'DIY' Laundry Detergent - A Dry Cleaners Comprehensive Review

DIY laundry detergent is the latest craze within the cleaning and laundry community. It seems like just about every cleaning website and influencer blog has their own magic recipe that promises amazing results for low low prices. 

In this video I'm going to make, use, test, and review two recipes from the well regarding cleaning website, The Spruce. The Spruce has a very large following online so I am hopeful the information within their recipes is thorough and backed by science. 

Powder Recipe:
1 Bar of laundry soap
1 cup baking soda
1 cup washing soda
½ cup borax

Pod Recipe:
1 & 1/2 cups of super washing soda
1/2 cup pure soap flakes
2 tablespoons epsom salt
3 tablespoons hydrogen peroxide
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
15 to 20 drops essential oil for fragrance (optional)

To test these recipes, we washed stained cotton swatches with a load of laundry (our ballast) with each of these detergents across 3 different water temperatures (cold, warm and hot). We then measured the results before and after to quantify the stain removal, see results below.

Results are as followed:
Powder Stain Removal Performance - 55.83% @ $.40 / load
Pod Stain Removal Performance - 52.70% @ $.75 / load

These two recipes were okay, but here is our take on DIY recipes:

Jerry's 'simple ingredients' DIY recipe:
2 parts washing soda
1 part borax
1 part sodium percarbonate
1 part Mollys Suds powder detergent

Zach's 'performance focused' DIY recipe:
2 parts washing soda
1 part borax
1 part sodium percarbonate
1 part Tide powder with oxi booster

Zach's DIY Recipe Stain Removal Performance - 64.40% @ $.35 / load
Jerry's DIY Recipe Stain Removal Performance - 54.77% @ $.32 / load

For more tips and tricks feel free to follow me on TikTok and Instagram @jeeves_ny. Please feel free to ask me any of your laundry questions by leaving a comment below. And let me know what you’d like me to discuss next, I am excited to be working on more long format content.