Zout.

Here what I don't understand - if the water/baking soda/H202 work so well, why aren't the manufacturers using those ingredients?

I was thinking about making my own dishwasher detergent out of Borox and Baking Soda (to save money), but then figured out I pay about 4 cent an ounce for Cascade which note only is CHEAPER than the homemade version but also doesn't cause spotting.

@wrjohnston19283: WHERE do you get name brand dish soap for 4 cents/ounce? Did you mean 40 cents?

@wrjohnston19283: Hydrogen peroxide doesn't store well, so that would be a pretty understandable reason.

I don't believe you can add hot water and baking soda to hydrogen peroxide and have the HP retain its oxygenation. It belongs with the recipes for cleaners that tell you to mix vinegar and baking soda. Yeah that'll work out well.

Yes, it's called "soaking in water with a little detergent". Honestly, I don't know what it is with Consumerist and wacky do-it-yourself tips that appear to have come from 1950s women's magazines.

Boiling down soap made me think of making soap which made me think of Fight Club.

On topic: I generally use blue dawn dishsoap for a pre-treater if I get stains on anything and that tends to work well.

I just use Oxiclean.

Peroxide generators are the main ingredients in all-fabric bleach. In fact, if you buy expensive all-natural bleaches like Seventh Generation, they're just dilute hydrogen peroxide.

I quit buying regular and all-fabric bleach and just started using normal 3% hydrogen peroxide a few years ago. It works a treat and doesn't create toxic chemicals in the sewer system like chlorine bleach does. Hydrogen peroxide will last for years as long as you keep it in a dark bottle - UV light causes the peroxide to decompose rapidly.

FWIW, I'm a chemist.

Also, @ChuckECheese, you could add the peroxide after the baking soda/water solution cools.

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!:
Billy Mays would be proud.

@bobert: What amount of hydrogen peroxide would substitute for 1/4 cup chlorine bleach in a wash load, and how does it compare for killing bacteria?

@ohenry:
I actually make my own soap out of rendered beef tallow (fat) at home a la Fight Club just without their type of fat. Lye and the whole 9 yards. My wife thinks I am nuts.

@ohenry: dawn dish soap is the best grease stain remover ever. Bonus, it is fairly cheap.

@mythago: I'd say it's worse over at Lifehacker. I remember their tip to "Make Your Own Over-the-Ear Earbuds," which involved twisting jagged paper clips or something around regular earbuds.

Most of the time, I think these DIY tips are a bit over the top. I mean, really -- recycling your old, used bars of soap when soaking in detergent (something you're already using anyway) already works fine?

What do you think Clorox 2 is? Just fancy H2O2

I was at a family reunion tonight and the conversation turned to this very topic.

I think the big surprise was Crisco. My mother-in-law said to use Crisco on greasing stains like oil and said it really works, even if the clothing has already been washed and dried.

Another money saver is using white vinegar in place of fabric softener. At about $2/gallon, its cheaper than Downy and (unlike other fabric softeners) helps clean soap residue out of clothes.

It's the same principle as the other famous use for vinegar and water: For those times when your clothes just don't feel, uh..."fresh".

@legwork: Hydrogen peroxide is a very effective antibacterial agent. It's actually one of your immune system's better defenses..

@gman863: Ooh I love white vinegar. I use it instead of Jet Dry and it works fabulously.

Apple cider vinegar is also a good hair rinse/conditioner.

@ohenry: I find that dawn is one of the best pre treaters that I have ever used. It is nice having more than one use for a cleaner.

Oxi-clean. It's not homemade, but it works wonders for us. It's removed stains out of baby clothing that was washed numerous times. As a last ditch effort before throwing something away because it's just so stained, I soak it in oxi-clean for a few nights in a bucket. 9 times out of 10 it's worked. Once it did eat away at the area around the buttons on a onesie though.

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: R.I.P. Billy Mays...

@jmhart:
"Protein gets out protein", so it stands to reason that fat gets out fat, I guess....

@ohenry: dawn dishsoap also kills fleas on kittens that are too young for regular flea treatments

hydrogen peroxide poured on a fresh bloodstain will get it right out. my sister's ex cut himself carving a thanksgiving turkey and grabbed up one of my grandmother's antique linen napkins to staunch the blood. while my sister tried to kill him i poured hydrogen peroxide on it and got it right out.
be careful though, straight hydrogen peroxide will also lighten most fabric dyes.

used to work for a carpet cleaning company that charged people $50 a spot to saturate kool aid stains in a special formula: white vinegar

Oil, grease, food grease/oil - Brakleen

For some reason I know way too much about this topic.

Those natural non-chlorine bleaches are 12% HP. Ecover brand is food-grade, preserved with citric acid. Seventh Generation's is probably the same, but when I last asked, they wouldn't say what the preservative is. In the past couple years, mainstream stores (Safeway and Kmart for 2) started selling these same peroxide bleaches under their own labels, often for less than $2 for 2 qts.

Sun Oxygen Cleaner is as good as Oxiclean at about 1/4 the price. It is the active ingredient of Oxiclean without all the additives like bluing agents and water softeners. These powders make a good substitute for dishwasher detergent in a pinch. Some dollar stores also sell oxygen bleach powders.

Most of these oxygen bleaches need time to work well. They don't bleach as quickly as chlorine. Agitate your clothes for 5 mins using peroxide or powdered oxygen bleach, stop the machine and allow to soak for a couple hours, then finish the wash cycle. Great results. Use about 1/3 cup 12% peroxide or at least a cup of 3% (drugstore) HP.

