Natural Laundry Soap vs Detergent: Inside Our Citrus Laundry Soap

Most of what we call laundry detergent is not soap at all. Our citrus laundry soap is the real thing: plant oils made into soap, with a bright, slightly spicy citrus smell from orange, grapefruit and lemongrass. Here is the difference, and what goes in the bottle.

People use the two words as if they mean the same thing, but they are made in different ways.

Soap is one of the oldest things people make. You take fats or oils and mix them with an alkali, and they turn into soap ¹. Detergents are cleaning ingredients made from other starting materials, built to foam and to wash well in any water. Many detergent products also add a strong perfume so clothes smell "clean" long after the wash.

Natural laundry soap goes back to that simple recipe. That is what we make. Ours starts with olive and coconut oils, made into soap with potassium hydroxide, the alkali that keeps soap liquid. None of that alkali is left over when the soap is done.

Here is our full list, heaviest first: water, olive oil, coconut oil, potassium hydroxide, glycerin, sodium carbonate, sodium citrate, sodium hexametaphosphate, orange oil, castor seed oil, avocado oil, lemongrass oil and grapefruit oil.

The oils become the soap. Glycerin is a natural part of soap making. The three "sodium" ingredients are laundry helpers that work alongside the soap. The last three oils are the scent.

Hard water has a lot of calcium and other minerals in it, and it is common in many parts of the country ². It makes every cleaner work harder: you need more soap or detergent to get your hands, hair or laundry clean ².

That is why our laundry soap is not soap alone. Washing soda, sodium citrate and sodium hexametaphosphate are there to keep the soap doing its job in the kind of water most of us have, so clothes rinse clean.

Orange is sweet and sunny. Grapefruit adds a sharper, tangy edge. Lemongrass brings a green zing that reads as a little bit spicy. Together they smell like a fresh-cut citrus bowl. Clothes come out clean and smelling bright, not perfumed.

The soap is highly concentrated, and one bottle washes up to 130 loads ³. If you go through a lot, our 5 gallon pail holds 640 fl oz ⁴ for refilling the bottle you already have.

Start with the bottle and give it a few weeks. Wash your towels, your sheets and your kids' soccer jerseys, and see how you like coming home to a laundry room that smells like fresh citrus instead of heavy perfume. If it becomes your everyday laundry soap, the pail keeps you stocked for a long time, and refilling the same bottle means fewer bottles headed for the recycling bin.