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How to Choose Natural Laundry Detergent and Why it’s Important

June 13, 2011 By Emily McClements
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I’m so excited about Natural Laundry month here at Live Renewed, and I have so much to talk about that I hardly even know where to start!  And now it’s almost the middle of the month, so we better get going!

We talked about hanging our clothes out to dry last week, but one of the most important things about laundry is the detergent.  I mean, that’s the main product that we use to clean our clothing, right?

I will admit that I have struggled with the detergent aspect of switching to green and natural laundry care over the past two years.


Photo used with permission from Brittany at The Painted Parsonage

I tried homemade detergent, and while I know others who use it with great success, it just didn’t end up working for me for some reason.  It’s still a great green and frugal option for those who it works for though, so if you haven’t tried making your own detergent yet, I encourage you to give it a try.

So, I had to start searching elsewhere for a good, safe and natural detergent.

How to choose natural laundry detergent - a great basic guide for choosing safe and natural detergent from LiveRenewed.com

Why choose natural detergent?

To begin with, let’s talk about why we should choose a natural detergent.

Conventional detergents are loaded with all kinds of ingredients, including chemicals, that we should be very wary of washing our clothes in.  Clothes we then wear against our skin, wich can absorb those chemicals into our bodies. It’s just like with personal care products, our skin is not a barrier to those things, but instead a permeable layer through which chemicals and toxins pass through into our bodies.

Detergents contain several different types of ingredients that can be of concern.

Cleaning Agents, or Surfactants

Many of the cleaning chemicals in conventional detergents are petroleum based – that should be a red flag right there! They cause environmental damage to rivers and lakes, and the aquatic life that lives there, and are endocrine disruptors that can affect our metabolisms, reproduction, and growth.

Optical Brighteners

Here’s a scary thing that I just learned while researching for this post – remember cosmic bowling?  You know, when you wear a white shirt and bowl under black lights and your shirt glows in the dark?  It doesn’t glow just because it’s a white shirt and the light is “black”, it glows because of chemical fluorescents that are in conventional detergents and are used to make clothes seem whiter and brighter than they really are!

In fact it probably isn’t really as white as it looks even in regular light, it’s just an optical illusion because of the optical brighteners.  Isn’t that crazy!?


Photo from Southern Living

Fragrance

The problem with fragrances is that we don’t really know what chemicals are actually in them.  They are often made up of phthalates, which are endocrine and hormone disruptors, which can affect both normal reproductive development and infertility, and they are also air and water pollutants.

All I know is that one time, when we ran out of our regular laundry detergent, my hubs used some left over regular scented detergent to wash a load of clothes.  When I put on a shirt from that load the next day, the scent absolutely overwhelmed me – it made me dizzy and gave me a headache and I had to eventually take the shirt off!

It just shows that so many of us have become so used to these chemicals that they don’t even have an effect on us. But once you stop using the chemicals and then are exposed to them again, your body will tell you that it doesn’t like being exposed to them!

“Fragrance-Free”

I also learned that some products listed as “fragrance-free” aren’t actually completely fragrance free because it’s not a term that is regulated.  Because fragrance often has to be added to cover up the smell of the chemicals, even “fragrance-free” products still contain small amounts of fragrance in them.

Other Ingredients

One of the other problems with conventional detergents is that they aren’t required to list all of the ingredients on the label, so you don’t actually know what is in the products that you are putting on your clothes and rinsing off into the environment!

The lack of labeling on household and cleaning products is very concerning to me.  How can people make informed and good choices if they don’t know what the products they are buying are made of?!

Another thing that also really concerns me is our children’s exposure to all these chemicals. Even if you love the scent of your conventional detergent, or how soft it makes your clothing, think about the effect that all these chemicals are having our our little one’s bodies which are so small and vulnerable and sensitive.

It’s especially important to choose natural laundry for the little ones in our lives.

Choosing a Natural Detergent

There is not one natural detergent that will work best for everyone.  I have tried several different types of natural detergents, and to be honest, some of them did not work well at all, others have been okay, and then I’ve found a select few that I really like and will continue to use for my natural laundry care.

Choose detergents with plant based, instead of petroleum based, surfactants, without optical brighteners, or with natural whiteners like sodium carbonate and sodium percarbonate, and that are fragrance free.  Or at least make sure the fragrance is derived from essential oils.

Here is my review of the different natural laundry detergents that I’ve tried over the past two years to help you determine which detergent might work best for you! You may also want to check the Good Guide as a place to start for finding a safe and natural detergent.

What do you think about all the ingredients and chemicals used in conventional laundry detergent?  Why do you choose to use natural laundry detergent?

