Homemade Laundry Soap

Brian probably thought that I had lost my mind when I told him I was going to make my own laundry detergent. 

But I have 2 hobbies: making stuff and saving money.

So this was very satisfying!!!

Here's the recipe:

1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax

1 cup Arm and Hammer Super Washing Powder

1 grated bar of soap

   (I chose Fels-Naptha because I have small kids and a messy husband who get lots of stains on their clothing, but really any bar of soap will do - Ivory, Zest, whatever)



So I started by grating up the soap.  I got really really tired of grating soap.  It's rather boring and I couldn't check Facebook while grating and it was 1:30 pm and there is absolutely nothing on TV at 1:30 pm... so I only grated about 3/4 of the bar.  I figured it would be okay.

It ended up looking like this.  I thought it looked a little coarse but I really didn't want to break out my food processor.  I really didn't want to dirty any more dishes.

Then I added the Borax and the washing powder

mixed it well and decided I'd better break out my food processor and make this a little more symmetrical.  I'm a symmetrical kind of girl.

Yes, thats my little food processor... in my bathroom.  It was nap time for Cowboy and I just couldn't risk waking him up.  When I use the food processor, he screams and cries in terror.  Like I'm going to make him eat pureed green beans or something...

I wonder where he got that idea...



before





After



So you actually only use 1-2 tablespoons of this homeade detergent per load.  I used 2 because I have this ginormous beautiful blue washer and this load was kid clothes, extra dirty.  I did not pretreat the stains. 

The verdict:  I was really quite impressed.  The clothes were really clean!  Like maybe even better than Tide.  The older stains faded. but didn't come out completely.  But the newer stains (3 days or less) came out perfectly and the socks were white again. 

So how much money will it save me?

Lets do some easy math:

60 load Tide - $8.99 at Target on sale

$0.15 per load

but lets be realistic here.  Tide says that it will last 60 loads if used for small loads where I fill the cap to line 1 or 2.  But I have large loads of very dirty clothes so I always put it up to line 3.  So maybe I get 40 loads out of that bottle, so

$0.22 per load

Lets do some less than easy math:

The box of Borax was $5.49 for 72 oz.  I used a cup of it.  So I probably used about $0.50 of it.

The washing powder was $4.49 for 55 oz. I also used a cup of that.  So probably about $0.55 of that.

The Fels-Naptha bar was $1.29 and I almost used all of it.  So maybe about $1 worth of that.

Total of $2.05

The recipe I used says it should last about 30 - 60 loads depending on if I use 1 or 2 tablespoons.  Knowing that I probably going to use 2 tablespoons per load, it will probably last me 30 loads which ends up totaling:

$0.07 per load

(and if I had used Ivory soap instead of Fels-Naptha, it would have cost me $0.04 per load!)

(or if I had purchased those items at Kroger instead of Ace Hardware I would have saved more $$$)

And thinking of my typical laundering habits, I could save about $75 a year just by making my own detergent. 

Both hobbies accomplished in one project :-)