Homemade Laundry Soap

A friend recently asked me for my recipe for homemade laundry detergent, so I thought I would share it with you.  It's fairly easy but a little time consuming.  It's very frugal - each batch costs only around $2 to make (works out to about 6 or 7 cents per load).  Let's get started!

You will need:
a large container of some sort (I use a 3 gallon/11 litre bucket)
1 bar Sunlight soap*
1 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda*
1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax*
28 cups hot water
*these are all in the laundry aisle at my local grocery store

 Grate (as finely as possible) your soap into a medium saucepan.









Add 6 cups hot water and heat on stove until the soap is dissolved.  Remove the pan from heat and add 1 cup washing soda and 1 cup borax.  Stir until everything is mixed together well.  Pour the soap mixture in your container and add 22 cups of hot water.  Stir well and let sit for up to 24 hours.

 This makes about 7 litres. After it has set, it will be a sort of gel.  Stir it up and then you can transfer it to storage containers if you want.  I usually dilute it more at this point so it's a little more pourable.

 When you're using this for laundry, you'll probably use about a cup per large load.  You need to let it mix with the water before you add whatever you're washing or you might get streaks of residue on your stuff.  I usually wash in cold water but I don't think it would be as tricky to use in hot water (because it would dissolve  more quickly in hot water).

And that's all there is to it!  It doesn't have much scent so it's good for people who are sensitive to perfumes or have breathing problems.  It just has a kind of clean smell.

Thanks for visiting today!  I'm linking this post to the Hip Homeschool Hop.

I got the original idea for this recipe from a newspaper article, but I have tweaked and changed it..