Did I post on this before? I don't remember. I know I took pictures. Did I ever post them? I SO need to organize my blog.
Well, by popular demand (and by that I mean one person) I will now present to you my laundry detergent recipe. (Your welcome Jenny.)
1/3 bar Fels Naptha soap
1/2 C Washing Soda (not baking soda!)
1/2 C Borax powder
Bucket (at least 2 gallon size. mine is 5 gallon)
I can find all of those ingredients at my grocery store. I don't think WalMart has all of the ing, but they have some. Look for Fels Naptha with the regular body soap or with the cleaning supplies, which is where you will most likely find the other ing. as well.
You will want to grate your soap. Doing the whole bar at once saves time later, but grate as you wish. You will need approx 1/3 of the bar for now.
Put your grated soap in a big pot with 6 cups of water. Heat until soap melts. Add your Washing soda and borax and stir until dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups of HOT water in your bucket, add soap mixture. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water. Stir.
Let sit for 24 hours. I put the lid on but leave a tiny side cracked open. I have no idea what the actual rule is on this one. Mine seems to turn our fine doing it this way.
After 24 hours you should have a rather funky looking soap. It will be thick and gel like. Give it a stir. Done. Use about 1/2 cup per load of laundry. This soap does not sud so don't expect to see suds. It's ok though. Your clothes will still be clean. The last time I made this I also added some Oxi Clean. It bubbled like mad. It does help with cleaning the clothes though, I think I might add less next time. I can't give you an amount there though because I have no idea how much I put in. I'll be making more sometime next week. I can let you know how it turned out then. :)
You need to give this a little stir each time you use it. I have a little measuring cup that I just leave in the bucket. I stick my hand in and give it a quick stir with the cup before I measure and pour.
I think you can also use a soap called Zote. I don't know where to find that though. I have heard of people using Ivory soap too, but I would think that you would have to add more ing. because that wasn't designed with washing clothes in mind.
You can also just add your dry ingredients together if you prefer a powder detergent. If you go that route only use 1 TBSP of powder per laundry load. I have never tried that one before. I prefer liquid.
There is enough to make multiple batches with all of the items purchased.
Happy detergent making. :)
December 11, 2008
Homemade laundry detergent
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6 comments:
Thanks Valerie. I am super excited to try this out! I have one more question. Where did you find your 5 gallon bucket? At a hardware store? I am so touched you posted just for me. Have a good weekend!
I got my bucket at Paul B, but you can get them a number of places. Ask around, someone might have one kickin around in their garage that you can use. I read that some people used buckets that they had bought detergent in from Costco. Others used a cleaned out kitty litter bucket. But yeah, mine came from Paul B, I think it was about $5.
Hey I have one from costco, so I'll use that. Thanks!
How's the cost effectiveness of this? How much does it cost to make a batch? How many batches do you get?
Just curious!!
I don't remember the exact numbers, but it is SO much cheaper than buying from the store. Even if you shop at Costco type stores. If you use the Fels Naptha in thirds you will get 3 batches. BUT there will still be more of the other 2 ing left. So 2 bars of soap should get you 6 batches. I think I spent somewhere around 8 or 9 dollars for all the ingredients. So 3 batches of soap for that price is pretty good. I could be off on my numbers because it was so long ago that I bought all of the stuff, but I'm still going strong in making the detergent. Just need another bar of soap. Much more cost effective than any deal + coupon.
Hope that helps. :)
good grief girl, is there anything you don't do???!!! :o)
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