Homemade Laundry Soap
I’ve been wanting to make my own laundry soap for almost a year now, but I had quite a few store-bought detergents to use up first. Well I finally ran out and got to make some today! This should last me a long time and it’s way cheaper than store-bought. Here’s the recipe that I used:
Homemade Laundry Soap
2 parts grated soap (Fels-Naptha, Zote, or Ivory)
1 part baking soda or washing soda
1 part borax
Mix and store in air tight container.
Use 1-2 tbsp per load.
It was kinda messy and a lot of work to grate the soap. I might try to find soap flakes next time. I’ve finished one load of sheets and they turned out fine. The true test will be Mike’s work clothes. 🙂 Do you make your own detergent? Whats your experience been with it?
*Update: I used this recipe for 2+ years and it always seemed to work great! I’m using store-bought detergent now because I was getting random spots on my son’s clothes all of a sudden, but I don’t think it was from my homemade detergent because it continued after I switched to store-bought.
Thanks for linking up at Unwasted Homemaking :).
www.dontwasteyourhomemaking.com
We LOVE it. My husband likes to grate the soap which I'm always happy to let him do :). I've made lavendar and unscented (for baby clothes/blankets). I have citrus, eucalyptus, and peppermint bars waiting their turn to become powder.
I always feel so good about myself when I scoop homemade laundry detergent into the detergent tray...what is it about the little domestic things? :) Happy laundry washing!
~Ashten :)
my washer is HE and the borax box says that's fine...along with some other sites i've found. i haven't had issues and feel like my stuff is getting clean:-) i am very happy with it! love that i haven't bought laundry dtg in what feels like ages! with 3 little boys i seriously so about 15-20 loads a week. this was seriously worth the effort.
I’ve made laundry soap the way you do for over a year. I love it, but I found grating the soap to be extremely difficult, especially considering I used the smallest holes on the grater so that the soap would be as much like a powder as possible and dissolve the best. Anyway, I tried drying my bars of soap out in the sun last summer by setting them outside in direct sunlight nearly everyday for weeks. While they were a little dryer and therefore easier to grate it still was not a solution to my problem. When I first read about making your own laundry soap this way (which there are about a hundred posts on with a million comments, lol) I recalled someone mentioning drying their bars of soap out by placing them on a cookie sheet in the oven. I thought that might work, but I did not know what temperature to do this at and for how long. I tried googling it and read through some on those many comments on those numerous posts about making your own laundry soap and someone mentioned microwaving. TAH-DAH.
Cut your bar of soap into 6-8 pieces with a sturdy knife (this is the hardest part). Its more effective to have smaller pieces (than one large bar of soap) because the microwave waves more evenly penetrate. Anyway using a paper plate (because this is a little messy and you don’t want to use anything that you would want to eat off of in the future) place all 6-8 pieces on plate and microwave for 45-60 seconds. Remove plate from microwave. THE SOAP WILL BE HOT! Let the soap cool completely then place all the pieces in a large Ziploc bag, seal the bag, and break the soap pieces into a powder. This should be easy, if you are still ending up with small chunks of soap you need to experiment with microwaving your soap for longer. Repeat with several more bars of soap so that you are stocked up for when you need it (you can pour each bars powder from the large Ziploc into a smaller one for storage and later add it to the correct amounts of borax and washing soda.
Disclaimer: I use Fels-Naptha Soap. It has what I find to be a mild and pleasant scent. When microwaved it becomes a strong and therefore way too perfumy scent (this will go away) so you may want to do this when husband is not home, open a window to air out kitchen, and you might need to microwave some vinegar in order to remove the smell from your microwave.
I hope this works for you. Obviously, sorry this is such a long comment but I know how much this has helped me, I think without having discovered the microwave method I would have given up on making my own laundry soap by now.
Many Blessings,
Hollie