Home Made Laundry Detergent

In our quest to save money, we looked around the house at the items we spend the most money on. Laundry detergent was up there at the top. It seemed we would go through a big bottle of laundry detergent about every three or four weeks, and even buying Purex, that is a lot of money. And my husband has an allergy to detergents so we had to use Dreft to wash his clothes because everything else would break him out. So I started scouring the web for ways to make my own.

And Lo and Behold, I found several sites that give recipes for liquid laundry soap. My favorite is so easy, and inexpensive, that I haven't bought laundry detergent since December.

You start with a 3 ounce bar of soap. You can use any soap really, the recipe actually said to use Fels Naptha or a bar of home made soap, but you can use any soap you like. I use home made lye soap in mine, because it doesn't cause my husband to break out. Grate it finely and melt it in about 4-6 cups of water over low heat. When it is completely melted, add 1/2 cup of borax and 1/2 cup of washing soda (not baking soda) and stir until dissolved. Pour all of that into a container big enough to hold at least 3 gallons ( I use a cat litter bucket) and add 2 gallons of water. Stir it up really well, and let it sit over night. Use 1/2 cup per wash.

This is a low foam washing soap, so you won't have a lot of bubbles in your washer, but it really does work. I used it to wash my daughter's fast food uniform and it worked great out getting out soda, chocolate, and strawberry stains out of her shirt. It is even good on grease. Just use a little bit of it to pretreat before you throw it in the washer.

Now this will not look like store bought laundry detergent. It is kinda thin, and opaque white. And will need to be stirred up occasionally. It will set up to look sort of like pudding until it is stirred back up. I actually use an empty fabric softener bottle to dispense from. It is a lot less messy that way. And the cap on the bottle actually holds the 1/2 cup you need per load. So you will have a new use for those empty bottles.

I have passed this recipe on to several of my friends and in-laws, and every one who uses it likes it. It costs about 80 cents to make 2.5 gallons using my own home made soap ( cost to make that is about 20 cents a bar).

Between the home made soap and using the clothesline, it costs me almost nothing to wash clothes, just the cost of the water and electricity to run the washer. So we are saving a bundle just on laundry.