The thing I love most about mustachianism is when you find a solution to a problem that ends up benefitting you in many unexpected ways. It is cheaper and better at the same time.
I noticed a while back that I was getting really bad asthma symptoms (I don't have asthma) at night and woke up all drained with puffy eyes, hives, queaziness and sometimes even swollen lips! I noticed eventually that it was at its worst the first night or two after washing my bed sheets. I realized that my body was not able to deal with the chemicals associated with laundry detergents and fabric softeners. I looked that up and found out that there are all sorts of nasty things in laundry products, so it seemed logical to stop using them and see what happens before going to a doctor (who likely would just charge me a bunch of money to instruct me to ingest other chemicals to deal with the symptoms).
After a little research I found that you can make your own laundry soap out of all-natural materials and it ends up being less than half the price of commercially made laundry detergent, probably less than a quarter of the price of commercially made all-natural laundry detergent. The recipes I found all involved melting bars of Dr. Bronner's soap and adding soda ash and borax with enough water to dissolve it all. I did not want to soap up my cooking pans so I just bought the liquid Dr. Bronner's and mixed it with water and those other ingredients. It works great and is about $.07 per load! I made this part unscented, but found a better way to add a fresh (non-chemical) scent to the laundry in drying.
Recipe is:
1/2 cup Dr. Bronner's unscented liquid castille soap ($14 per 32oz)
1 cup Borax ($5 per 12 cups )
1 cup Washing Soda (sodium carbonate) ($4 per 10 cups)
3.75 quarts hot water
Just stir that all together in a gallon jug and use about 1/4-1/2 cup per load depending on size. If you buy these three things, there is enough to eventually make 8 gallons of it for 23 bucks! One gallon is enough for about 48 loads that are between large and x-large. So that ends up being 384 loads for $23 or 6 cents per. At my 3 loads per week rate, that is more than a 2 year supply. Also it is way less shitty to the environment, and the soap part of it is organic and fair trade, two things I like to support when I can.
You will notice that it is watery and has less foaming than your previous detergent, but that is because they add chemicals to thicken it so we see it as more "concentrated" and they add sodium laurel sulfate to add foaming because we inaccurately perceive foaming as being associated with the soap "working". To see if soap works, feel the water between your hands when the washer is full. It should be slippery between your fingers, a sign of lowered surface tension within the water.
To replace dryer sheets, I found some wool dryer balls on amazon, that you add to the laundry in the dryer and it softens the clothes and speeds up the drying time. They do not, however, address static cling. For that, add two tennis ball sized balls of aluminum foil. So 3 wool dryer balls and 2 aluminum foil balls, which you reuse indefinitely, does the trick. To scent it, once the dryer has cycled, I put a few drops of essential oils onto each wool ball and run it with no heat for 15 minutes. Heat will destroy the essential oils, they say. For sheets, I use lavender oil, and for the rest, I use a combination of sweet orange and ginger oils. There is a bit of a startup cost for this (all these things listed will be about $25) but then you never have to buy dryer sheets again so it is actually frugal. The oils (about 12 bucks of that 25) will last a year at the rate I use them.
So it did, in fact, instantly solve the asthma symptoms, hives, swollen lips and eyes, and does a great job of cleaning as well. It is about half the price per load of the cheapo Purex I was using. The soap leaves behind a very comforting undertone of pure cleanliness after the essential oils fade away. I also really like the ability to adjust the smell of the laundry to my taste.
I hope you all give this a try. I highly recommend it.
