Laundry Detergent -- The Scientific Results

Oh my goodness, we are making huge, Earf-shattering discoveries with regard to homemade laundry detergent, let me tell you.

Cheer, Tide, All, Biz, Purex, and OxyClean --

You guys are going DOWN

Having provided detailed, step-by-step photographic procedures for making your own homemade laundry detergent in my recent posts, I didn’t want to stop there.

In my detailed investigations with regard to making one’s own laundry detergent, I discovered that there are a myriad of websites that provide this same information.

They’re all a bunch of light-weights!

Why? What about how the detergent works?

I’ve already proved that it’s easy and extremely economical to make.

But how does it really work?

(Actually, there really is a part of me who is a cold, hard, analytical snurd who really just wants to 'see the numbers'. . sort of.)

So, I decided to do a real test. A real test under real conditions. I decided to test my homemade laundry detergent against a commercially-made detergent.

I had, on hand, some leftover 2X Ultra Tide to use as my comparative agent.

I cut a white towel in half and thought about smearing each side with yellow mustard -- that would be a good test.

However, I’ve pretty much adopted a completely vegetarian diet at home. Being that I wouldn’t have had any food item on which I’d have used yellow mustard, I didn’t have any.

However, now that I was a vegan, I did have a big jar of tikka-masala paste readily available. (Doesn’t everyone have tikka-masala paste on hand these days?)

Smearing the two sides of the towel with the tikka-masala paste really did a realistic stain job. I’m not a parent, but I’ve had my share of dealing with poopie diapers.

(Babies have that yellow-green bean poop-thing down pat, but man, they’ll also surprise you with some of that meaty brick-red sh*t too.)

I decided to test the detergents by washing two identical white (dingy) towels, each smeared with the offensive paste.
Here they are before going into the washers:


I washed towel No I (on the left) with the homemade detergent
and towel No II (on the right) with the 2X Ultra Tide.

Both were washed alone in separate washers with hot water for 36 minutes.

And here are the results.

Oh my goodness, Check it out!

Towel #1 with my homemade detergent on the left:
(This cost me 2 ¢ per load)

And Towel No. 2 with the 2X Ultra Tide on the right:
(Costing .23 cents per load)

The homemade stuff worked so much better, getting out all of the stain (at one-tenth the price) while the Tide left a good bit of the stain and costing ten times the price.

My homemade stuff smells a lot better, too.

You must know that I'm not the first to have conducted this test.

Oh my goodness, similar tests were conducted on linen cloths centuries ago.

The most notorious test like this was done 657 years ago, way back in 1352.

One servant washed the cloth in OxyClean and another used sodium carbonate and borax, just like I did.

And just look at the results:

Can you spot the one washed with homemade detergent?

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist that)

Anyway, I’m really curious as to how many of you, dear puppies, will continue to buy the detergent that costs ten times more and works much less.

If you want a liquid laundry detergent, it‘s online. It uses pretty much the same ingredients.

So, that’s my attempt at foiling the Evil Capitalist Pigs.

If you want to give a thoughtful Holiday gift, find out what type of soap your friend likes, then make this detergent using that type of soap. Double this recipe and give them a quart of the stuff in a decorative jar, wrapped in a thoughtful bow, or whatever the hell Martha Stewart suggests.

It’ll cost you pennies.

Happy Holidays

You’re home free.

Thank You!