Great Cakes Soapworks

May

7

2010

Does Lye Soap Make Good Laundry Soap?

Lye Soap by Great Cakes Soapworks

That’s what Autumn of Autumn Asks Why set out to discover. I sent her three bars of my Old-Fashioned Lye Soap several weeks ago for her experiment. Autumn’s recipe is a combination of washing soda, borax, oxygen booster, and grated bar soap. She has tried four different types of bar soap for in her quest for the best laundry soap, and the results are now in! I may be tweaking the next batch just a little when I make it next week (yes, it’s currently out of stock!). Click here to read her review and find out what might need to change.

Posted under Customer Feedback, Featured Products. Tags: homemade laundry soap, old fashioned lye soap. RSS 2.0 feed Leave a response, or trackback.

7 Responses to “Does Lye Soap Make Good Laundry Soap?”

1. michelle Says:
   May 7th, 2010 at 10:09 pm

   We use 100% all natural laundry soap. Ours cleans very well and for us it is much cheaper than any alternative. I read her review and I use the same ingredients plus two other ingredients that she doesn’t use. The scenting issue is easy to fix if someone wants to have the clothes smell like their natural laundry soap. My clothes smell like my soap for days afterwards. It really just depends on the ingredients used as there are other natural ingredients to help clean the laundry that Autumn didn’t include.

2. Amy Warden Says:
   May 8th, 2010 at 12:03 pm

   @Michelle – Thank you for your input! Would you care to share what your extra ingredients are?

3. Helene Says:
   May 10th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

   I had no idea that people actually make their own laundry detergent!!! I’ve always used the Costco brand natural detergent, without a scent.

   Thanks again for the gift basket you sent to Noelle! She loved it!!! Isn’t it so sad about her husband? It seems like it happened so quickly from the time he was diagnosed to the time of his death. She’s hanging in there, doing much better than I expected. But I would assume once everything calms down for her, that’s when she’ll really feel the loss.
   .-= Helene´s last blog post ..Yet another fine example of my lack of common sense… =-.

4. Elizabeth Says:
   May 18th, 2010 at 11:44 am

   It has been FOREVER since I’ve been on any blogs! lol. I’m so bad!

   But I did have a thought on the ‘body odor’…

   I looked into natural laundry soap a bit before I made my own. Everywhere it said to not superfat, which made sense, but I didn’t know the reasoning. AM finally pointed it out…superfatting leaves un-soapinified oils to make your skin all soap and such, but on clothes it will build up and go rancid.

   So if your lye soap is superfatted…it might be what she was smelling (not that it was unscented)

5. Amy Warden Says:
   May 18th, 2010 at 11:54 am

   @Elizabeth – actually I used 0% superfat when I calculated my recipe. However, I just made a batch with orange essential oil that should do the trick for laundry soap, as well as a plain batch for others who might be using it for poison ivy or whatever else.

6. Sophia Chang Says:
   December 15th, 2011 at 6:28 am

   Wow this post and its links was a super helpful jumping off point for me as a novelist. I always thought lye had a strong smell (at least in the ye olde times) but now I have to reconsider how I describe laundry soap.

   And your soap looks utterly delicious!
   Sophia Chang´s last blog post ..A Touch of Poison and Win a Kindle Fire

7. Amy Warden Says:
   December 15th, 2011 at 9:24 am

   @Sophia – When you add the lye to water to make soap, it definitely has a strong smell. You have to be in a well-ventilated area. After the soap is cured and ready, it is quite good.

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