DIY Cleaning Recipe Builder.
Pick what you are making and it works out real quantities from ordinary ingredients — with the cost per use, the method, and an honest comparison of the three approaches.
What are you making?
Water hardness and machine type change the quantities, not just the wording. Everything you tell it below is used.
A main-wash detergent. Water hardness and machine type both change the dose, and both changes are arithmetic rather than opinion.
How many loads to mix at once.
An agitator machine that fills the drum. Roughly 50–60 L in the main wash.
The standard approach, using widely available products.
Conventional
About $0.39 per load
A builder-and-surfactant powder: sodium carbonate for alkalinity and hardness, borate for buffering, and a nonionic surfactant to do the cleaning.
What you need
Sodium carbonate
also sold as washing soda, soda ash
1120 g (2.47 lb · about 4.98 cups)
Alkaline builder. Raises wash pH and takes the hardness out of the water so the surfactant is not wasted on it.
Sold as
- Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
- Dri-Pak Soda Crystals
- generic soda ash
Examples only, in alphabetical order — not a ranking and not a recommendation. Store brands carrying the same active ingredient are chemically identical.
Reading the label
The ingredient panel must read sodium carbonate. Baking soda is sodium BIcarbonate and is a much weaker alkali — the two are not interchangeable. Pool-supply "pH increaser" is the same chemical, usually cheaper by weight.
Sodium tetraborate
also sold as borax
480 g (1.06 lb · about 2.39 cups)
Buffers the wash so pH does not collapse as soil loads up.
Sold as
- 20 Mule Team Borax
Listed as an example, not a recommendation. This class is commonly distributed under a single name — that is a fact of the market, not a preference.
Reading the label
Look for sodium tetraborate decahydrate on the panel. In the EU and UK the product on the shelf labelled "borax substitute" is sodium sesquicarbonate — a different chemical that buffers but does not condition water the same way.
Nonionic surfactant
also sold as alkyl polyglucoside or alcohol ethoxylate
320 ml (1.35 cups)
The cleaning agent. Everything else in the powder exists to let this work. In a high-efficiency drum this has to be the low-foaming grade.
Reading the label
This class is bought by its chemistry, not by a brand. On a label it reads as "nonionic surfactants", "alcohol ethoxylate", "alkyl polyglucoside", or "coco-", "decyl-" or "lauryl glucoside". Two practical sources: raw surfactant from a soap-making supplier, or an unscented, dye-free liquid laundry detergent used as the surfactant component. For a high-efficiency drum the label must say low-foaming or HE.
Method
- Weigh the powders into a dry tub and stir until the colour is even. A kitchen scale is worth more here than any measuring spoon.
- Add the surfactant a few millilitres at a time, stirring after each addition, until it is a free-flowing damp powder rather than a paste.
- Dose straight into the drum, not the dispenser drawer. Homemade powder cakes in a drawer and never reaches the wash.
- Wash at 40 °C (105 °F) or above where the fabric allows. Below about 30 °C the alkalinity does far less work.
- Label the container with what is in it and the date you mixed it. An unlabelled bottle is how the dangerous mixes get made.
| Ingredient | Per load |
|---|---|
| Sodium carbonate | 35 g |
| Sodium tetraborate | 15 g |
| Nonionic surfactant | 10 ml |
On this surface
- Not for wool, silk, cashmere or anything else made of protein fibre: alkali above about pH 9 permanently damages them. Fine on cotton, linen and ordinary synthetics.
What your answers changed
- The carbonate dose already carries the hardness correction, so performance holds up as the water gets harder.
- Dosed for a standard top-loader. An agitator machine that fills the drum. Roughly 50–60 L in the main wash.
Before you mix
- Keep it out of reach and out of unlabelled containers. Alkaline powder looks exactly like several things that are safe to eat.
Quantities are for 32 loads. Measure powders by weight where you can — a scale is exact and a spoon is not.
Read this before you mix.
Do not combine ingredients from different columns. Each option below is safe used on its own.
This combination is usable, but it carries a documented hazard. The detail below comes from the cited public health source, not from Otesse.
- CautionOxidised terpenes
The hydrogen peroxide released by sodium percarbonate oxidises the oil, so the scent is gone before the wash finishes and some of the bleaching power is spent on the oil.
US EPA — Safer Choice ingredient criteria(opens in a new tab)
| Compared on | Conventional | Natural | Heavy-duty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effectiveness | Effectiveness: Strong | Effectiveness: WeakSource noted in the assumptions below. | Effectiveness: StrongSource noted in the assumptions below. |
| Cost | about $0.39 per loadSource noted in the assumptions below. | about $0.67 per loadSource noted in the assumptions below. | about $0.67 per loadSource noted in the assumptions below. |
| Active time | ~4 min active | ~2 min active | ~5 min active |
| Safety notes | Alkaline powder. Irritates eyes and skin — gloves, and keep the dust down. | Low hazard. Sapindus saponins can irritate eyes; keep the bag out of reach. | Oxidiser and strong alkali. Gloves and eye protection; never store it damp. |
| Surface risk | CautionSource noted in the assumptions below. | Safe | CautionSource noted in the assumptions below. |
| Availability | Specialty | Specialty | Specialty |
| Septic safe | Conditional | Yes | YesSource noted in the assumptions below. |
Cells marked with a dagger carry a source note, listed under “How this is worked out” below.
