Homemade Laundry Detergent.

Yikes. I never, never, ever, ever thought I would make my own laundry detergent. But, I did. I was trying to be the good, frugal housewife I am supposed to be (which, I'm sure doesn't include making your own laundry detergent, but oh well, if it saves a few pennies, right?). And, so far it has been working exceptionally better than I thought it would. I did some research for laundry detergent "recipes" online, and I found this one. This is the one I used. And, if you don't feel like going to that site for the ingredients, I'm listing the entire recipe below. Oh yes, and the original site gives an estimated cost-per-load if you want to know. Not to mention the entire description is going to be much better than mine... I am certain! I didn't feel like doing the math for what I made, and I didn't take pictures of my progress (tutorial failure).

what you are going to need...

1 Cup of Borax. You can only buy a box of this stuff,
but it has lots of uses!

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1 Cup. I had a hard time finding this. I hear they have it at ACE Hardware.
I did find mine at Wal-Mart, but I went to two different Wally World stores before
I found it.  This is not the same as baking soda!

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One bar of this stuff. I love how old-fashioned it looks!
I found this next to the Borax in the laundry detergent aisle.



Step One:

Grate your bar soap. I used my regular ol' manual kitchen grater, and immediately placed the grater in hot soapy water after grating, and there was no soap residue smell on it.  This is easier than it sounds! Fels-Naptha is actually fairly soft. It took maybe 5 minutes to grate the entire bar.

Step Two:

Add 1 Cup of Borax and 1 Cup of Washing Soda to the grated Fels-Naptha.

Step Three:

Stir. Stir. Stir. You want all of your ingredients to be mixed together well. I used the advice from this tutorial's original source, and whipped out my food processor. Don't worry, it won't smell either if you put it in hot soapy water after using it.  Anyway, add all of your ingredients to the food processor and process it until its uniformly mixed! 

Step Four:

Put into a cute little laundry detergent holder (a cheap, plastic container with a lid works well too).  Display your handiwork!  Also, be sure to check out this tutorial's original source for information about HE washers, pictures, cost effectiveness, etc...

       Notes:

• This isn't going to leave your clothes smelling like Tide. To me, they just smell fresh (not stinky, don't worry). If you want them to smell, just add some fabric softener.
• I use about 1 tbsp. for small loads, and 2 tbsp. large loads. I purchased a metal coffee scoop to put in with my detergent.  The coffee scoop is 2 tbsp. so I just use my best judgement for measuring 1 tbsp. of detergent.
• I also always add this before I add my clothes to the washer. I let the detergent disolve, then put in my clothes. We don't have an HE washer, and I find this works the best as to avoid getting any powdery residue on your clothes.  Obviously, if you do get a residue, you can just re-wash, but who wants to do that, right?!