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.
Nothing you enter here leaves your browser.
The standard approach, using widely available products.
Natural and Heavy-duty are unavailable for this selection. Select either to read why.
Combination Not Verified. No Mixing Instructions Are Shown.
Laundry detergent, conventional mix.
This tool has no verified compatibility evidence for this selection. Follow the exact product labels and safety data sheets; do not treat missing evidence as permission to mix.
| Compared on | Conventional | Natural | Heavy-duty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Effectiveness | Effectiveness: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Effectiveness: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Effectiveness: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
| Cost | Cost: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Cost: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Cost: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
| Active time | Active time: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Active time: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Active time: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
| Safety notes | Not verified. Select this option to read why. | Not verified. Select this option to read why. | Not verified. Select this option to read why. |
| Surface risk | Surface risk: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Surface risk: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Surface risk: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
| Availability | Availability: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Availability: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Availability: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
| Septic safe | Septic safe: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Septic safe: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. | Septic safe: Not established. No compatibility evidence is available for this combination, so no figures are shown for it. |
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.
- 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.
- 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.
Other Tools
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