I have been reading No Impact Man after watching the movie (I highly recommend both) and have since been even more convinced that I should try laundry detergents better for the environment, and hopeful also better for me. There are quite a few recipes online for baking soda and bar soap (or in my sensitive case - baby shampoo) detergents that are supposed to be just as effective as the industrial chemical detergents I have been using. For tougher loads, you just add a little Borax (that's a laundry booster powder, not the guy that goes around acting like he's from Kazakhstan). So I get 8lbs of baking soda to go with the 10 bags of kettle chips I already have in my cart. And don't forget the rechargeable batteries and fair trade coffee! I now have my mega McGruber list (my husband and I used to refer to these as our McGyver lists -- as in those crazy scavenger lists that McGyver would create in order to solve a problem -- but I thought "McGruber" was probably more inline).
On my way home I was passing by the university experiment farm and I see something that makes me doubletake and gasp. There is a hole in that cow!!
No.
OH, HOLY SHIT YEAH! THERE IS DEFINITELY A HOLE IN THAT COW!!!!
I raced home and Googled "why is there a hole in that cow" (cuz that's how it's done), and I get back this:
I'm sure most of you could have gone your whole life without seeing that. But I know you are dying to know if the baking soda worked...
Like a charm. :)
2 comments:
So what was your baking powder to baby shampoo mix for a load of laundry? Would this work on denims too? I'm curious. I currently use half the suggested detergent (grey water safe) with a capful of antiseptic because for some reason we get that "bachelor stink" on clothes quickly - even if left in the machine for an hour. I used to use borax on the kid's tougher stains - good stuff!
Lyvvie, I smiled when you mentioned "grey water safe". You are a woman definitely in the know. I use our kitchen grey water for watering our gardens and would love to figure out a way to use our washing machine water.
It was a few TBS of baby shampoo to 3/4 cup baking soda. I washed lightly soiled clothes with that. Came out clean, soft and fresh smelling - and none irritated my skin.
My clothes will smell really swampy if the clothes aren't removed from the washing machine right away. This load was left for quite a while and never got swampy.
I did try this with more heavily soiled clothes, but it doesn't work well enough on its own. Borax or Oxiclean would be needed - works best used as a spot cleaner. I have recently found that OxiClean is better than Borax and is a little easier on clothes. Both are fine environmentally in washing doses and OxiClean breaks down faster in the environment than Borax.
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