Make a Change

Don’t waste money buying your laundry detergent when you can make your own in under 10 minutes!

Recipe:

• 2 parts grated bar soap
• 1 part Borax
• 1 part Washing Soda (not Baking Soda)

For the soap, select any bar soap you like, preferrably one with minimal packaging.  Ivory soap would be a good example.  You might also hold on to those slivers of soap that are hard to use … keep them in a jar until you have enough.

First, grate your soap on a medium fine grater.  The finer you can get it the better as it will be easier to mix all the ingredients together.  Some people use a food processor for the whole process.  Whatever works for you.

After you have grated your soap, measure it.  This measurement will help you in getting the right amount of Borax and Washing Soda.  For instance, one bar of Ivory soap will create 2 cups of grated soap.  Based on this measurement, 1 cup each of Borax and Washing Soda would be needed.

Dump all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and, either using a wooden spoon or your hands, mix the ingredients together for approximately 5-10 minutes.  I know this sounds like make-work work, but getting the ingredients to blend together is important to creating the best final product.  Consider this your workout for the day.

Once blended, find a nice container to store your homemade laundry detergent in.  I found a lovely glass jug with lid at London Drugs and also got a metal coffee measuring spoon to give that slightly elegant look (Italian made glass is so fashionable for laundry detergent, no?!).

This homemade laundry detergent works great in regular and HE washing machines.  It is low suds, so won’t harm your machine.  For HE machines use 1-2 tablespoons, for regular machines use 2-4 tablespoons.  (I use one coffee measuring spoon for my HE machine – no more suds at the end of the cycle and lovely clean clothes.)

Cost?  What you see in the glass jar is 26 coffee measuring spoons worth of laundry soap – one scoop per load for me.  Washing soda cost me $7.49 for 3 kilos (105.8 oz or 13.125 cups = 57 cents a cup); Borax cost me $5.03 for 2 kilos (70.5 oz or 8.8125 cups = 57 cents a cup).  A two bar package of Sunlight laundry bars cost me less than $2.  I can buy Sunlight laundry detergent for $8.95 for a powdered product that gives me 40 uses.  My homemade laundry soap costs me 8 cents a load; the purchased product costs me 22 cents a load.  Quite the savings!