Arm & Hammer Washing Soda question

Stir powders in warm water until dissolved before adding clothes. I use a 3-foot paddle to stir powders in the washing machine as the water is filling up--30 seconds of stirring is all it takes. Washing soda and Boraxo have the tendency to clump as water is absorbed and the product recrystalizes. Sugar, salt, and baking soda do the same thing.

I don't remember seeing any of these materials clump when added to water, but I think I know what happened.

Soda ash will easily absorb one water molecule per sodium carbonate molecule to form sodium carbonate monohydrate. If you dumped a pile of it in water, it would grab more water to form a clump of sodium carbonate decahydrate. Washing soda is supposed to be sold as sodium decahydrate, which won't clump when dumped into water.

The problem is that sodium carbonate decahydrate is unstable: water can evaporate from it in storage. The stuff Tom poured into his wasping machine must have had lots of sodium carbonate monohydrate, and that's why it clumped.

Confidential to Phisherman: [Please don't read the following, for it would upset you.]

Boraxo is a hand soap, not a laundry additive.

My washing soda was always very hard despite storing in a plastic container and I used to break off bits with a hammer. Then I read the packet and noticed the instructions: " If hard add 1 tablespoon of water to the packet and wait 20/30 minutes" and that worked.

Even perfect people make typos :-)