WARNING: This may be boring to those who care nothing about homemaking or saving money. So just skip this if the above warning pertains to you. But, if you are curious about what exactly it means to make your own laundry detergent and how crazy we are…read on!

Okay, now that that is out of the way…I haven’t made any laundry detergent in about six months. Right when I ran out, I was going to make some more, but then I got pregnant and the first trimester was a blur of nausea and exhaustion and taking care of my little Characters. So, I’ve just been using the detergent I purchase for diapers as my clothing detergent. Note: I can’t use my homemade detergent for diapers because the Borax will mess up the diapers, supposedly.

Finally, today on our weekly trip to Wal-Mart I went in search for an appropriate container for laundry detergent. Previously, I used a 13 gallon trash can. The largest batch of laundry detergent I’ve ever made is 6 gallons. Plus the trash can didn’t have a secure lid (it was a flip lid) so “stuff” kept getting into it which I thought was really gross. On my last sweep in the container/organizer aisle, I spotted a trash can that was 24 quarts (aka 6 gallons). Eureka! Not only that, it also had a locking lid to keep yucky stuff out. I was super excited (okay probably way too excited as any one person should be over an inanimate household product).

We made up our laundry detergent tonight. It smells so yummy! We used Dove soap this time. Previously, we’ve used Ivory Soap. I hope the smell sticks around with this one. The Ivory smell didn’t stay long.

Here is the recipe for our laundry detergent:
18 c water
1 bar soap, grated (Fels Naptha is a laundry soap but any bar soap would work)
1 1/2 c Washing Soda
1 1/2 c Borax
24 quart bucket (6 gallons)
12 c hot water
hot water

Mix soap in a suacepan with 18 cups of water, and heat on low until dissolved. Stir in Washing Soda and Borax. Stir until thickened, and remove from heat. Add 12 cups hot water to bucket. Add soap mixture, and mix well. Fill bucket with hot water and mix well. Set aside for 24 hours, or until thickened. Use 1/2 cup of mixture per load.

Soaps Goen Buy is the only place I’ve found that carries Washing Soda. Some grocery stores are rumored to have it but we don’t have grocery stores here that carry it.

Real quick and then I’ll show pics of our laundry process. I found out that homemade laundry detergent could be made a little over a year ago from a friend who knew someone who used to make their own. Curiousity got the best of me, and I googled it! I found the recipe above at The Frugal Shopper along with several other recipes. Mark, being such a great husband, agreed to embark on this new adventure. We tried it…it worked…the end. My brother in law actually figured out how much money the detergent cost per load. It was somewhere around .02 cents per load, I believe. Not bad!

Here are the pics from our laundry detergent adventure.

Getting a little help from Liam as we grate soap!

Zoe was fine tuning her grating skills.

Still grating…this is the most time consuming part of the process.

Grated soap…finally! Looks kind of like powdered sugar or snow in the picture.

Zoe stirring the soap and water until it dissolves.

Mark filling up the bucket before we added the soap, borax, washing soda concotion.

My new and cool laundry bucket! I printed off the recipe on sticker paper and then attached it to the bucket as well as covering that with contact paper. A lot easier than searching for my recipe each time.

This is what the detergent looks like when it’s first made. Very watery. It’ll gel up into a goopy substance after about 24 hours and then it’ll be ready to use. One thing about homemade detergent is that it doesn’t suds like store bought kind…but that’s okay. Our clothes are still getting clean!