DIY Laundry Detergent

Happy Sunday!

Edited to add: I use this soap in my HE (high efficiency) washer and have had no problems at all so far. I've also noticed that the machine does not ask to be cleaned as often as it used to.

A friend of mine from work made her own laundry soap and shared some of it with me and I LOVE IT! I loved it so much I made more and I will continue to make more in the future. It's going to save us lots of money too! My friend got her recipe HERE.

The ingredients you see above cost us $27.70, all from WalMart. These ingredients will make enough soap for a year if you wash 6 loads per week. It could last you longer than a year if you do less laundry. Oh and the best part is...you only use 2 tablespoons per load.

Here's what you will need to make a very large amount of soap:
1 Large container with lid (ours is 24 qts)
1 Grater with a small grating area

1 (4 lb 12 oz) Box of Borax - $3.38

1 (3 lb 7 oz) Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda - $3.24

1 (3 lb) Container of OxyClean - $7.52

2 (14.1 oz) Bars of Fels Naptha Soap (You can also use Zote Soap) - $.97 each

1 (4 lb) Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda - $2.66

1 large or 2 small Bottle of Purex Crystals Fabric Softener - $8.96 (large size)

You will need to grate the bars of Fels Naptha soap. Get your poor arms ready for a work out! Whew! I mostly used the smallest part of my grater but every now and again I would grate a bit on the large size. You will end up with about 3 cups of grated soap.

The Fels Naptha is a pretty yellow and smells really nice too. You can see here the larger pieces I threw in every now and again. Again, this is the hard part and will give your arms a good workout for sure! Once you've finally grated both bars of soap you will use a large container to mix it all in. Be sure to mix it well so its all stirred up and distributed evenly. I used a wooden spoon to stir mine.

I used my canning funnel to fill my large size Purex softener bottle. It held 7 cups of soap nicely, but you possibly could get 8 in there. The regular size bottle holds 4 cups and I also had some large creamer bottles I've been saving and they hold 3 cups nicely. See the blue cap on the Purex bottle? It has 3 lines one it and the middle one is approximately 2 tablespoons. AWESOME!

Even though this was a bit of work to get put together, it makes the house smell wonderful and clean and best of all its very easy to use and cleans great!

It doesn't have to be done all at once. It is a slow process in the works! C-ya next time!
I'm linking to these parties: