Today my package I have eagerly awaited arrived. I previously had been making my own laundry soap but seemed to have problems with our white's turning a bit off white. While watching a film where they were using laundry bluing in the wash I realized that this might help my problem with my own laundry soap. I temporarily stopped using my home made version until I could find a solution. Traditional bluing is a chalk like substance that is actually very fine blue iron powder. I was only able to find it in a liquid form and ordered a bottle to add to my 4.5 gallon container of laundry concentrate. My DH helped me calculate how much I needed to add and we added it in. Stirred it up and it turned this lovely blue color.
Beautiful isn't it! I was really excited to use it and using a hand pump pumped the concentrate amount into my laundry container and filled the rest with water and commenced doing laundry. A while later when we went back into the kitchen it had turned a strange green color. Another hour later a light greenish yellow. And now it is this disgusting yellow!
It is so strange. DH thinks there is some sort of chemical reaction between the liquid bluing and the soap. The base for the home made laundry soap is a Fels-Naptha laundry bar which is a yellowish color. Not this dark though. I will say this, the clothes are much softer when washed in the home made laundry soap. As long as it is not harming our clothes I will continue to use the home made until we run out and either not use the bluing again or will be trying another laundry recipe. The other option is to add a few drops of bluing to each load I wash of whites to brighten them. I will keep you posted :)
At the moment I am working on machine quilting the baby quilt and hope to post an update on the quilt tomorrow!
It is so strange. DH thinks there is some sort of chemical reaction between the liquid bluing and the soap. The base for the home made laundry soap is a Fels-Naptha laundry bar which is a yellowish color. Not this dark though. I will say this, the clothes are much softer when washed in the home made laundry soap. As long as it is not harming our clothes I will continue to use the home made until we run out and either not use the bluing again or will be trying another laundry recipe. The other option is to add a few drops of bluing to each load I wash of whites to brighten them. I will keep you posted :)
At the moment I am working on machine quilting the baby quilt and hope to post an update on the quilt tomorrow!
5 comments:
I always add a splash of blue to the rinse cycle - works really well. I don`t think it`s supposed to go in with the soap/wash cycle
Hmmmm, I've never used blueing, but I do think it supposed to go in the final rinse. Good luck!
Thank you Corinne I wonder if that wouldn't help more. On the liquid bottle the directions said to place a few drops to 1/4 tsp. to a load of laundry, it said to place this in several quarts of water and add it to the machine (the water) as it was filling. That is where we got the idea to add it in directly to the laundry soap as we have a front loader and water washes the soap dispenser as it fills. Something is obviously not working correctly with our method. This is the first time we have used it so I greatly appreciate the suggestions. Thank you so very much for your help and sharing what works best for you. Have a wonderful day :)
Homemade laundry soap does seem to cause a bit graying of whites. I've been using Oxy Clean,but even that doesn't seem to do much anymore. I may have to either try the bluing or maybe soak my whites in plain Oxy clean for awhile.
My friend is testing a new laundry recipe and as soon as she has results and I try it myself I will post this. One mistake I made and it was a lack of informed reading was soaking a decorative pillow from a bed set that had an apple juice stain on it. I soaked it overnight in the sink with oxy clean and in the morning it literally fell to pieces! The oxy clean had dissolved the fabric because it was not 100% cotton. Lesson learned! I know it's lazy on my part but I do not want to wait for the rinse cycle to add bluing to my laundry. So I would like to find a solution in the laundry soap itself. Of course DH said it's to purchase store detergent that already has it figured out. lol :)
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