Sandy it will take some time for the build up of soap to rear its ugly head..a few months of using it ought to do the trick. Wouldn't washing soda raise the PH more than the Borax?

The back of the boxes of washing soda and Borax say to use something like a half a cup as a booster along with your detergent. The people using the homemade brew are using grams and no detergent.

Fun experiment Sandy but it needs to be used exclusively for several months lol.

Washing Soda has a higher Ph than Borax. I do agree that people who use this home made detergent/soap are not dosing high enough. However, it occurs to me that if I was hand washing, I would only be rubbing the garment with the bar of soap, and in all reality not using much of that bar at all. So technically, in my mind, for a whole load of wash, you really do not need a ton of bar soap. It just makes more suds to rinse. However, I do think that front loaders and top loaders need totally different dosing simply because of dilution. Secondly, the liquid version of this home soap is wayyy more diluted than the powered. There is no way in hell that a half a cup of that liquid would clean the average soiled load of laundry.

All that said, years ago I made this home made stuff because I was barely scraping by financially. I had a traditional top load washer, made the liquid version, 1/2 cup a load, and with pretty hard water. Six months later, I had gray whites. Mainly white towels...and I could not reverse it. I ended up throwing them out because that was the first (and last) time in my life that I had ever, ever had dingy laundry, and I was embarrassed. I was also cloth diapering at that time, and had zero issues until the tattle tale gray took over. I never had a sour smell or absorbency issues, but I did not use any additional softener with it. In my honest opinion, I DO think you can get, and maintain, clean laundry with the homemade version, IF you know what you are doing. All of the major laundry areas become more crucial to achieve results. Soil level, water hardness, amount of dilution, and water temperature are all areas that should be considered. Since every household is different, the formula should be tweaked to suit each household's laundry.

I've always maintained laundry can be cleaned beautifully with soap, but it take knowelage on proper use and it should not be done except perhaps occasionally in a FL or TL machine...this should be done in a wringer washer. The soap will build up on washer parts and stay put..it doesn't just clean up running a clean cycle. But get a wringer, some STPP, a ton of hot water and some good soap..I'd recommend vintage Ivory Flakes, get a lovely 2-4 inch soap cake going, you'll know your using enough soap to actually clean if you have a few inches of suds...after all the hot and very warm rinses you will have the softest sweetest smelling laundry in town..no FS needed LOL.

Every time I see those homemade soap posts on blogs I think that those people don't have enough to do if they make time to make laundry detergent. I have a huge list they could help me with.

Our littlest DGS was hyper allergic as a baby. DD found Cal Ben pure soap which had to be used for all his things or he got a contact allergy. She like it a lot, it's not expensive and she continues to use it. I think some of the kids stuff looks dingy. it's clean. But I did some laundry there and got gray stuff. Think it's fine for whites bu not the best on colors.

I never understood the idea of using a body bar to wash clothing. That's as much as 25% free fats or oils. Fels Naptha and the other bars have enough not to damage skin so I'd guess 5%? My soap has 0. A smarter home brew mix would be dish detergent in place of the bar soap as it has no fat. My water is soft.

Mama - washing soda is more alkaline than borax. As this has no fat and is as alkaline as a detergent it does not leave things soft. It also has very little suds. This washer gets used almost exclusively for dog bedding, rugs and whatever else I don't want to drag upstairs or need a lot of heat for. I'll have to dedicate some dog towels to test the greying but I'm sure they would without high heat, optical brightening and some kind of bleach.

Roco - It took 5 minutes to make.

Joel - this could definately work if, like you stated, it was tweaked to meet the laundry needs instead of used as is.