You might also notice a powdery residue left on just washed clothing, which is also due tohard water.

Learn how to handle hard water stains on clothes and get better and cleaner results for your laundry.

What Is Hard Water?

water with suds

The Spruce / Ulyana Verbytska

Hard water is found in 85 percent of America.

In excessively hard water, the fabric fibers can actually break and create holes.

There are also companies that willtest your water supply.

hard water laundry

The Spruce / Alison Czinkota

Testing is particularly important if you use well water.

you’re free to also add half a cup laundry borax to each load.

Borax acts as a water softener and boosts the performance of some of the ingredients in laundry detergent.

borax next to laundry detergent

The Spruce / Ulyana Verbytska

Homemade laundry detergentsoften rely on a pure soap as a basic ingredient.

Unfortunately, soap does not perform well in hard water.

You may need to test and adjust your formula to include even more borax.

Add four times the normal amount of detergent and one cup water conditioner.

Agitate just long enough to wet the clothes.

Soak overnight or for about 12 hours.

Rinse thoroughly, then launder.

Learn to handle rusty waterandhow to remove the stainsusing arust stain remover.

Yes, water softener is beneficial for laundry.

The mineral count in hard water requires you to use more detergent than the recommended amount.

The only concerning disadvantage for some regarding using a water softener is the higher sodium levels.

Yes, vinegar can be used as a substitute for fabric softener.

It works the same as a fabric softener, without the chemicals.

As a bonus, vinegar also prevents static in clothes.

Softened Water Benefits Study.Water Quality Research Foundation.