Did you know that many laundry detergents can contain harmful chemicals?  These chemicals can cause skin irritation, cancer, respiratory, developmental and reproductive problems.

Understanding how to read ingredients in products that are used daily is an important lesson to learn. The motto we use in my household is, “If you read an ingredient and don’t know how to pronounce it or don’t know what it is, don’t buy it.”  

When using household products, it is important to consider that anything you put on your skin can be absorbed into your body. Some common ingredients to avoid are sodium lauryl sulfate, 1,4 dioxane, NPE (Nonylphenol ethoxate) and phosphates.  

If you are interested in finding out if you have these harmful ingredients in your detergent, visit www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners.  One way to know exactly what is in your products is to make your own.

 This laundry detergent recipe is what I use in my household and it really works.  Most of the ingredients I purchased from Mountain Rose Herbs.

 This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. It doesn’t cost you anything extra but I receive a small commision to help keep my blog running.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup baking soda
• ½ cup  citric acid
• 1 cup washing soda
• ¼ cup coarse sea salt
• 1 bar  Pure Castile Soap ( I use Dr. Bronners)
  

Instructions:

• Grate the bar of soap finely.
• Put the grated soap in a bowl and mix in the remaining ingredients.
• Store in an airtight container.
• Add a desiccant pack to prevent detergent from clumping together.

 

 

Use:

Add 1-2 Tbsp of the detergent to each load.