Homemade Verses the National Leading Brand!

Last year I discovered homemade laundry detergent.  We were on a play date and our friends were doing laundry.  Their home smelled so good.  She was using her homemade soap to do the laundry.  Yeppers...oh, and did it smell goooood.  

She assured me that it was much cheaper and worked just as well.

Then my Funny Frugal Farmer Friend started telling me about her laundry detergent.  She had a couple different recipes.  We decided to try one.  We went out and bought all the ingredients.  We went back and forth on the size of the bucket we needed, and settled on a five gallon one.  Then everything sat in a pile on the kitchen counter for a few weeks. It's just the way things work around here sometimes!

Mac came home from co-op one day all excited.  They needed to put together a science experiment. 

Mac wanted to test laundry detergent!  She wanted to see if the National Leading Brand worked better than the homemade stuff we were hoping to make!

This is what she came up with!  She used three brand new cotton t-shirts. 
She placed four different stains on each shirt:
Mud,
Cran-Lemonade Drink,
Ketchup,
Hot Chocolate!
One shirt she washed in the National Leading Brand.  She washed another in a homemade detergent. 
She also washed a third shirt in water...nothing added. 
For our blog we will just focus on the homemade detergent and the National Leading Brand.

Homemade before

Homemade After

National Leading Brand Before:

National Leading Brand After

It may be a bit difficult to see in the pics, but the homemade definitely removed the stains better.  We were shocked and delighted all at once!  If you are interested in trying the homemade detergent yourself, you will find the recipe at Household Cents!