A couple of years ago I found a recipe for homemade laundry detergent. I thought, What a great idea to save money! I bought the ingredients and made up my first batch, storing it in a large plastic trash can (for lack of a bucket). I made countless batches after that one, experimenting with different soaps (from the traditional Fels Naptha to Ivory soap), and using at least 3 different washers (one of them a front loader).

After all that experimenting, I have decided that it simply isn’t as good as the commercial stuff. I have piles of whites that are dingy and graying–not even hanging them on the clothes line or using bluing will make them whiter. Maybe if I used bleach on a regular basis, they would look better (I do use it occasionally), but with a septic tank, I don’t want to use it too often.

So right now I’m using some clear and free stuff my mom bought for me, and will probably switch back to Arm & Hammer powdered laundry detergent sooner or later. That’s what I used before my foray into making my own, and my whites looked much better then than they do now!

So click on the link at the top to find out what doesn’t work for other people. If you have every tried homemade laundry detergent and had good results, I would love for you to share your story. Post a comment and tell me about it or link to your blog post if you blogged about it.

Here’s a recipe I found somewhere that I really like for homemade window cleaner.

1 cup water
1 cup rubbing alcohol
1 tbsp. vinegar (I estimate this)

Pour into a spray bottle, label, and use. It is cheap, and it works. Okay, not quite as well as Windex, but it smells better, and it does work. You can use a newspaper to buff at the end if you want. Seems to help. But I usually just use a clean, dry cloth and it works pretty well. Doesn’t streak if I make sure it’s dry before I move on.