very easy homemade laundry

The idea of ​​returning to recipes from the past is not always well-connoted. Will we go back to candles while we’re at it? And yet, doing without toxic products is tempting and easy to make homemade laundry detergent. Update on laundry detergent with ivy and other soap plants such as soapwort, horse chestnut or alfalfa.

Certain plants found along roadsides and near homes can be used to make homemade laundry detergent. Ivy or soapwort laundry detergent is yours.

Laundry with ivy or soapwort, very easy ancestral recipes

Rather than buying laundry detergent, even organic laundry detergent, more and more of us are tempted to stop doing so. It’s that make your own laundry is not really complicated. The biggest difficulty will be to adapt each recipe to the conditions in which we find ourselves. The dirtiness of the laundry, the availability of ingredients, or even the time we have. Nothing prevents you from alternating methods depending on the conditions.

Many recipes include baking soda, soda crystals, sometimes essential oils. These will heat up and be less active, but also serve to preserve the mixture.

Other recipes are much simpler, but sometimes keep less well due to the lack of preservatives. This is the case with ivy laundry or soapwort laundry, which you can still keep refrigerated for two weeks.

Ancestral plant-based laundry techniques: soapwort laundry detergent

Homemade laundry detergent is far from being a new craze born from the twisted minds of humans tired of household products. This technique dates back several centuries. Laundry has often benefited from saponin, a foaming substance present in certain plantsincluding horse chestnut, soap tree bark (Koelreuterie paniculata), climbing ivy or soapwort.

The officinal soap maker in particular was a very present herb in the 17th century. We still find Saponaria officinalis by the side of roads in hot regions, particularly between June and October. From the 18th century, it was used extensively as industrial soap manufacturing developed.

The soapwort is easily used to make homemade laundry detergent © Heike Rau

Soapwort laundry detergent

If you come across soapwort on your path, it can be useful for replace soap and wash your hands on a picnic or on a hike. We then rub our hands with a few petals and a little water.

To make laundry detergent, make a decoction of 100 grams of roots for one liter of water. We boil for five minutes and simply remove the roots.

This detergent cannot be used with white fabrics because it tends to yellow. On the other hand, it is excellent with the wool and fragile textiles.

Ivy laundry detergent, an allergenic homemade laundry detergent? Yes and no!

Ivy sometimes has a bad reputation: it is said to be allergenic and therefore not very usable for making household products.

Ivy is found almost everywhere, but can we use it? – © Eugenia Vysochyna

Ivy, an allergenic plant?

To begin with, there are several varieties of ivy, the two most common being climbing ivy and creeping ivy. For laundry, the climbing ivy (Ivy Helix) interests you. This variety is less allergenic than the others, but if you have allergic tendencies, you might be bothered.

The leaves contain falcarinol which can be allergenic and cause contact dermatitis. In any case, do not touch the drupes, the berries, which are toxic. Needless to say, they are not edible.

If you have very sensitive skin, including to household products since traditional laundry detergent can contain toxic products, take a test and protect your skin before handling the plants. One method may be to use a mixture of ivy leaves and baking soda first time to see if this detergent suits you. This method applies to other plant-based laundry detergents.

The recipe for ivy laundry detergent

Pick some climbing ivy leaves and don’t wait to make the recipe. First wash the leaves in clean water. Use gloves if you have sensitive skin. Have a pot large enough to hold a quart of water and deep enough to submerge the leaves. Then place the leaves in the water and bring to a boil with a lid. Once the water boils, put the mixture over low heat and let it heat for another fifteen minutes, still covered. Remove from the heat, leave to macerate for a whole day (24 hours).

Ivy laundry detergent is quite quick to make. – © Heike Rau

All that remains is to filter the mixture with a fine-hole sieve, or a cloth and a funnel. The mixture is then ready to use like a classic detergent. You can keep it refrigerated for around fifteen days, rarely more than three weeks.

What other plants to use for laundry?

Horse chestnut

As mentioned above, all plants rich in saponin. If you have one near you, the horse chestnut tree can do the trick. Good for blood circulation, horse chestnut is found in many public spaces and apps like Falling Fruit can help you locate them.

Read also: chestnut and chestnut: which is edible, which is toxic?

This involves specifically identifying the horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanus) which are particularly commonly found in mainland France and Belgium. To make laundry detergent, you can pick up a basket of chestnuts: count one kilo for three liters of water. Shell them and grind them using a mortar.

The process is a little longer than with soapwort, but they are more easily found in the fall and early winter. Once the chestnuts have been peeled, put them in boiling water and let the decoction boil for an hour. After that, pass everything through a sieve. We can then collect the juice and bottle it.

Horse chestnut detergent is particularly recommended for wool and dark fabrics.

Alfalfa laundry detergent

Alfalfa is also a soap plant – © Michael G McKinne

The luzerne (Medicago sativa) is a fairly common perennial soap plant. It’s just a matter of not confusing it with the sainfoin it looks like. We can harvest this root crop in any season.

In terms of proportions, count 100 grams of alfalfa root for one liter of water. First wash the root and cut it into small pieces. Throw them into boiling water and let boil for half an hour before straining.

Article republished.