Laundry Detergent

I buy cheap laundry powder at No-Frills; comes in a carton about the size of a small car. I've been decanting it into empty 4-litre water bottles that someone on my floor tosses into our floor's recycle bin. Lately I realized that it's a terrible waste of a potential food-container.

I launder by soaking my clothes in a 24-litre pail to which was poured about ½ cup of cheap powder. Water is the universal solvent, as any chemist worth his NaCl will tell you, also that any soap or detergent is merely a wetting agent.

Soaked for 20 hours, I drain the buckets, and take them to the laundry room, where what would be a normal cycle of wash followed by rinse becomes two rinse cycles, removing every trace of dirt and cheap laundry detergent from my clothes.

Dawned on me that folks buy liquid laundry detergent and toss the bottles in the waste bin. Laundry detergent bottles, rinsed and dried, would be better harbours for laundry powder than drinking-water bottles, which are idea for storing rice, sugar, and so on. (Easier pouring and measurement!).

Here's a turfed bottle "empty" of detergent, right?

So I start to rinse out a cast-off laundry bottle in the kitchen sink, and realise that water is the universal solvent, and any soap or detergent is merely a wetting agent. That's unused detergent I'm flushing down the drain.

Here's the same bottle getting worked up into a lather.

So from now on

1: I don't buy dishwashing detergent

2: I use rinse-out laundry detergent for dishes (which I always rinse in fresh water after washing anyway)

3: I drive the superintendent batty by dropping a laundry-detergent bottle, empty, into our floors recycling bin every day.

There are but six apartments on this floor ...