Home Remedies vs. Store Bought

Problem/Question

Are you wasting your money on expensive laundry detergents? I decided to do this project because I was very curious whether or not my family should be spending money on something we could easily make at home.

Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that the store bought laundry detergent would work best. It would only make sense in my opinion if they worked the best because why would people pay to use something that doesn’t work?

Procedure

• 1. I started out by researching 2 non-toxic home remedies that were easy and had the best reviews.

  2. I then picked out a store bought detergent, which was Tide.

  3. I then cut up square pieces of white t-shirts.

  4. I then stained the t-shirt squares with coffee, ketchup, and dirt/grass.

  5. I made the first non-toxic solution of ⅔ Baking Soda, ½ Soap, ½ Water, and 2 tablespoons of Vinegar.

  6. I scrubbed it with a toothbrush on each stain and rinsed it with warm water, If there was still some stain, I would repeat the process.

  7. I then made the second non-toxic solution of 2 tablespoons of Hydrogen Peroxide and 1 tablespoon of Soap.

  8. I then repeated step 6 with the solution in 7.

  9. I used the Tide detergent to wash out the three different stains, scrubbing it with a toothbrush and rinsing it with warm water.

  10. I let them dry overnight and compared the results.

  11. I repeated the same procedure with new stains a second time.

1. I then compared the two results from the 1st trial to the 2nd one on a scale of 1-10.

Abstract

The objective I tried to reach was finding out whether home remedies are better than store bought detergents. My hypothesis is that the laundry detergent will work best because people pay to use them instead of home made ones. It would only make sense in my opinion if they worked the best. I chose this topic because I am curious whether home made concoctions will get the stains out or is it worth the money to buy laundry detergent.

I started it out by gathering few old white t-shirts and cutting them into squares. Then I put 3 stains on each white squares, ketchup, coffee, and grass stains. I then found 2 all natural home remedies online. The first home remedy i found was to mix together ⅔ cup of baking soda, ½ cup of non toxic dish detergent, ½ cup of water, and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar. The second remedy was 1 tablespoon of non toxic dish detergent, and 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide. I chose Tide as my store bought detergent because it's one of the higher quality and also more expensive detergents. Plus, it is the detergent that my mother has found to work best over the years. We then added each solution to each stain and scrubbed it with a toothbrush, then rinsed with warm water. I then repeated the same steps over again with the same solutions and stains. I then compared the now clean stains and rated them on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the cleanest.

After collecting my data, I then rated them on a scale of 1-10. The first non-toxic home remedy worked well for the coffee, excellent for the ketchup, but not so well for the dirt and grass. Scoring 41 out of 60. The 2nd solution did well for the coffee, the ketchup and the dirt and grass scoring a 47 out of 60. Lastly, the Tide only did well for the ketchup stain making it a 30 out of 60. It seems that the Tide did not work as well as the other two non toxic home remedies.

When choosing a science fair project, I mentioned this as one of my ideas to my mother, who was curious to see if she has been wasting money on expensive detergents all these years. I chose to use non toxic materials to make it more environmentally safe. I learned that my mom has been wasting all her money all these years, considering that Tide was proven to be the worst out of the three solutions. My hypothesis was proven wrong because I thought that Tide was going to work best in every stain, but I was surprised the see that it worked least effective for each stain. In my opinion, I think that this could have been more accurate by making the stains the exact same size. If I could do this project again, I would do this against actual marketed stain removers instead of detergents. All in all, my project proved that the 2nd home remedy, which was the hydrogen peroxide and white vinegar, worked best.

Conclusion

`When doing this experiment, I tested to see if store bought laundry detergents worked better than Homemade Solutions. My data proved that my hypothesis was incorrect. My hypothesis was that Tide was going to work best on stains, yet it cleaned the worst. The second homemade solution worked the best on each stain. I think my experiment as accurate because I repeated it twice and it got the same or close to the same looking cloth. If I tried doing this project again I would choose more than one store bought detergent, rather than just comparing to one. I think picking another detergent would improve this experiment, or even change the results. All in all, non-toxic home remedies worked the best as a stain remover.

Data