How this is worked out
- What is being made
- Laundry detergent. Batch: 32 loads.
- Water hardness used
- Moderately hard: 5.3 gpg (91 mg/L as calcium carbonate). 61–120 mg/L. Faint kettle scale, occasional spotting on glassware.Source: US Geological Survey water-hardness classification: soft under 60 mg/L as calcium carbonate, moderately hard 61–120, hard 121–180, very hard above 180. One grain per gallon (gpg) equals 17.1 mg/L.
- Hardness correction
- Sodium carbonate added on top of the base dose = 18.1 mg per litre per gpg. At 5.3 gpg over 55 L of wash water that is 5.3 g.Source: Sequestration arithmetic: 1 gpg of hardness is 17.1 mg/L as CaCO₃ (M = 100.09 g/mol). Precipitating it needs an equimolar amount of sodium carbonate (M = 105.99 g/mol), so 17.1 × 105.99 / 100.09 = 18.1 mg of sodium carbonate per litre per gpg.
- Wash water volume
- 55 L. An agitator machine that fills the drum. Roughly 50–60 L in the main wash.Source: Wash-phase water volumes: a high-efficiency front-loader holds roughly 12–18 L in the main wash, a conventional top-load agitator roughly 50–60 L. ENERGY STAR certifies clothes washers at 14 gallons or less for a whole cycle; conventional agitator machines run to roughly 30–45 gallons.
- How the mix is scaled
- Quantities are authored as the dose for one load and multiplied by 32 for the batch shown.
- What "active time" counts
- Hands-on minutes: mixing the batch, and applying one use of it. Soaking, dwelling and drying are listed as waits inside the method instead, so the row stays comparable between an option that works in two minutes and one that works overnight.
- Cost
- Materials only. Water is treated as free, and equipment you buy once — bottles, brushes, a scale — is not counted.Source: Ingredient costs are US retail shelf prices for the largest ordinary pack size, converted to a per-gram or per-millilitre figure. They move with the market and with pack size, so every cost in this tool is an approximation, shown to the cent only because fractions of a cent would be false precision.
- Sodium carbonate price
- $0.39 per 100 g. Basis: 55 oz (1,559 g) carton at about $6.00.
- Sodium tetraborate price
- $0.43 per 100 g. Basis: 65 oz (1,843 g) box at about $8.00.
- Nonionic surfactant price
- $1.90 per 100 ml. Basis: 1 US quart (946 ml) of concentrate at about $18.00.
- Saponin-bearing Sapindus shells price
- $8.50 per 100 items. Basis: 1 lb (454 g, roughly 190 shells) at about $16.00.
- Sodium bicarbonate price
- $0.15 per 100 g. Basis: 13.5 lb (6,124 g) bag at about $9.00.
- Essential oil price
- $40.00 per 100 ml. Basis: 30 ml at about $12.00.
- Sodium percarbonate price
- $0.97 per 100 g. Basis: 5 lb (2,268 g) bag of pure percarbonate at about $22.00.
- Spoon equivalents
- Volume equivalents for powders use measured loose bulk densities: sodium carbonate 0.95, sodium bicarbonate 0.95, borax 0.85, sodium percarbonate 0.95, citric acid 0.90 grams per millilitre. Powders settle, so a scale is exact and a spoon is not.
- Safety
- Every mix on this page, together with anything you said you were also going to add, is checked pairwise against the shared hazard matrix before it is shown. A blocked pair means no recipe is rendered at all — not a recipe with a warning on it.
What each comparison row means
- Effectiveness
- How well this option performs on the specific job selected above — not a general rating of the product.
- Cost
- Approximate materials cost in the stated unit. Excludes equipment you would buy once and reuse.
- Active time
- Hands-on time only. Soaking, dwelling and drying time are listed separately in the method, not here.
- Safety notes
- Skin, respiratory, child and pet considerations. Descriptive — read it rather than scoring it.
- Surface risk
- Whether this option can damage the surface it is used on. "Never" means it causes permanent damage.
- Availability
- Whether you can buy this at an ordinary supermarket or hardware store, or need a specialist supplier.
- Septic safe
- Whether this is safe to send down the drain on a septic system. "Conditional" means it depends on volume or dilution.
Source notes
- Ingredient costs are US retail shelf prices for the largest ordinary pack size, converted to a per-gram or per-millilitre figure. They move with the market and with pack size, so every cost in this tool is an approximation, shown to the cent only because fractions of a cent would be false precision.
- Wool and silk are protein fibres. Alkaline solutions above roughly pH 9, and oxygen bleach, hydrolyse the fibre and cause felting, yellowing and permanent strength loss.
- True soaps are fatty-acid salts. Calcium and magnesium ions displace the sodium or potassium and precipitate insoluble calcium stearate — the film known as soap scum. Synthetic (detergent) surfactants do not form this precipitate, which is why they replaced soap in laundry products.
- Detergent proteases and amylases work in water at roughly 20–50 °C and need dwell time. They are denatured by oxidising bleaches and by strongly alkaline or acidic conditions, so an oxygen booster and an enzyme cleaner cancel each other out if mixed.
- A septic tank works by anaerobic bacterial digestion. Chlorine bleach, quaternary ammonium disinfectants and large slugs of borate are antibacterial by design and suppress that digestion; oxygen bleach breaks down to sodium carbonate, water and oxygen and does not.