put between 1 to 2 tablespoons in every wash.

Fels-Naptha you will find in your laundry aisle.  It's bar laundry soap.

There are certain ingredients in Fels-Naptha that I'm not super happy with, and I might try another soap, but I'm still on my first batch, and it works great.

It was very difficult to find ingredients for the other detergents, so that is why I am posting them here.  I hope this information was helpful and look forward to all comments?