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If you’d like to learn more about living green and living frugally I’d love to have you as a Live Renewed reader! You can subscribe, either by email or in a reader, to get the latest posts, ideas and inspiration for living frugally green. We’ll be talking all about natural laundry in June, I’d love to have you join with me! You can also connect with me on Twitter and Facebook!

Sources: Chemical versus Natural Laundry, Health Child Healthy World, About Phthalates

14 CommentsFiled Under: Around The House, Green Living Tagged With: "green", children, cleaning, home, laundry

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Comments

  1. Sarah says

    June 13, 2011 at 7:59 pm

    I just started using my own homemade laundry detergent; I’ve only used it for a week and I hope it doesn’t start spotting my clothes because I made about a year’s worth. 🙂
    I just posted about it today:
    http://mindfullyfrugalmom.blogspot.com/2011/06/make-it-yourself-monday-laundry.html
    My recipe includes Borax, Washing soda, and OxiClean. I didn’t use the soap flakes because I was too lazy to grate them, but also because I have heard that they leave too much residue on cloth diapers.

    Reply
  2. Stacey says

    June 13, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    This is such a timely post. For weeks now I have been thinking I need to try and make my own detergent. But then as I reflect on it, I honestly don’t have the time to do it right now…so at least I can switch to a more natural detergent from what I am using. I look forward to the rest of your posts this week.

    Reply
  3. Rebekah from Simply Rebekah says

    June 14, 2011 at 1:07 pm

    Ok. So that is crazy, right? The black light thing just blew me away! I would love to be able to compare white shirts under black lights in some kind of crunchy green science experiment. 🙂

    I am excited to hear which natural laundry detergents have worked for you. I’m reviewing Molly’s Suds right now & will be doing a giveaway in July. This is my first experience with natural detergent. I think reading your post just solidified things for me. I probably won’t ever go back to traditional stuff.

    Reply
  4. Shiree says

    June 14, 2011 at 1:13 pm

    I just had the same experience with some scented detergent. I bought some environmentally safe stuff that had a scent and it knocked me over!

    Reply
  5. Myah says

    June 14, 2011 at 2:10 pm

    I’ve been making my own for several months now, and I’ve been pretty happy with it, but my husband doesn’t think his white shirts are staying very clean. I am looking forward to seeing all the recipes you’ve tried. 🙂

    Reply
  6. Margaret says

    June 14, 2011 at 2:51 pm

    Looking forward to your review of the products you have used. I am trying to decision whether to buy or to make. Your reviews may help in my decision.

    Reply
  7. Kristy Campbell says

    June 14, 2011 at 9:33 pm

    I experienced the same thing you did when I put on a shirt which had been laundered for a long time in a detergent containing fragrances. (The shirt was given to me by a friend.) It almost made me feel sick! Even scarier, it took about 5 washes in natural detergent before the fragrance smell faded out.

    We choose to use natural laundry detergent as part of an overall strategy to be more eco-friendly. Now that we have a daughter (6 1/2 months) this is even more important to us as we want her to grow and develop as free from dangerous chemicals as possible.

    We use Country Save for all of our clothes and Rockin’ Green for our cloth diapers. Looking forward to reading your reviews of other natural detergents!!

    Reply
  8. Brenda says

    June 15, 2011 at 4:53 pm

    Several years ago I made my own laundry soap. It was easy enough and consisted of Borax, PhelsNaptha, and Washing Soda. It was pretty cheap and lasted a long time, but I didn’t feel like it really got our clothes as clean. My husband sometimes gets grease on his jeans and shirts and it didn’t do the job on those. And, our whites started looking pretty drab. I look forward to hearing more ideas too. I love your site.

    Reply
  9. Dawn says

    June 16, 2011 at 10:44 pm

    I started making my own homemade laundry detergent about 6 months ago. I use 1 cup each of : Borax, Washing Soda (not the same as baking soda!!), baking soda and shave one bar of natural soap (I like Dr. Bronners and homemade soap). I grate the soap in my food processor and then also mix it all up in my food processor. It costs about $5 for a batch and lasts me 6 months. I love it. If I need a color booster I use a little Oxy Clean or Biz. I also pretreat for stains. I got so tired of spending $20 every other month on commercial laundry detergent that was at least 75% water. I couldn’t be happier with my own homemade laundry soap and it’s even fun to make and only takes about 10 minutes.

    Here is the original link to where I found my recipe:

    http://www.diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/

    Reply
  10. Diana says

    June 29, 2011 at 3:23 pm

    I’ve been using Nellie’s for several months and I’m happy. The clothes are clean and soft. Love the packaging too.

    Reply

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