Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Homemade Laundry Soap

Now...Do NOT make this for dinner...but because I love you all so much I thought I would share a super fun recipe with you all. Some ladies in my ward make their own laundry detergent and I thought I'd give it a try. It was so easy, works great and is sooo inexpensive. Laundry detergent can be super expensive, so if you want to save some money, try this out...you can thank me later :)

Ingredients: (all found in the laundry section at walmart or WinCo, ect.)
1 Fels Naptha Bar
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Arm&Hammer Washing Soda

Grate the Fels Naptha bar on the small side of the grater (do it on the small side because it saves time later). Put 3 Cups of COLD water in a saucepan. Add grated bar soap to this water and let soak a few minutes to soften. Then, bring the water to a boil, turn to medium heat and cook until it dissolves, stiring the whole time. Make sure you get out any lumps, takes about 10 minutes.

Fill a 5 gallon bucket with HOT water (fill it within a few inches of the top) Put the liquid you just made from the saucepan in and the borax and soda. Mix, mix, mix, make sure you get out all lumps. (The recipe says to mix this for 15-20 minutes...when I made mine there weren't really many lumps, just make sure you mix it really good).

Let sit for 24 hours or more. It will gel like chicken fat. Mix it one more time and it will never gel again. (My kids loved this part, we just put our arms inside the bucket and mixed away. Radley was mixing some clumps and said, "I just want to hold this forever!") Store in old laundry detergent containers or clean milk gallons.

Shake bottle each time before using. Use 1/2 Cup per load. This soap doesn't make suds and can be used in front loaders. There's no smell or additives, so its great for sensitive skin. (You can use smelly fabric softners like downy,ect or just good smelling fabric softeners if you want). This is totally inexpensive, seriously ladies...I think it cost about 3-4 dollars to make FIVE gallons of laundry soap, that would cost like $100 if you bought it at the store! I've been using this for a few weeks now and it really works great.