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If so, what ingredients do you use? I want to start doing this mainly to avoid all the chemicals in store bought detergents. And saving money will be nice also.
You only buy it once to get the recipe. Then you can buy the Borax and washing soda yourself.
And get free containers for it from the recycling center.
It surprised me how good it was at cleaning clothes. Summer is a great time to stock up on making detergent as you need to place the buckets outside
Homemade Laundry Soap
1/2 bar Fels Naptha
1/2 c washing soda
1/2 cup borax
2 gallon bucket
Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Add your soap mixture and stir, then add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let soap sit uncovered for 24 hours. Use 1/2 cup per load. (You don't have to let it sit if you need it right away. It just gives it time to gel.)
Note: that is washing soda not baking soda. You can use different bars of soap but the Fels Naptha works the best. (I did a batch with ivory soap and it worked fine.) It's low sudsing and it does a very good job.
I grate the soap with my food processor which makes the job easy.
I found the washing soda and Fels Naptha at Ace hardware. The Fels Naptha is available all over the place but the washing soda is not. Locally, Ace had the lowest price for the Fels Naptha.
Homemade Laundry Soap
1/2 bar Fels Naptha
1/2 c washing soda
1/2 cup borax
2 gallon bucket
Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Add your soap mixture and stir, then add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let soap sit uncovered for 24 hours. Use 1/2 cup per load. (You don't have to let it sit if you need it right away. It just gives it time to gel.)
Note: that is washing soda not baking soda. You can use different bars of soap but the Fels Naptha works the best. (I did a batch with ivory soap and it worked fine.) It's low sudsing and it does a very good job.
I grate the soap with my food processor which makes the job easy.
I found the washing soda and Fels Naptha at Ace hardware. The Fels Naptha is available all over the place but the washing soda is not. Locally, Ace had the lowest price for the Fels Naptha.
Excellent!!! I get old plastic lemonade containers from apartment recycling bins
I admit I still like buying it off of ebay because they grate that phels neptha soap for you
Powder anything requires that it goes in first and swills and that warm water is used. For laundry soap not detergent, vinegar should be used in the rinse because it removes residue. My soap recipe is similar to post five, except I no longer grate the soap. I buy Ivory and nuke it, so it looks like a huge cloud, wait to cool then with a rolling pin go over the cloud to make soap flakes. One cup of that, one cup each borax and washing soda. Mix well. The washing soda is cheap from pool supplies stores. Some people add oxy clean to the recipe. Anything suspect for staining should always be pre-treated as usual.
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