This page was quite helpful in determining what exactly I needed to be doing. I went for a dry recipe, and scaled it WAY down as I doing laundry just for myself.
Some additional reading on borax and washing soda may be in order before getting started yourself. This helped me decide which recipe I wanted to try out.
Recipe:
1c grated Dr. Bronners unscented castille soap bar (A single 5oz bar makes 2.5-3c grated.)
1/2c borax
1/2c washing soda
For my very first load, I used 2Tbs of my mixture dissolved in some hot water, with a single drop of essential clove oil. I also used my new Downy ball, filled to the medium line with white vinegar (5%). Everything seems to have come out clean enough. This seems like an especially lint-y load, but that could be because it was also a dark load and I don’t machine dry. The only thing that didn’t work out super-well is a pair of jeans that I bled on, but I neglected to pretreat in any way and I forgot that this pair of jeans was in this load and ran it on warm, which never helps that situation. I’m going to do some H2O2 treatment action and run them through again later.
My next load was a sheets-and-towels load that smelled pretty musty (I don’t wash sheets often). This time, I didn’t dissolve the 2Tbs of soap first, I just poured it along where the water comes out. I also added a bit more essential oil (3 drops). Again, everything seems to have come out fine. The recipes all called for adding the essential oil to the big mixture, but I want to be able to experiment with different ones, so I am just adding it to the little bit I am using for each load.
Conclusions: Success! Everything seems to be working out fine. I might switch up my essential oil choices, as the clove isn’t working out quite how I had hoped. We’ll see what happens when this most recent load has finished drying.
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