DIY Homemade Laundry Detergent Recipe for Sensitive Skin (Borax-Free)
Update: 5/30/25 — Website Redesign. Prices and affiliate links have been updated. Prices definitely went up since 2013! Still going strong and continue to make my Homemade Laundry Detergent!
UPDATE: 7/11/19 — I still make this formula! This blog post was moved and adapted for my new website. Original was posted on 9/8/13 at madeofgray.com
UPDATE: 10/5/15 — I still make this formula every 3-4 months for our family, and I love it!
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!
This simple 3-ingredient homemade laundry detergent recipe is perfect for sensitive skin, completely borax-free, and provides incredible value compared to commercial alternatives.
Why I Created This Sensitive Skin Laundry Recipe
Hi, I'm Holly, and I have extremely sensitive skin. I can only use specific makeup brands and struggle to find gentle face cleansers that don't cause reactions. My husband has even more sensitive skin than I do, and our daughter inherited both of our sensitivities.
Our Journey with Commercial Detergents
Years before our daughter was born, we discovered my husband was reacting to fragrances in Tide laundry detergent. We switched to All Free Clear, which helped initially, but he still experienced frequent flare-ups that required steroid foam treatments.
When our daughter was born with equally sensitive skin (her allergies and sensitivities are documented in her medical file), we upgraded to Seventh Generation Free and Clear. While it worked well, spending nearly $30 for a 2-pack became unsustainable.
The Search for a Borax-Free DIY Solution
I've been making homemade house cleaners for almost 15 years now, primarily using baking soda, vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide. Laundry detergent was my final commercial holdout.
After researching Pinterest extensively, I found inspiration from Delightful Creations blog, which featured a borax-free recipe. I specifically avoided borax due to conflicting safety information – why take the risk with sensitive skin?
The Perfect 3-Ingredient Recipe
Baking soda - natural deodorizer and stain fighter
Washing soda - powerful cleaning agent
Dr. Bronner's Castile soap bars - gentle, plant-based cleaner
I chose castile soap bars over liquid versions I'd used in other homemade cleaners. The scent options are wonderful – I always return to peppermint and almond for their clean, fresh fragrance.
Results
After testing a small batch, I was thrilled with the results. Our clothes weren't just clean – they were actually clean for the first time. I barely need to pre-treat stains anymore, though I still keep Ecover Stain Remover on hand for tough spots (needing much less than before).
The finished laundry feels crisp and genuinely fresh. It's a noticeable difference from any commercial detergent we've tried.
DIY Detergent Cost Breakdown:
2025 Prices
Total for 3-6 months: Approximately $45-50 vs. $60-120+ for commercial equivalents
2013 Prices
Castile soap bars: $3.49 each at Whole Foods (on sale)
Washing soda: About $3.00 per box, needed 3 boxes = $9.00
Large bag of baking soda: About $7.00 from Costco
Total original cost: Around $30 for 3-6 months of laundry detergent
How to Use This Homemade Detergent
I keep a 1/8 cup measure in the container and typically use two scoops per load for optimal results. Adjust based on load size and soil level.
Important Note: I use a traditional top-loading washing machine and haven't tested this recipe on HE (High Efficiency) front-loading machines. If you have an HE machine, you may want to start with a smaller amount to test how it performs.
Pro Tip: Use a food processor to grate castile soap bars into tiny crumbs for easier mixing and dissolving!
Exact Recipe Measurements For a 3-Month Supply:
16 cups baking soda (one 13.5 lb bag provides plenty)
12 cups washing soda (slightly less than three boxes)
8 cups grated castile soap (4 bars total – each bar yields 2 cups when grated)
Simply mix all ingredients and store in an airtight container.
Why This Recipe Works for Sensitive Skin
This borax-free formula eliminates common irritants found in commercial detergents:
No synthetic fragrances
No harsh chemicals
No artificial dyes
No optical brighteners
The natural ingredients are gentle enough for the most sensitive skin while providing superior cleaning power.
Ready to Try This DIY Laundry Detergent?
This homemade laundry detergent recipe has transformed our laundry routine while saving hundreds of dollars annually. If you have sensitive skin or family members with allergies, this gentle, effective formula might be exactly what you need.
I'm pretty excited about the fresh and crisp potential here. Happy washing!
Originally posted September 8, 2013, at madeofgray.com. Updated and moved to the current site July 11, 2019. Latest update May 30, 2025.
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Pinhole Alternative Photography - Solargraphy
My pinhole photography is coming along nicely. I’m totally into the process and the time component.
This is a 24hr exposure looking up at one of our plumeria plants.
The line through the sky is the sun’s path through the afternoon sky. So cool.
Homemade Pinhole Cameras for Solargraphy
Seven more solargraphy pinhole cameras. Five Elecare cans and two Fire investigation cans. Blending of my home. Sending these out into the world this afternoon.
Solargraphy
Solargraphy ☀️
Yesterday I hid 6 pinhole cameras all over our land with plans to continue adding to that number throughout the year.
I’m using handmade pinhole cameras created with Elecare formula cans. This camera here will be a full year exposure… July 1, 2022.
Patience and analog photo processes are pretty damn cool, y’all.
Morning Routine in Motherhood
I shared this post with @artistmotherpodcast a few weeks ago and wanted to share here as well. The full video can be viewed on my website. hollydgray.com
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Hello 👋 Holly D. Gray (@hollydgray) here! I’m excited to share my art and life with the A/M community today. Even though my art practice and education started well before I became a mother, my story begins in 2007 when our daughter was born prematurely with a rare birth defect. As you can imagine, my art practice came to a halt during this challenging time.
After ten years of full-time caregiving, living in hospitals, and no art practice to speak of, I returned to graduate school for my MFA in 2016. Art (and life) before and after my daughter’s birth are as different as day and night. Every ounce of my art practice is influenced by my unique and mostly isolating journey of motherhood.
I primarily work in photography, video, sculpture, and mixed media. All of my ideas start photographically and conceptually. The ideas come first and then I decide how I can speak to that idea in the best way. My mind is constantly planning and churning and I largely enjoy this side of my artist’s brain.
The video short here is titled Morning Routine in Motherhood. This is a one-hour and eight-minute video consisting of the documentation of seven mornings. One week, all the same, and yet slightly different. While developing this video I was processing my morning routine as the primary caregiver to a disabled child and the gendered assumptions, as a female, chosen for me from birth. Equally, this video is a silent commentary on caregiving, repetition, monotony, and parenting burnout. The pressures of keeping up a time-based, strict, clean, and mistake-free environment are life-altering. Without this morning routine, my child would not survive.
What Lies Within Us
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photograph of Carrot, Squash, Garlic
-from the series Bodegón (Still Life)
Archival Pigment Print on Deep Matte Paper
Available
Silkies in the City
Last summer while we were waiting out the pandemic we decided to join the chicken owners club. We brought home seven silky chickens and four ended up being hens in the end. We spent two months building a chicken mansion in the backyard and entertaining the neighbors with our fluffy new pets.
A side project of mine has been to figure out how to live stream our chicken coop to the world. I finally figured out how to make that complicated process happen! So if you’re interested in watching live silky chickens take care of their new baby chicks 24/7 we are now live on YouTube 🔴under our channel, Silkies in the City
Switching from Canon to the Fuji XT4 Mirrorless camera
Last summer I made the switch from a full-frame Canon DSLR to the Fuji XT4 Mirrorless camera. Really, I love it. Haven't looked back. There was a learning curve with my muscle memory that surprised me. Sliding through aperture and shutter speeds without a glance can still occasionally be tricky to my brain just because I'd been a Canon user for the past 15 years.
iPhones are amazing, but there’s something about the control of a slow shutter speed and my trusty Manfrotto tripod that makes everything feel just a little bit more magical.
Fun fact: I found the tripod at an estate sale for $8!
Creative mind plays
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." - C.G. Jung
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Photograph of Apple, Sage, Radish
- From the series Bodegón (Still Life)
Archival Pigment Print on Deep Matte Paper
Dialogues in Art Panel - Disability
March 5, 2021 - Join a group of scholars, artists and students for a panel discussing Art & Disability.
Born Free, Live Wild Spring Collection
I'm so excited to share that I have three pieces curated in the exhibition "Born Free, Live Wild" by @brandihoferartist 🖤
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“Our Spring Collection is here, Born Free Live Wild is all about the ability live life uninhibited.
A stunning collection of raw and carefully curated artwork created by female artists and artisans from all corners of the globe.
Artwork connecting you to the wild heart that you were born to bare!
live wild
for what could be more beautiful than a world anew?” - Brandi
These 16x24, archival matte photographs are available right now with shipping already included!
Head over to the "Born Free, Live Wild" site to check out the collection and shop some really cool art.
1) Photograph of Pomegranate, Buffalo
Perfectly curated with all of these amazing Womxn:
Thank you for including me @brandihoferartist 🖤
@lizzytaber @jo.roets @paintedrangedesigns @elysejokinen @hearttohandstudio @erikabhess @sarahtwiggyboyerart @naufss @shamstoked @monalerchwallart @twyla.exner @raizmacrame @Stephanie.hanes @katerinaspopova @rosydeertextiles @bach.tara @charukaarora @velveteenvintage_
Juan Sánchez Cotán - An Artist Connection
Quoted from my artist statement for Bodegón (Still Life):
“As a mother, a lush abundance of foods have always had a deep meaning. From the first drop of breastmilk, the natural instinct for a mother is to feed her infant. For my daughter, I will never be able to fill this maternal urge. She does not enjoy the sourness of a lemon, or the sweetness of a pear. This is my personal connection to the rich emotion that I found in Cotán’s paintings.”
The Rejection of Being an Artist
Let's talk about artist grants, applications, and residencies for a minute. There are lists upon lists of places and people that want to make an artist's idea come to life, but honestly, it can feel rare to get in a win.
I submitted the general proposal for my latest photography series Bodegón (Still Life) no less than 6 times to different residencies, grant proposals, and applications before I was accepted to an artist residency that worked with my schedule as a full-time mother and caregiver.
Think about it... what career accepts rejection and failure as the norm? Then it expects you to pick back up and take the next denial letter like a champ. Weekly, monthly, forever. Prerequisite: Tough skin.
Sales comes to mind, but aren’t artists selling themselves and their work?
Very similar, but maybe more personal.
I had a professor keep each of his rejection letters in a file. The rejection folder as you can imagine was a lot larger than the acceptances. I started the same physical and digital folders for my rejections back in 2006. It's like a road map of where I've been.
We have to wade through those failures to see the wins on the other side.
Food is Emotional - An Artist's Outlook
When I talk about the spark for my recent photography project I always lean toward the dark, moody, and classic aesthetics. What I learned almost immediately when I began to research the life of Juan Sánchez Cotán was that I became borderline obsessed with the object and materials that Cotán chose to include in his paintings.
Food.
Fruits, Vegetables, Animals, and Spanish Pantries.
My relationship with food has changed so much over the past 15 years. Food is weird for most people, right? We love it, we hate it, we have too much or not enough. Food equals power for and power over people. Over the past year, we’ve been flooded with images of food insecurities and long car lines.
Food is emotional. I can think of dieting when I didn’t need it, attempting to eat healthier in anticipation of pregnancy, discovering that gluten was essentially killing me, and going plant-based over eight years ago. AND that’s just me. My daughter was born with the inability to tolerate any foods and has an exhaustive list of allergies that actually land her in the hospital. It’s complicated.
Our day-to-day relationship with what goes in our body seems like the battle between the cans and can nots. I know I’m not alone in this. So when thinking about Cotán’s paintings I found a deeper personal connection tied together hundreds of years apart with something as universal as a lemon.
See the entire series here
Juan Sánchez Cotán - Bodegón (Still Life)
Juan Sánchez Cotán. This was the guy. The inspiration for Bodegón (Still Life), my latest photography series. Cotán was a Spanish 1600s painter. He started out flexing his still life talent, but fairly quickly pivoted, devoting his life to the church. As a result, not many of his still-life paintings exist.
With my series Bodegón (Still Life), the most common comment that I get is that the viewer is reminded of paintings from the Dutch Masters. I totally get that. Maybe that’s what drew me to Cotan’s paintings. He was a pioneer of realism in Spain and was ahead of the time. I loved discovering his work.
The spark was set for this project over two years ago. What started as an aesthetic-inspired romance quickly turned into a personal connection.
Artist Residency in Texas
Throwing back to last Fall and the beginning of my artist residency at The Texas Studio🖤 Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to share more about my time at the residency, my ideas behind the body of work, and some fun exhibition news.
If you are the need it now type you can view my portfolio and shop originals and prints through my website.
Instagram Reels Pottery
Tiny Monday touch ups. Off to hand-build some mugs while this sculpture dries a little more. All fun and games over here... I’ll also be multitasking with insurance all day 🔥
Expired Fuji FP100C Pack Film Polaroid Land Camera
I like where this is going. Photographing at our land.
The perfect escape.
An abstract landscape out of reach.
Working with a New Black Ceramic Clay Body
I’m working on several projects with a new black clay. It’s softer and smoother than I’m used to, but hopefully, it’ll look pretty sweet with the matte black glaze I have waiting.
Fingers crossed. It’s a good way to celebrate #earthday2021 🌎
This time I’ve put everything up high, and out of Alma’s way. No more cat disasters!