Soaking most of your vegetables in about 3 oz of 12% HP in a sink of lukewarm water for 20 minutes will prolong their freshness. Be sure to drain well and wrap most vegetables before storing. Don't soak potatoes or onions or they'll sprout. This works especially well with leafy greens, but will retard spoilage of most vegetables.

@wcnghj:

45 ounces of Cascade on sale at CVS for $2.99, less a $1.00 coupon, is 4.4 cents per ounce.

To remove automotive grease, butter, fat, and other oily stains that just won't budge with these (water-based) solutions, we keep a bottle of Lestoil.
Apply it to the stain. Make sure it soaks through to the other side of the fabric. Let it sit for about half an hour, then wash as normal. Even if the garment has been washed and dried, setting the stain, this will work.

Pro tip: Wash the treated clothing with utilitarian items like jeans. You don't want your dress shirts and underwear to smell faintly of Lestoil (or maybe you do, and that's more than I wanted to know about you).@wrjohnston19283:

@wrjohnston19283: I somehow got the above to appear as a reply to your comment. Oops.

We use Dr. Bronner's soap for everything. We shower with it, wash our clothes, dishes, and clean with it.

Here's what we use for an All-Purpose Cleaner:

2 tablespoons Dr. Bronner's peppermint liquid castile soap
1⁄4 cup baking soda
1⁄4 cup white vinegar
Water to fill quart spray bottle

You can also replace the Peppermint with another scent of Dr. Bronner's. It works great!

My grandmother taught me to use 1 part dishwashing detergent and 3 parts ammonia. Mix it well, apply to the stain. I've seen it get out stains that have set in. You may have to use it 2x on something that's been 'baked' in by the dryer, but it DOES work.

I've made and used the "soap jelly" before. I stopped and threw it out when I noticed that a ring of soap scum was building up inside the washing machine.

Not recommended.

A particularly effective wine stain remover is 4 parts H202 to 1 part Dawn. It's like magic.

@serreca: wow! never thought to use it in the dishwasher. Great tip! Jet Dry is ridiculously expensive so I rarely buy it.

@bohemian:

...no, Goo Gone and other citrus-based solvents are a lot better than Dawn.

The OP recipe is pretty close to dog "skunk wash" that the vet gave me last week. It works wonders.

Also, if you get a few spots of grease on your shirt, just rub it with a little water and Dawn (or other liquid dish soap). It degreases clothes as well as it degreases dishes. Steak juice is my arch nemesis, so I'm well versed in this.

@catastrophegirl - sometimes makes typos and doesn't care:

They use it to get oil off birds when there is a spill, too.

@gman863: Phyllis Diller said to use vinegar, and just sit near a salad if you're worried about the smell. :)

Here's something you can do with soap slivers:

Undo a plastic scrubby and make a little bag out of it. Put the soap slivers in the bag. Close it and hang it next to your outdoor or laundry/mud room faucet, and use the soapy scrubby to get dirt off your hands from gardening, yard work, pet handling, etc. It grinds it right off and the slivers stay contained.

It works great! :)

@BlytheGalolahere:

I'm going to try this. I have 2 boys; grass stains, spaghetti and meatballs, clay mud, more grass stains, blood, hot chocolate, stickers (LOL)... *sigh*

I wish I had a grammy to teach me things like this!

@ChuckECheese: Mixing vinegar with baking soda does actually work well as a cleaner -- I use it all the time. I just make sure the proportions are correct and I don't have a huge, foamy mess.

@AlbertDadgum: "Soap jelly" might work well if you're using simple soaps made out of very basic ingredients and which are all alike; a mishmash of commercial soaps with everything from fragrance to wax? Not so much.

We make our own powdered laundry detergent.

Take a bar of Fels Naptha (yes, it's a bar-shaped laundry soap, and if you don't know what it is, it's likely your parents or grandparents do!) and grate it with a fine kitchen grater. You'll get something like 2 cups of powdered Fels Naptha. Mix it with 1 cup each of laundry soda (not baking soda) and Borax.

2 or 3 tablespoons of this stuff is plenty for a load of laundry. You don't get a lot of suds, but the smell of the Fels Naptha is pleasant.

For pretreater, you can either make a paste with this stuff, or with a little straight grated/powdered Fels Naptha.

It's cheap because you can get bars of Fels Naptha in a dollar store (at least, we can), and boxes of the laundry soda and Borax are 2-3 dollars each and go a long way. We bought boxes of the soda and Borax late last fall and are still working on them. And we've only gone through maybe 4 or 5 bars of Fels Naptha in the last 6 months ... if that.

Trent, writing The Simple Dollar blog, has a video of (and lots of posts about)how to make your own laundry detergent with Fels Naphtha. I've been happy using it for about a year, and got one of the cashiers at my supermarket started on it too!

@gman863: Ohhh, I should try that! I hate buying Downy, but we have ridiculously hard water at our apartment so we need to use something.

@puddinhead:
Good catch!

Although I still use Jet Dry (my water is rock hard and spots are an issue), I found white vinegar will get rid of cloudiness (a.k.a. "film" or "etching") which build up on clear glassware and plates.

This trick will usually remove light to moderate film. I do it every 3-4 months:

- Load all glassware, plates or other items that have film buildup (WARNING: If you have fine china or lead crystal, be careful. You might want to pre-test for possible damage by placing a few drops of white vinegar on the underside of an item for a few hours, rinsing and checking for unattractive damage).

- DO NOT place any detergent in the open wash cup. Put dishwasher detergent only in the main wash cup (the one that you close prior to starting the dishwasher) or just skip to the next step using the "rinse and hold" cycle followed by a regular wash cycle.

- Pour one quart of white vinegar into the bottom of the dishwasher and start. The quart of vinegar will mix with the water in the first spray cycle and remove the hard water film.

peroxide bleaches - beware!