Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Homemade Laundry Soap

I have gotten several inquiries about this homemade cleaner so here ya go!

Well, they say third time's the charm and it took 3 tries for me to find a laundry soap that I was happy with. I normally use liquid soap, so that is where I started.

First I tried this one. I did not like it.

Then I tried this one. It cleaned better but my hubby and I are training for a half marathon and our running clothes get really sweaty in this humid Houston heat (nice alliteration!) and I thought that our running cloths still smelled bad even after I washed them in this soap.

Now for the one I recommend, I gave up on doing a liquid and I am SO glad that I did. Not only is this one MUCH faster to make (no "cooking" required), it makes my clothes smell good! So I would like to tell you about this powdered lavender laundry soap. I got the recipe here. 

Here is what you need:

2 cups Borax
2 Cups Washing Soda
1 1/2 bars Fels Naptha soap OR 2 bars Ivory Soap
2 1/2lb Oxy Clean
30 drops lavender essential oil 

Side note: You know how I hate having to drive all the way to HEB to get some strange item on a recipe, like essential oils??? Good news! They are building one right down the road from me! WOO HOO!) Okay, moving on...


Here's what you do: 


 First you need to grate the soap. This was taking FOREVER (forever, forever..Sandlot, anyone?) So I decided to pull out my food processor. I used this grate tool but it was no fine enough so after that I put the already grated soap in the processor with just the normal blades and that did the trick.



Now just mix all of the ingredients and TA-DA! You're done! I will say that the borax was a little clumpy so I used my potato smasher to help break it up while mixing. At least that poor smasher is getting used for something. My hubby probably wishes it was for potatoes more often! ;)



Now you just use 1-2 Tablespoons per load but put the soap in the empty machine, let it fill with water so that it dissolves, THEN add the laundry.I know this is a little less convenient, but come on, isn't it worth saving money?

How much money? Well not quite as much as the 2 liquid recipes I tried first, one of which claims it is 1 cent per load. However I didn't think those recipes worked well. This one probably works better and costs more because of the OxyClean, but I am okay with that because what is the point if my clothes stink? The blog that I got this recipe off of said it is about 7 cents per load. I did the math on a few others to compare:

Homemade: 7 cents per load
Tide: 21 cents per load
Gain: 16 cents per load
Surf: 11 cents per load

So regardless of what you use, you save money. And is smells nice :)




2 comments:

  1. Jamie, there is another brand of the soap you can get that works just as well. As an added bonus it is available at Walmart and already comes shredded!!! One box of the already shredded equals two bars of the soap you have to shred yourself. That's what I use for my homemade laundry mix and I love it. :)

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  2. Going to try this tomorrow I think. No food processor here... guess I better get MY little sweatshop working to grating. Liked the "For-ev-er" comment. :) Glad they are building an HEB by you!

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