Hard Water is Evil

I have well water. I have hard water. Bummer. Hard water is water chock full of minerals. The problem is that hard water makes deposits on faucets, toilet bowls, dishes, and anything that has water sitting on it for a length of time. I first noticed it as a white film on my dishes. Then my toilet bowl had an orange crusty ring in it. And my laundry was stiff and uncomfortable. Very upsetting. I tired liquid dishwasher detergent, powdered detergent, JetDry, vinegar... none of which worked for my dishes. I tried a couple of different brands of toilet bowl cleaner, and they didn't work either.  Needless to say, nothing worked for the laundry.

Toilet Bowl became Battlefield Calcium Deposit. Baking soda and vinegar have worked best there, but I have to clean the bowl every five or six days, which is probably a good thing anyway.  : )

The Laundry. I found a hard water formula for laundry soap (not detergent), which appears to be working! Hooray! Turns out that baking soda, vinegar, and borax are natural water softeners, which many with their own water wells already know. So, this new laundry recipe uses borax, washing soda, and Ivory soap (or fells naptha) with vinegar in the rinse cycle for extra softening. You can add essential oils of your choice to the vinegar for a lovely scent. Mix the dry ingredients together and put them in a lidded container (I used a plastic bin) and put the vinegar and essential oils in a bottle with a pour spout (I reused a thoroughly cleaned-out  laundry detergent bottle).


Hard Water Laundry Formula (from Karyn Siegel-Maier)
1 Cup soap flakes or finely grated bar soap (Ivory or fells naptha)
1 Cup washing soda (next to the borax in the store)
1/2 Cup borax
     For the Rinse Cycle
       2 Cups vinegar
       10 drops essential oil of choice
Add 1/2 cup of the dry ingredients to the water before you put in the laundry (as you should with any soap or detergent) and 1/2 cup vinegar/oil to the rinse cycle or the fabric softener dispenser, if you have one.
I'm looking into buying soap flakes online, 'cause, I gotta say, grating the bars of soap was cruel to my arms. But, for now, I used a cheap cheese grater and grated the soap into a measuring cup. You have to mix the dry ingredients up a bit each time you use it to make sure you're getting a good blend of the ingredients in each scoop, and give the liquids a shake before you pour them in. So far, this seems to be working. My laundry smells nice and clean and is softer!!  Hooray!!

For the dishes, I am still working on a solution. I made a new dishwasher soap with lots of borax, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything different than previous versions or even the commercial detergents. Bummer. Here's the formula, anyway, in case it works for you.


Hard Water Dishwasher Soap Formula
2 cups of Borax
2 cups of Baking Soda
4 small packets of sugar freelemonade Kool-Aid (you can also use 4 tablespoons of citric acid--if you can find it)
White Vinegar


Mix all the dry ingredients together in a lidded container and use two tablespoons per load, one tablespoon in the regular wash dispenser, and one in the prewash dispenser. The vinegar serves as a rinse aid, so put it in the dispenser where you'd put JetDry or it's ilk. This formula works great at getting the dishes clean, by the way, so you could use it even if you don't have hard water (luckies!).
Got any hard water fixes? Let me know!!
Happy cleaning,
Emily