Homemade Laundry Detergent

During my husband's unemployment I made plans to begin making my own laundry detergent in order to save money. I purchased a large container of Liquid Tide, so that I'd have a container to put my homemade detergent in when the Tide was used up. Well, I didn't realize how long it takes to use up a huge container of liquid detergent concentrate, when you only use a tiny amount in each load! My husband has now been working again for 3 months, and last week I finally used it all up. So I excitedly made my first batch of homemade detergent.

Here is what you need:

1. Borax
2. Washing Baking Soda
3. A bar of fels naptha soap (some of my friends who have allergies that can cause skin irritation use a different type of bar soap ~ not sure what it is but I'll find out)


The recipe I used calls for grating 1/3 of the fels naptha, but I didn't want to get soap in my cheese grater so I cut it into small chunks instead and it worked just as well. Pour 6 cups of hot water into a large saucepan and add the grated or chunked soap. (Yes, I made laundry detergent inches away from freshly baked bread! Busy kitchen day....)


After the soap has completely dissolved, add 1/2 cup of washing soda, and a 1/2 cup of borax. It will look something like this:


In a separate bucket, pour 4 cups of hot water and then add the soap mixture from the saucepan.


Stir thoroughly until all is dissolved and mixed well. Add 6 more cups of hot water and stir again.


Then pour in a gallon of hot water, stir it up, and let it sit overnight.


In the morning it will appear to be solid, but in fact it is gel-like for about 3 or 4 inches down with the rest of the liquid underneath. Wisk (or pay one of your children to wisk for you!) the soap and then pour into whatever container you plan to use for daily use. Nearly all of this batch fit into my empty Tide container.


I have used this detergent for several loads now, and here are my observations...

You have to be more careful to check for and pretreat stains before washing. If you are used to using a detergent with bleach already added in, as I was, stains may not come out with just a regular washing using homemade detergent. Also, it tends to separate in the container and so I get a bunch of liquid with chunks of gel floating in it. Today I started shaking the container before dispensing detergent and that seemed to help. And lastly, this detergent does not make suds, which is fine since suds is not required to get clothes clean. But it looks really different when you look inside your washing machine and see no suds.

I am using a full cup with each load so I'll go through this container much faster than when it was filled with liquid Tide concentrate. But since the ingredients were SO cheap and each batch makes so much, I still think it will be a significant savings over store bought detergent. I'm keeping track of how many loads each batch washes so I can compare later.