Cleaning & Organizing Cleaning Products & Appliances

Where to Buy Borax Powder

How to Spot the 20 Mule Team Borax Box

20 Mule Team borax

The Spruce / Taylor Nebrija

Borax is a great product with lots of uses around the house. The 20 Mule Team Borax brand has traditionally been used for laundry, cleaning, and even for killing ants. Despite that long history, it's not always easy to find in stores.

Where to Buy Borax In-Store and Online

  • The laundry aisle at grocery stores and big-box stores, such as Wal-Mart.
  • Hardware stores
  • International grocery stores
  • Farm supply stores
  • Health food stores
  • Swimming pool supply stores

"20 Mule Team" is the borax brand that you're most likely to come across. It's sold in a white box with red lettering and touches of green. You may want to look at photos on Amazon.com, so you're familiar with what the box looks like before you head to the store.

Be sure to look high and low on the shelf for it. That middle shelf space is usually reserved for the most popular detergents and laundry products, so you'll have to look carefully to spot the borax. But as more and more people turn to making their own cleaners and using natural products, it's becoming much easier to find.

places you can find borax illustration

The Spruce / Hugo Lin

What Is Borax?

Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate or disodium tetraborate, is a naturally occurring mineral that is used in many commercial cleaning products. Borax is used in everything from toothpaste and cosmetics to laundry boosters and dishwasher detergents. It is sold in powder form and has a consistency that's similar to powdered laundry detergent.

What Is Borax Used For?

There are many household uses for borax. It can be used to create natural cleaners or added to homemade laundry or dishwasher detergents. It will boost the cleaning power of other ingredients. Many homemade cleaners also take advantage of its ability to soften hard water and whiten whites.

Borax is also popular as a pesticide. It can be mixed with sugar to lure and kill ants and roaches, although this isn't recommended in households with children or pets.

Borax is also popular as a homemade slime ingredient. Is this really a good idea? Borax is safe in slime as long as it's not consumed. When making slime, supervise your children and ensure they wash their hands thoroughly afterwards.

Warning

If you have young kids who like to put things in their mouths, you may want to choose a slime recipe that doesn't include borax. That's also true if you think your kids might leave their slime out where pets could find it.

Why is borax used in slime recipes, to begin with? This ingredient gives the mixture its thick and stretchy quality. Other ingredients can be used to achieve the same thing. Some recipes use contact lens solution instead of powdered borax. Contact lens solution contains boric acid in a safer form that eliminates the risk of inhaling.

Is Borax Safe to Use?

Borax is a natural ingredient, but as noted, it's still toxic if ingested. If you use it to make your own products, label the containers with all the ingredients, just in case there's ever an accidental ingestion. You may know what's in your concoction, but other people in your household may not.

Treat borax with the same care that you would any other cleaning product, and you shouldn't have any problems.

Borax's Long History

In the late 1800s, borax was mined in Death Valley and transported across the Mojave Desert by teams of mules and horses to the railroad spur. That's where 20 Mule Team Borax gets its name. The company sponsored the television and radio show "Death Valley Days," from the 1930s through 1975. It was even hosted by Ronald Reagan in 1964-65. This made the name very familiar in those decades.

FAQ
  • Is borax the same as baking soda?

    Borax (sodium tetraborate decahydrate) is sometimes confused with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) but they're chemically different compounds. While they're both salts and popular ingredients for cleaning and deodorizing , borax is considerably more alkaline than baking soda. While you can consume baking soda, you should never consume borax.

  • What is borax good for?

    Borax has endless uses as a cleaning agent. It can be added to an all-purpose spray, used to clean the dishwasher and disposal, and added to laundry for a deeper clean.

  • What should borax not be mixed with?

    Some recommend mixing borax with sugar to use as an insecticide in the home but this can be dangerous. Children or pets can inhale or eat the concoction causing harm. It is safer to use pesticides made with boric acid because it's much lower in toxicity.

The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
  1. Borax + sugar and other dangerous homemade pesticides. College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan.

  2. Boric Acid Fact Sheet. National Pesticide Information Center.