I've been wanting to try making my own laundry soap ever since I caught a 45 second snippet of 473 Kids and Counting several years ago. The mom mentioned that she only paid a couple dollars a year for laundry soap for her entire family and that it was good enough to handle even their cloth diapers.
My interest was renewed when I was pregnant with L and purchased some fabulous detergent online that was designed specially for sensitive skin and babies. It worked great and only took 1 tbs per load, but with a new baby it's hard to remember to re-order online, so I ended up buying the mega-Costco box again.
The main things holding me back were that all the recipes seemed pretty labor intensive (grate, melt, boil, set, mix) and I was concerned about having a 5 gallon bucket of slime in the laundry room with a curious toddler in the house. So I was thrilled when my friend Andrea posted a link to a recipe for homemade laundry powder that seemed pretty easy to make.
The recipe she used can be found here- http://www.diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/ I made a few adjustments based on the comments found under the original recipe and some trial and error, then took pictures of each step.
So first you need to find these ingredients- 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Washing Soda and 1 bar of soap.
I purchased mine from Walmart. The Borax, Washing Soda, three pack of Ivory and a bar of Fels Naptha were under $9 total, and I used two bars of soap and about a quarter of the boxed ingredients. The double batch I made will end up doing about 64 loads of wash, so with the addition of an extra three pack of soap I will be able to do about 256 loads of laundry for around $10. (For future batches I will totally skip the Fels Naptha soap and just use the Ivory)
To start, chop the soap into smaller chunks, put them in a bowl that you don't care about and microwave for one to two minutes.
The Ivory was nuked for one minute and overflowed the large paper bowl it was in. Within about five minutes it was fully cooled and ready to shred. At the bottom of the bowl were several unmelted chunks that took about 30 seconds more to melt.
The Fels Naptha went two minutes and never foamed up like the Ivory did. After 20 minutes it was still uncomfortably hot in the middle, and when I tried to melt the chunks that were left in it, it never foamed and actually scorched by 30 seconds.
The Ivory shredded very easily but the Fels Naptha left quite a few chunks. Below you can see the two soaps shredded and mixed, adding the Borax and Soda, and all the ingredients mixed together.
Several of the comments on the original recipe mentioned that they put all the ingredients into their food processor and mixed the ingredients that way. I only have a mini-chopper and didn't want to mess with cleaning it, so I tried to mix it with a pastry blender. It got a ton of the clumps out but there were still quite a few. I tried to get some out by hand, but the dust is extremely fine and makes it uncomfortable to breathe. After sneezing a few times I finally broke down and pulled out the mini-chopper. I lightly shook the bowl a few times and all the clumps rose to the top, skimmed them off and put them into the chopper in a couple batches. Sure enough, three quick pulses and all the clumps were mixed in smoothly.
When everything was mixed the soap resembled a very fine corn meal, and smelled very light and clean.
Each load of wash only uses 1 tbs, which looks like a minuscule amount compared to the 1/2 cup that I needed of my old detergent. The first load came out of the wash smelling great- clean, but not perfumed, and the clothes were not nearly as stiff as usual. I didn't have any issues with the soap not dissolving all the way like some of the comments did, but I think that is because I didn't grate the soap, but shredded it. The load is still in the dryer, but so far it seems to be a success.
Bottom line-
Ingredients: $10
Time: about a 1/2 hour, but future batches will be much quicker
Total output: about 256 loads
Cost per load: .04 cents
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