When we visited Minnesota this summer, one of our friends told me: I am making my own laundry soap and I save a lot of money. She told me the basic ingredients but I didn’t write them down. Then I remembered that I had watched a TV program where a big family also made their own soap.To say the least, I was interested. I looked up different recipes on the internet and made my own soap:
Recipe for 64 loads of home-made laundry soap:
1 cup grated soap (you can use any left-over bar soap and grate it on the kitchen grater), or 1/3 bar Fels Naptha utility soap
½ washing soda (from Arm and Hammer; NOT baking soda)
½ cup borax powder
2-gallon bucket
Heat 6 cups of water and melt 1 cup grated soap until well dissolved. Add ½ cup washing soda and ½ cup borax, stir to resolve. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups of hot water into the 2 gallon bucket. Add soap mixture and stir. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir (makes a total of 32 cups or 2 gallons liquid).
Let soap sit for about 24 hours to make it gel. Put detergent into covered containers like mason jars or empty detergent bottle. Use ½ cup per load.
Here is a step by step approach in pictures from the Family Homestead.
Your laundry will be clean and have a fresh smell, without any fragrance. For white clothes to be whiter, you can add ¼ - ½ tsp. of bluing liquid.
By drying your clothes with dryer balls, you can avoid any softener additions since the balls take away static cling. I bought mine for less than $5.00 at Bed, Bath and Beyond.
As for the cost of the laundry soap:
1 box of washing Soda (55oz.) $3.091 box of Borax Bleach (76oz.) $4.19
1 bottle of Mrs. Stewarts Bluing liquid (8oz.) $2.69
soap left-over $0.03
total $10
For 10 dollars I have soap for 64 loads of laundry plus the many more mixtures I will concoct in the future. According to the Family Homestead website it costs about 1 penny per load compared to 15 cents of the average bought detergent.
How’s that for saving money?
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