There's Nothing Wrong with Homemade Laundry Detergent

I don't know about you, but I am forever doing laundry.  It is amazing to me how many outfit changes one little girl can need in a day.  That, along with her cloth diapers, my washing machine is running every other day.  That equals a lot of detergent.  Does anyone else cringe at the prices of name brand detergents?  And it always seems like they are coming out with a new "must have" additive in smaller containers for sometimes more money.  What ever did people do before the Oxy Burst/Laundry Booster phenomenon?

My challenge this week is to bring laundry detergent back to basics.  Clean clothes at a fraction of the cost. If I told you that you could have nearly 10 GALLONS of laundry detergent for less than $15.00, would you be interested in knowing how?  Well, then read on.

Here are the supplies you will need.  I was able to find them all at both my local grocery store and at Walmart in the laundry aisles.  Walmart had the better prices.

Borax ($3.24)
Arm & Hammer Super WASHING (not baking) Soda ($3.38)
Fels-Naptha Soap Bar ($0.97)
5 Gallon bucket with lid ($4.00 at Home Depot)
10 empty and clean milk jugs or other containers

For the first step, grab your kitchen grater and the Fels-Naptha bar.  Grate the entire bar until you have a shaved pile of soap.

Next, fill a sauce pot with 4 cups of hot water.  Dump the grated soap into the pot and stir continuously over medium low heat until all of the soap flakes have disappeared and melted into the hot water.  Your mixture should be foamy and have no flakes still floating in it.

After your soap flakes are melted, fill your 5 gallon bucket half full with hot water.  Add your soap mixture along with one cup of the Arm & Hammer Washing Soda and a half cup of the Borax.  Stir well.  At this point my house smelled amazing!

Fill the rest of your bucket with water until it is full.  Stir it again until it is mixed completely.  Cover your bucket and let it sit overnight.

I let my soap sit for a full 24 hours in my laundry room.  The mixture should have gelled and thickened slightly.  For some reason my mixture was more than slightly thickened.  Stir thoroughly again.

Perhaps if I let it sit for only 12 hours as opposed to 24, or maybe if it were in a warmer part of the house it wouldn't have gelled so much.  The only result of really gelled detergent is that I had to stick my hands in the bucket and break up the big lumps by hand.  It really wasn't a big deal at all. Just a little more hands on work.

Time to get all your milk jugs ready!  Use a funnel and fill each container half way with the soap mixture.

Fill the other half of the jugs with water and shake well.  And, this is the result of a couple hours work:

 

For HE machines, use 1/4 cup of detergent.  For regular machines use 1/2 cup.  Make sure to shake the bottle well before each use.

I now have enough laundry detergent to last a lifetime for less than $15.00!  And the greatest part is that the next time I need to make detergent again, I only need the Fels-Naptha Soap Bar, as I already have plenty of the Borax and the Arm & Hammer Washing Soda.  So the next 10 gallons of detergent will cost only 97 cents!!  You can't beat that!

So now that I have my pretty jugs of detergent, it was time to put it to the test.  The detergent may be dirt cheap, but can it actually clean dirt?

The first test was going to be my dog's dirty blankets.  If it can clean a dog bed, then I'm confident it can clean normal dirt and grime.  Clean or dirty, I don't normally put my face into my dog's blanket and sniff, but for this experiment, I made the sacrifice.  The result?  CLEAN!  It didn't smell like dog, and it also didn't smell like commercial laundry fragrances.  It just smelled clean.

The next tests were a load of lights and a load of darks.  I had an arts and crafts day with my daughter and managed to get pink craft paint on my favorite jeans along with spaghetti sauce from her dinner.  I crossed my fingers and threw them into the wash with the homemade detergent.  The result?  CLEAN!  No paint stains and no tomato sauce.  How excited am I!!

The third and final test will be the deal breaker.  Can this homemade detergent clean and deodorize my daughter's cloth diapers?  I filled the diaper soaking bucket with water and 1/4 cup of the detergent.  As she soiled the diapers I threw them into the bucket to soak.  When I had enough dirty diapers, I threw them into the wash using the homemade detergent.  And the result?  Amazingly clean smelling cloth diapers!

If you really like to have scented detergent, you can always add a few drops of essential oils to the laundry detergent.  

If you happen to have a really tough stain or above average dirt and grime, I would suggest pretreating the stain before washing.

So, there you have it.  There really is nothing wrong with homemade laundry detergent!

Next up:  Homemade Fabric Softener!

Happy washing!