Green Cleaners: Clean Your Home with Natural Household Cleaners
(Page 3 of 5)
July/August 1990
By Ann Larkin-Hanson
Borax also works as a laundry whitener and freshener. Instead of buying detergent, I use a recipe (from Cheaper and Better: Homemade
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Alternatives to Storebought Goods, by Nancy Birnes) that calls for one part borax to one part washing soda and one part soap flakes. For normal loads of wash, use about threefourths of a cup of this mix. If your water is soft, you can cut the amounts of borax and washing soda by as much as three-fourths, or simply vary the formula till it works for you.
THIS MIXTURE works as well as any detergent and smells better. It's especially good on natural fabrics. One word of caution: Before you make the switch from detergent, be sure to run all your clothes through a cycle with washing soda only, to remove the detergent residue. I didn't do this the first time, and my husband now has yellow T-shirts. Also, white clothes that contain synthetic materials may tend to yellow slightly over time with this formula. Counteract this by line-drying clothes in the sun whenever possible. Sunshine is the oldest, and best, bleach and disinfectant known to man.
Having to mix a new batch of this laundry formula from time to time is, I admit, a bit inconvenient. It can also be more expensive than regular detergent (depending on the brand you use). In fact, I wasn't sure it was worth it until I noticed, about a month into the experiment, that after 15 years of low-level acne my face had cleared up. When some houseguests arrived shortly thereafter I decided to switch back to detergent—rather than go through the process of washing away the detergent residue from their clothes—and I immediately broke out. Once back on the soap formula for a month or so, my skin again cleared. Later, I ran out of soap during a stormy weekend and used up the last of the detergent instead. Guess what? The mirror doesn't lie. My face is happier and healthier with soap, and so is the baby's bottom.
If the soap mixture I use seems too expensive or inconvenient to you, try using a phosphate-free detergent that has been on the market for decades (Dreft is a particularly good one). Generally speaking, the longer a brand has been around, the more likely that it's biodegradable. Also, remember that you can usually get by with about half the amount recommended on the package. (If we can't entirely eliminate household chemical pollutants, we can at least greatly decrease the amount we use.
Dish detergents are not significantly different from laundry detergents, but they are harder to replace satisfactorily. My mother remembers how excited women were when commercial dish detergents became available. Instead of having to soak the dishes extensively before washing them, and instead of having to change the water a couple of times and add fresh soap to get the dishes clean, they could simply fill the pan and wash. The suds didn't disappear after only a few minutes.
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