Make Your Own Laundry Detergent

Lately I’ve got it into my head that I need to make my own laundry detergent.  Why?  Well, I’ve heard it’s cheaper.  And it’s got to be better for the environment, since there is less manufacturing and chemicals involved.  And the main reason is that I’ve just been reading too many frugal mom blogs.

I decided to try Recipe #4 on this website.  I want a small batch because I have concerns about the powder dissolving in cold water, which is all we use to wash with.  If this doesn’t work well, I’ll try a liquid recipe.  Those are a bit more labour intensive to make and since I’m prone to laziness, I’d rather not go there.

The Recipe

2 cups Fels Naptha Soap (finely grated)
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup Borax

• mix together and store in a closed container
• Use 2 tablespoons per load

The Process

First, I went out and bought all my ingredients:

Obviously, I couldn’t find any Fels Naptha, but I’m sure Linda will work just fine. After all, it’s the soap your Nonna used!  And Nonna’s really know best, don’t they? (Or it’s the grandmother of all soaps.  My Italian is rusty.  Anyone help a girl out?)

By the way, how cute is the little Borax girl?  Sort of like a baby Pioneer Woman. 

Now, let’s talk about money for a second since that’s part of the reason why I am going through all this trouble.  I never pay more than $6 for a bottle of liquid laundry detergent (I have no brand loyalty – I just stock up on whatever is on sale).  Each bottle is generally 32-40 loads, so I spend an average of  16¢ per load on laundry soap.  God, that’s nothing.  Why am I doing this, again?  Oh right, the environment.

Okay, the recipe only calls for 1 cup each of the Borax and Washing Soda, so that ends up costing only 69¢ and 46¢ respectively.  The bar of soap was $1.49, so we are looking at $2.64 to make 1kg of soap.  Using 2 tablespoons per load (which I’m going to round out to 30g for calculation’s sake) that works out to about…. 33 loads at 8¢ per load.  So half the cost, pretty much. 

Enough with the boring stuff!  Let’s get to it!

First, you need to grate the soap

I tried to grate it “finely”, by using the small hand grater, but really that was going to take all day.  And I’m not saving much money if it take me seven hours to make the stuff, am I?  So I switched to the big grater, and decided to try my luck afterwards at grinding up the soap in my coffee grinder (which I use only for grinding salt for my bath powder).

By the way, Linda is a very nice smelling  Nonna.  Not too overwhelming, but just soapy-clean enough.

It turns out 1 bar makes plenty enough for this recipe.  We’ll save the other bar for the next batch.

Look, cheese!  Anyone want to come over for dinner on April 1st?  I’m making tacos!

Then I decided to take a little break and let the soap dry out a bit.  I didn’t want to run it through the grinder if it was all sticky.

Guess what.  You can’t grind soap in a coffee grinder.  The blender worked okay, but it took a lot of scraping.  And the soap didn’t get as fine as I wanted it to be. Next time, I’ll just do it right the first time and grate it using the fine side of the big hand grater.

Mix it Up!

Next I added 1 cup each of the Washing Soda and the Borax to a big ‘ole bowl.

Then I mixed in the ground up soap, and ended up with the funky looking mixture below.

That soap looks so much like cheese, man.

Done!  Wait, put it in a nice container first, and then you’re done. 

Now when I have company, they will wonder, “Why does this woman have a jar of cheese mixed with salt in her laundry room?”

I’m washing the first load with this concoction as I type this blog.  We’ll keep y’all apprised on how clean my towels come out.

Tonight, I’ll be making dryer balls using this tutorial, and this pretty wool: