Easy, effective, and healthy, this is the homemade cloth diaper laundry detergent you’ve been looking for! It’s made with simple, cheap ingredients, and does a fantastic job cleaning dirty diapers.
From homemade dishwasher powder to homemade hand sanitizer to regular homemade laundry detergent, I love making all my own cleaning products. However, I used to think that diapers were just too dirty for any homemade detergent to handle.
I was so wrong! When I finally decided to make my own cloth diaper detergent I was shocked to find that it worked just as good, if not better, than the standard store-bought detergent I had been using!
Now I can wash my cloth diapers with ingredients I feel good about at an affordable price. I’ll never go back!
Why You’ll Love this DIY
Clean ingredients – This detergent is made with only 4 simple, clean ingredients, you can feel good about using.
Affordable – Clean laundry detergents often cost so much, but this DIY is a fraction of the price!
Effective – After using this a while diapering 2 kids, I have had no issues with smell, buildup, or diaper rash.
Easy DIY – This only takes a few minutes to put together!
How Much Money Does It Save?
The price of ingredients and laundry detergents are always fluctuating, so it’s impossible to give an exact price comparison that will be relevant for you.
At the time of writing this post, if you leave out the tea tree oil, this detergent costs almost the exact same price as standard detergent brands such as Tide or All. However, it’s made with much healthier ingredients.
If you buy a more expensive, clean laundry detergent, this will save a significant amount of money.
How to Use
Place the diapers in your washing machine and sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of detergent (depending on the load size) over them each time before running the washer.
For more details, you can read my post all about how to wash cloth diapers.
FAQs
The purpose of soap in laundry detergent is to lift dirt particles off of the cloth. Since poop in cloth diapers is cleaned off in the toilet, there should be no (or extremely minimal) dirt particles left.
Also, soap can easily build up on cloth diapers and cause a variety of issues. For these reasons, this homemade cloth diaper detergent does not use soap.
There is a lot of debate on the safety of borax, however, for washing cloth diapers I don’t see any problem using it. It doesn’t come close to food, and it’s rinsed off completely in the washer.
Yes, since this detergent is low-sudsing, it will work in an HE machine.
Tools You May Need
This post contains affiliate links which means I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure  here.
Ingredients
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1: Combine the Oxiclean, borax, washing soda, and tea tree oil (if you’re using) in a large bowl and stir until well mixed.
Step 2: Then pour the mixture into a 1/2 gallon jar or container to store.
If you try this DIY, let me know in the comments! Tag me on Instagram @violet_rightathome
More Clean Living DIYs
Cloth Diaper Laundry Detergent
Equipment
- Mixing spoon
- 1/2 gallon mason jar (or other container to store it in)
Ingredients
- 3 cups oxiclean Free
- 2 1/4 cups borax
- 1 1/2 cups washing soda
- 3 teaspoons tea tree oil optional
Instructions
- Combine the Oxiclean, borax, washing soda, and tea tree oil (if you're using) in a large bowl and stir until well mixed.
- Pour the mixture into a 1/2 gallon jar or container to store.
- Use 2-3 tablespoons of laundry detergent per load and wash as usual.
Notes
If you love this detergent, please make sure to come back and leave a comment and a 5 star rating. I’d love to hear how it turned out for you!
Also, I’d love to have you part of the Right At Home community! Make sure to join my newsletter for all the latest clean eating recipes and clean living tips and DIYs.
I use this constantly to wash our cloth diapers! If you have any questions on how to use it, let me know in the comments. I’ll reply to you as soon as I can!
Hi Violet! I have been trying out your detergent, and I am concerned that it’s not working for my cloth diapers or I’m not doing something right. They don’t come out smelling completely fresh, so I have to run them a third time quite often. I am wondering what the reasons would be for the detergent not working. Do you have any ideas? I have even been using more than your recommended amount to get them smelling fresh enough. My usual routine is a prewash (cold water, detergent, quick cycle) and then a main wash (hot water, detergent, extra rinse). Do you have any advice? Thank you so much!! Love your blog!!
Hi Ariana, thanks for reaching out! There are a handful of things that can affect it, and my first guesses would be the hardness of your water and your washing machine/settings. If you have hard water, that can definitely make you need more detergent. I’ve also used this recipe with two different washing machines in different houses and had to experiment with the settings and amounts to figure out what worked best. Using a soak setting during the hot wash (or opening the washer for about 30 minutes after it’s filled up with water) helps a lot with getting the diapers clean. With my current washer, I use a deep rinse setting for both the cold and hot washes. Lately I’ve been doing the first cold wash on the medium soil setting instead of the light setting. I’ve used the light setting at times and it’s worked, but I tend to want to err on the side of extra clean instead of just doing the minimum. I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions!
Thanks for this laundry detergent idea. I always feel like washing cloth diapers can be so overly complicated. This looks so simple and I believe I have most of this already!