Healthy Household: Wicked Laundry Soap

“I’m old enough to have a vague memory of clothes so white that they were called bright. This happened despite the absence of additives — the ridiculous varieties of sprays and bottles and packets that festoon our cabinets today and that we throw into the wash to try to boost the cleaning power of our pathetic machines and increasingly useless laundry soap.”
Hack Your Shower Head: Get Big Government Out of Your Home by Jeffery Tucker

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Sometimes you got to be wicked to get clean laundry.

Back in January, I was working on a new recipe for homemade laundry soap. I was starting to question the value of my very expensive green laundry soap. I started wondering what I was really buying when I spent extra money on green products, considering that the green products didn’t clean very well. I watched while my family’s clothes became greyer and smelled less fresh with every wash.

Then I read Jeffery Tucker’s book called Hack Your Shower Head: Get Big Government Out of Your Home. This amusing little book explained why my clothes were getting greyer and smelling less fresh with each wash. He even had a theory about why my plumbing wasn’t working very well either. I decided to give trisodium phosphate (TSP) a try in my laundry soap. The results were remarkable.

TSP was once in all laundry detergents. Some environmentalists got worried about the possibility that phosphates in detergents might cause algae blooms in lakes. They lobbied governments to legislate TSP out of laundry detergents. According to Tucker, this is why our clothing isn’t clean anymore and our plumbing is getting plugged-up. (He also has some very negative things to say about low-flush toilets adding to our plumbing problems.) Tucker furthers states that TSP “is a natural element discovered in the 16th century, is amazing not because it cleans — it needs soap to do its thing — but rather because it rinses, whooshing away all dirt, oil, stains, as well as leftover detergent.”

After three months, our laundry isn’t “whiter than white” but it is cleaner. The laundry does smell fresher. The best part is our plumbing is working better! Every few months, Shaen has to clean the filter in the septic field. This is a very nasty job. He has noticed that the filter is clean and not full of what he calls grease biscuits. The earthworms that live in the septic tank are doing extremely well so the TSP isn’t hurting them! Because we use a septic field the lakes of the world are safe from my selfish use of TSP.

Wicked Laundry Soap
2 parts soap, ground into very small pieces
1 part washing soda powder
1 part borax powder
1 part trisodium phosphate (TSP)
Cut the bars of soap into small pieces. In a food processor, grind the soap into small pieces. If the bar soap is sticky, add some washing soda to the food processor. This will help grind the soap into smaller pieces. In a reused detergent pail, mix the soap, washing soda, borax and TSP. If you have very dirty or greasy clothing add more TSP to that load. If you are having trouble finding TSP, it’s in the paint section of the hardware store.

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Cut the bars of soap into small pieces. In a food processor, grind the soap into small pieces. This time, I used a combination of Jenson’s hand soap and Fels Naptha soap.

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Grind the soap into very small pieces. If the soap is sticky add some washing soda.

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Store the laundry soap in a reused detergent pail. Add more TSP to laundry loads that are particularly dirty or greasy. You can find TSP in the paint section of the hardware store.

In closing, Tucker has a bleak view about government interference into our private households: “This is the whole trajectory of life under government control… And this isn’t just about clean clothes. It applies to every regulation, every tax, every expenditure, every stupid war and every monetary manipulation. Everything government does comes at our expense, and the cost are both seen and unseen.”

If you would like to learn more techniques for getting government out of your household please see Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo. I may not agree with all of Tucker’s lifestyle choices but we do agree that people need liberty, not government legislation. As Murray Rothbard once said: “Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that ?liberty is the highest political end? ? not necessarily the highest end on everyone?s personal scale of values.”

For more recipes please see Healthy Household: Staying Clean Safely and Saving Money.