The Cleaning Battle

I'm addicted to the 100 days of real food blog. If you've never looked at it, you seriously need to, like right now. Go read hers instead of mine! ;) She is such a great resource for menus, ideas, and just everything. She did a series on 100 days of real food on a budget, however her "budget" was nearly twice what I have to work with and for less people....almost got a little discouraged for a second, but I KNOW it's one step at a time here and I just need to keep reminding myself that. Like constantly.
I was bored last night (husband was working, kids were outside playing, baby was sleeping) so guess what I did for fun? I mopped my kitchen! I swear, my floors have never been so clean. Of course, with 3 boys in the house, they pretty much needed to be done again this morning, but whatever. Cleaning has never been my most favorite thing to do, but I love a clean house, so yeah, it's a constant battle. Add those darling 3 boys and this pretty much sums up my cleaning life

So anything I find that motivates me and makes the job a little less torturous, I'm all about it! Lately, that motivation and joy comes in not having to pull out the Hazmat gear and banishing the children to another sector of the house just to clean something.
I made my own laundry detergent awhile back, and while at first I loved it I began noticing that our clothes were coming out looking a little dingy. Ok not a little dingy, a LOT dingy. I then read that you have to mess around with the ingredients if you have hard water (which we do) until you find the perfect balance to get clean clothes. Ahem. Yeah, definitely don't have the time or motivation to do that... this is a hard one for me, because I love CLEAN clothes and already am a "snob" when it comes to laundry detergent (as in, I only use Tide). So I'm looking for some ideas here! Does anyone have a laundry recipe that actually works for hard water areas? Or an affordable "natural" detergent they use that WORKS?