Homemade Laundry Detergent

In honor of my NEW "old school" washing machine (more on that later), I just made another batch of laundry soap and am reposting my laundry detergent recipe for any of those interested, along with some updates from lessons learned!


Yesterday was our day to make laundry detergent, and I was lucky enough to have a helper on hand!  I started doing this November 2008 and haven't used store bought since!  It's quick (15 minutes!) easy, fun, and makes a ton each batch, so I only need to do it every 2-3 months or so.  There are many recipes available on the internet, but I will walk you through ours:

INGREDIENTS:  (update:  more stores stock these ingredients than when I first started, looks like people are starting to ask for it!)

-1/3 bar grated soap (I use Zote or Octagon, Zote is easier to grate) -can usually be found in  an ethnic grocery if you can't find it at your regular store

-1/2 cup washing soda (different than baking soda!)  got mine at WalMart

-1/2 cup Borax powder (available at most stores)

-Essential Oil optional (I use grapefruit!)

- 2 or 3 gallon bucket

- Pot for heating soap

- Funnel

- Empty Containers (I use recycled store bought laundry containers, empty H2O or clean milk   jugs work too...amount depends on how big your containers are!

Step One:

Set out your ingredients:  note the "Princess Bucket" my child picked out for me, it has "sparkles"!
Step Two:

Grab a helpful child, or maybe not so helpful...

Step Three:

Put your grated soap plus 6 cups hot water (I grate by hand since I mangled my food processor doing this last time:) in a pot and heat just until the soap melts (do not boil!).  Add the washing soda and Borax and stir until dissolved.  Remove from heat.

Step Four:  

Pour 4 cups hot tap water into your bucket.  Add melted soap mixture and stir.  This is a good time to add a couple drops of essential oil if you prefer a scented soap.

Next, add 1 Gallon plus 6 cups water and stir some more...this is a great chore for the "helpful child"!

Step Five:

Let the soap sit about 24 hours in the bucket and it should come to a thin egg white consistency.  (The reason for 24 hour wait is if it gels too much you can add more H20 and blend to right consistency - BEFORE it gels "too much" in your containers and won't come out!) If the remaining soap flakes visible bother you, just run an immersion blender through it before funneling into your containers.  Voila!  You have a ton of laundry detergent for just a cent or so per load!  Use about 1/2 cup per load ( I just use the cap from the bottle).  This is safe and actually beneficial for H.E. machines since it is low-sudsing.

**Tip:  If the next day your soap is gelled solid, just add some more H2O and use an immersion blender to thin.  I only offer this suggestion because I made this mistake the first time...I think I heated the soap too much on the stove, evaporating too much water!!!

Recipe makes about 2.5 gallons!  I just use recycled store bought containers, but milk or water jugs work just as well!  When done, I just store all my laundry making ingredients away in the bucket and it's easily accessible next time.

FABRIC SOFTENER:

I mix a few drops essential oil into a bottle of vinegar and add 1/2 cup to the rinse tray...soft clothes and cleans your machine at the same time!  Really great for those H.E. machine nasty seals!  Don't worry, your clothes will not come out smelling like vinegar, especially with essential oil added.  Happy Laundering...ok, well maybe "Cheaper Laundering" at least...!

**Note:  if you dry your clothes on the clothesline, you will find that the vinegar rinse does not do the same trick, I haven't yet found a homemade softener that works on line-dried clothes - if you know of one, please share!

Garden Now - Think Later!: Laundry Detergent Day

I have had several people ask for my laundry detergent recipe recently, so I am just going to link it here again! Happy Laundering!

Garden Now - Think Later!: Laundry Detergent Day

**note! Step 3 is missing the key ingredient water!! It should read "mix 6 cups of water with the soap to melt"

(for some reason, I can't edit the original post from so far back)

Powder Variation:

** To make powdered detergent, it's super easy! Mix 1 cup grated soap (Zote or similar), 1/2 cup Washing Soda, 1/2 cup Borax... I usually triple this recipe so it will last longer, and have been known to add 1/2 cup Oxyclean if I have it handy. The liquid recipe makes more, but when you need it quickly, nothing beats the powder since you can whip it up in less than 10 minutes and won't be tempted to buy it!

Odds & Ends

So that's what winter is for! The past 2 days I have been catching up on all neglected things around the house and miscellaneous suburban homesteading busywork. I finally did all my windows, and more importantly, my white shutters on all the windows that have been collecting dust and just bugging me in general (one of those things that nobody notices except me, lol)! I posted last spring about my "freezer inventory" list - well, that hasn't been updated in a good long while, like all summer, and as a result I have a freezer full of God-knows-what plus all the frozen veggies from the past summer, so that's done too! Now I can stop wasting money buying things that I already had in the depths of my little deep freezer. I highly recommend this if you store alot of garden veggies and like us, meat that we buy by the share. It's difficult to keep track of all the cuts otherwise!

This morning so far I have been tending to my laundry room - HA! Laundry CLOSET, that is. Since it is hidden by a curtain and the only unseen landing pad in the house, it was stacked sky-high with Christmas stuff, laundry supplies, tools, you name it - it goes here. It needed to be cleaned out since this is also my seed-starting/grow lights area, and that time is coming up swiftly! After organizing that somewhat, it was time to make laundry detergent. I did a post about making liquid laundry detergent, and it works great and is fun for the kids to help make, but this time decided to try homemade powder detergent. This stuff whips up in about 2 minutes so that is a definite time saver. I just finished washing a load and it appears to work just as well as the liquid.  The recipe I used today is as follows:

Powdered Detergent:
- 2 cups grated bar soap (I use Zote, Fels Naptha, or whatever laundry/plain soap I can find cheap) - just use a cheese grater on the fine grate size
- 1 cup Borax Powder
- 1 cup Washing Soda (not baking soda! This can be hard to find in some areas, but I now go straight to an Asian or Mexican grocery store where I can always find it! Some people report WalMart always has it, but this is not true in my area)
- Optional: 1/4 cup of OxiClean (I don't use it)
- Mix all together and place in a sealed container. Use 1 tbsp per load, 2 if extra dirty - That's It!!!

Fabric Softener:
I just use plain vinegar with a few drops of essential oil added for scent. You do not need to use essential oil, believe me, your clothes will NOT smell like vinegar! I just use it 'cause it makes me feel pretty while doing my laundry LOL


I also want to add that I have reached my 1-year anniversary!!  That's 1 whole year since I have purchased store bought laundry detergent or household cleansers!!  

I have many other things planned around here this week that I won't bore you with because they all involve closets and cupboards and other unseen messes, but I am hoping to actually get out into the garden and tidy up a bit more this week also. I see out the window I have gorgeous salad fixin's just waiting to be harvested and now that incessant rainy yucky weather has slowed, maybe I can get motivated to get some mittens on and get out there!

Interesting Tidbit:  I balanced my checkbook the other day - let me add that I have been spot on to the penny since I first started doing this in high school - and .... I was $184.82 off ...IN MY FAVOR!  I have waited a few days and did it again.... still the same.  WooHoo!  Of course I won't spend it since I fear that some alien transaction will reappear at an inconvenient time, but hey, it's like an early Christmas. This good fortune will never happen again, lol!  I am also having trouble with the new post editor on the blog so if the fonts and spacing are off, I apologize.