Laundry Soap

I've been reading a lot about homemade things. I decided to try making my own laundry soap for no other reasons than 1) because it's cheap, and I love to save money and 2) so I could say that I tried it!

There are several different "recipes" available online, but I decided to use the Duggar Family recipe for liquid laundry detergent. I figured with all the clothes they have to wash, surely their recipe would be pretty good.

Here's their recipe:

4 cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1/2 cup Borax

Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continuously over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted. Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda, and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover, and let sit overnight to thicken.

Stir stored detergent. Fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full will soap, and then fill the rest of the way with water. Shake before each use (will gel).

Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: Rosemary, lavender, tea tree oil.

Yield: Makes 10 gallons

Top load machine: 5/8 cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

Front load machine: 1/4 cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)



THE REVIEW:

Okay, so first let's talk about cost. I found all the ingredients in the laundry aisle at our Publix grocery store. That's the only place that had all the ingredients. (If you can't find Fels Naptha, search for variations of the recipe online. Some use Ivory soap or Zote.) The cost of the ingredients were as follows: Fels Naptha Soap $0.99, Borax $3.99, and Arm & Hammer Washing Soda $2.29. The Borax and washing soda can both be used for multiple recipes of the laundry soap. That taken into account, the amount used for each load of laundry costs around $0.01!! You can't get much better than that!

Now for ease of making the recipe... The whole process took less than 30 minutes, so I figure if it works well, it will be well worth my time. The majority of the time I spent was grating the soap.



The soap bar kind of smelled like original Dial soap and made the kitchen smell nice and clean!

The biggest "con" for me is the storage. A five gallon bucket in some laundry rooms just won't work. Luckily, I have a decent sized laundry room with storage space to spare!



It was also a little messy transferring the soap into the dispenser. I recommend a funnel. Wish I'd had one! The soap is not a gel like store bought detergent. It is more of a liquid with gel throughout. It is kind of the consistency of egg drop soup. This is why it is important to shake before each use.

Mine turned out yellow because that's the color of the Fels Naptha soap bar.



How did it work? Well, I tried it out on a load of colored clothes, including Stephen's sweaty softball uniform. The soap does not produce suds. I'd read that it didn't, so I wasn't alarmed. The amount of suds has nothing to do with the cleansing ability.(I read somewhere that Americans have been "brainwashed" into believing that suds = cleanliness. We are obsessed with the amount of lather our bath soap creates and even the "foaminess" of our toothpaste. In many other countries, toothpaste does not foam. It has nothing to do with cleaning your teeth. American manufacturers add detergent to toothpaste so we'll feel like it is working better!)

All the clothes came out looking clean. They did not come out smelling bad, but they really did not have a smell. It was more like when Avery was first born, and I was using the Tide Free & Clear that didn't have any dyes or perfumes. If you enjoy that "fresh laundry" scent, I would recommend adding the essential oils to obtain that fragrance you desire.

All in all, I liked it. I'll have to see how it works on whites and update on that in another post. I go through a ton of pretreater with all the stains Avery and Sydney create. So, I'll have to see how it works along with that!

So, next up on the homemade homefront is baby food purees and (hopefully) a blackberry cobbler. The blackberries are getting ripe, and I'm so excited. I've already made some apple-carrot puree for Avery, and she loves it, so I bought more fruits and veggies to try!