When our family was first experimenting with natural cleaners we tried tons of recipes for laundry. After some trial and error, we came up with this Liquid Laundry Detergent recipe that works great. It gets clothes clean, removes odor, and doesn’t leave a yucky residue in our washer!
With 8 people in our home, we do a TON of laundry so it was important to us that the detergent we used met our three criteria for successful laundry detergent:
- It gets clothes clean
- Removes odors
- It doesn’t leave a yucky residue in our washer
- High-efficiency washer safe
Trust me when I say that not all natural recipes live up to those three simple guidelines. Even our regular routine using Castile soap didn’t always work the best on really tough loads. It was good, but not really great!
Then Dr. Bronner’s released Sal Suds [1] and our lives got brighter – along with our laundry! It’s got a strong cleaning function that we feel like does an even better job than the regular Castile soap that we used for a few years.
You might love powder detergents, but they always made me nervous that our high-efficiency washer wasn’t dissolving all of the flakes. That’s the reason we premix our detergent into a liquid. Then I know for certain that there won’t be undissolved clumps of laundry detergent in my loads.
Here’s a secret: this recipe is really a liquid version of our very popular recipe for treating musty laundry [2]. Stinky laundry (whether it’s from body odor or slow laundry routines) is something we all deal with.
That’s why we decided to integrate that natural answer to a universal problem into this new Liquid Laundry Detergent Recipe:
New to essential oils? Learn more about how we use them and why you should use them as well. [3]
Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup Sal Suds [1]
- 2 2/3 cups water
- 2/3 cup baking soda
- 30 drops Purification Essential Oil
- 1 quart-sized mason jar [4]
Directions
- Place water, baking soda, and essential oil in the jar.
- Add soap.
- Replace the lid and swirl to combine.
To use:
- Add 1/4 cup detergent per HE load. Use 1/2 cup for regular washing machine.
- Optional: Add vinegar in rinse as a natural fabric softener and to remove any remaining odors or residue.
- Optional: 1/3 – 1 cup vinegar per load
See more about how our laundry routine has evolved here [5]. Also, if you’re interested in saving energy (and you don’t have a clothesline), check out our experience with wool dryer balls [6] to see if they’re right for you. We love them!
We love this recipe so much that we made it part of our Kitchen and Laundry Cleaning Make and Take Party Printable Pack. Have a party, make some great cleaners, and send them home with friends and family to enjoy! You can find out more about our Make & Take Party Printable Packs here [7].