What Is Laundry Soda?
Cleaning your clothes can feel like a full-time job, and with all the different products and chemicals you’re recommended, it can be a costly one as well. Sometimes, it can be better to go back to basics, but just because your grandmother may have cleaned her windows with dish soap and newspapers, is it really better than modern-day window cleaner?
By the same token, is vinegar or baking soda an effective laundry detergent? And where does laundry soda come into it?
Let’s explore laundry soda, its uses and how you can make washing your clothes even quicker and easier.
What Is Laundry Soda?
Laundry soda, also known as washing soda, is made up of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). Laundry soda is different from baking soda, also known as bicarbonate of soda (NaHCO3), although they can work in very similar ways, with both proving useful as cleaning products.
Laundry soda and baking soda are useful to remove greasy stains on clothes and surfaces like your hob, however, due to the different pH levels (acid and alkaline scale), one is more effective at cleaning than the other. Baking soda has a pH level of 8, while laundry soda has a pH of 11, making it very alkaline, and very effective against greasy marks. Standard dish soap is usually between 7 and 10 on the pH scale, while bleach is often between 11 and 13.
Therefore, laundry soda is a potent substance that can clean clothes as well as bleach. However, as laundry soda is higher on the pH scale, it can be tougher on fabrics so shouldn’t be used in such high quantities as this may cause your fabrics to wear more easily.
What Is Laundry Soda Used For?
Laundry soda has two main uses:
- Removing grease stains on clothes
- Removing limescale from washing machines
While laundry soda is excellent at removing greasy marks and food stains from clothing, it’s not as good at cleaning clothes as laundry detergent so shouldn’t be used as an alternative. Instead, if you have, for example, a white shirt with an oily mark down the front, you can add some laundry soda to the wash, about 100g, to remove the stain. Add the washing soda to the drum with the clothes and your laundry detergent to the drawer as normal.
Many washing powders include some laundry soda in the mixture, as it works like a fabric softener, so check the ingredients before you use it to see if you still need it.
You can also add laundry soda to your washing machine if you live in an area with hard water. Due to the strength of laundry soda, it works to remove the calcium and magnesium deposits known as limescale left behind by hard water. Limescale build-up can cause your washing machine to malfunction and require you to replace it, so keeping on top of your limescale problem is essential to keeping your washing machine lasting as long as possible.
To prevent limescale build-up, run an empty wash once a month with 500g of laundry soda in the drum to pass through the pipes and clean the limescale. If you’re a beginner with washing and have never done this before, run a few consecutive empty washes with laundry soda before continuing your empty washes once a month.
Calcium and magnesium will also make your clothes stiffer, so using laundry soda will help to make your clothes feel softer. In large quantities it can cause the fabric to wear thin, so use laundry soda liberally.
Does Baking Soda and Vinegar Work to Clean Clothes?
Baking soda is not as strong as laundry soda so it’s not as effective at removing stains from clothing, although it can be great at removing grease from your kitchen surfaces, especially when mixed with lemon juice.
Some people think that a white vinegar and baking soda mix is the best natural way of cleaning clothes, and while they are excellent cleaning products individually, experts suggest that mixing the two does very little to clean your laundry.
How to Get Your Laundry Done Quickly
Washing your clothes can seem like an endless job…
- Separate the colours
- Put a load in the washing machine
- Unload the washing machine
- Hang them to dry or put them in the tumble dryer
- Iron (if you still do!)
- Fold and put away
- Repeat with the next load
Each step can take a lot of time, even if you’ve been doing it for years and go into autopilot, so it’s no wonder many people ask ‘Isn’t there a way of paying someone else to do your washing for you?’ Well, fortunately, now there is! Although the first laundrette was opened in the early 1930s, you still had to do your washing yourself, well now, with the appearance of online laundry services, each step is taken care of for you except putting your clothes in your wardrobe.
Laundry apps are available all over the UK, so all you have to do is schedule a collection of your clothes, have them taken away to a laundry facility where they’re cleaned, dried and folded, and delivered back to your door within 24 to 36 hours. Doing your laundry has never been quicker or easier!
Benefits of Laundry Apps
If you’ve been doing clothes washing your whole adult life, you may think it’s cheeky to get it done via an online laundry service. But when you hear about the benefits, you’re sure to change your mind…
Convenient
Laundry apps are very convenient to use, whether your washing machine has broken, you’re away from home in a place without laundry services, a student tired of using the local laundrette, or you’re simply bored of wasting over an hour each week cleaning your clothes. When you use a laundry app like Love2Laundry, you can schedule a laundry pick-up with a few taps on your phone and not have to think about getting your clothes cleaned again; for one item or several loads of washing, a laundry app will take over for you.
Time-Saving
When you consider how much time in your life you’ve spent on clothes washing alone, it may startle you into wondering how you could have better spent your time. Learning a language? A martial art? When you use a laundry service, you can choose how you spend your free time.
Laundry apps are especially helpful time-saving tools when you’re away on holiday or a work trip, as you value your time even more, and don’t want to take time away from your exploring or meetings to simply get an outfit or two cleaned at a laundrette. Save yourself a lot of time and use a laundry app.
Are Laundry Apps Expensive?
The cheapest way to get your laundry done is, of course, by doing it yourself. However, if you have special items of clothing, such as those that need special chemicals or handwashing, when you add up all of the costs of your water bills, the price of the detergents, conditioners, laundry soda and dryers – as well as the cost of your time – the overall price isn’t that much different.
If you want to use a laundry service full-time, you can prepay for multiple loads of laundry to be done within a specific time period, such as 6 months or 12 months, which reduces the cost per load of laundry. Or if you only want to use the laundry app for a one-off, such as while you’re staying in a hotel, it can be more cost-effective to use a laundry app than to use expensive hotel laundry services or laundrettes.
In London, you can expect hotel laundry services and laundrettes to hike up their prices, so you may be better off financially to use a laundry app and enjoy the convenience of the process as well.
Download the Love2Laundry App Today!
If you want to save time and leave your washing to the professionals, download the Love2Laundry app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store today!
