Have you noticed that your laundry room contains a whole bunch of products designed to pretreat your clothes before you wash them? Do you remember these from your childhood? Probably not, because they didn’t exsist. In 1993 TSP (Trisodium phosphate) was outlawed in the United States as an additive in laundry soap. TSP is a natural element. It doesn’t wash your clothes, the soap still does that, but the TSP helps them to rinse. Without the TSP all of the dirt, stains, oil and laundry soap stay on the clothes.
I’m old enough to have a vague memory of clothes so white that they were called bright. This happened despite the absence of additives – the ridiculous varieties of sprays and bottles and packets that festoon our cabinets today and that we throw into the wash to try to boost the cleaning power of our pathetic machines and increasingly useless laundry soap.
Then, the other night, I experienced an amazing blast from the past. I added a quarter cup of trisodium phosphate (TSP) and otherwise “treated” nothing. The results were nothing short of mind-boggling. Everything was clean – clean in a way that I recall from childhood.
Before I read this article, I had no idea what the problem was with my wife’s washing machine. She’s always complaining about how the clothes never come clean. The author of this article:
Experienced an amazing blast from the past. I added a quarter cup of trisodium phosphate (TSP) and otherwise “treated” nothing. The results were nothing short of mind-boggling. Everything was clean – clean in a way that I recall from childhood.
How is this a business opportunity? Well, I’m not sure since it appears to be illegal to make laundry soap with TSP. How would you make money with trisodium phosphate?
Photo by tracitodd.