Homemade Laundry Soap

I don't know about you, but I've made my own laundry soap a few times. The biggest hassle? Finding a container large enough to fit it all in! Every recipe I've had has called for making at least 2 gallons at a time.  I mean, who keeps 2-5 gallon buckets just sitting around their house? And if you do, you should sell those, I'd have paid money a couple of times to have one.

So when my last bucket laundry soap container kicked the bucket (ha!), I just figured, this is ridiculous. I'm spending $5-$10 bucks two to three times a year for buckets because they tend to crack after a while of putting hot liquids in them. I had just been using your average run of the mill trash can you can find at your local discount store. Plus, they had no lids. I've dropped things into them before, almost knocked them over....

So I decided it was going to have to work differently around here. I don't have the money or the room to keep a 5 gal bucket sitting in my already cramped 5x5 laundry room, so I needed something smaller. What I did have on hand, and I bet you do too, is a 100oz liquid laundry container from previous bought laundry soap. So I decided when it was empty, I would make soap that would fit in there, but still clean as well as I know homemade laundry soap does. The best part of all this? Each load costs me less than 2¢. You're average commercial laundry soap costs 35¢ - 40¢ depending on local pricing. For someone like us, with six people and Mt St. Kurz to climb every week, this translates into tons of savings!


So here's what you need:



Water
Borax
Washing Soda
Fels Naptha or Ivory soap bar





The first thing you want to do is cut off one ounce
 of fels naptha (or ivory) from the bar. Now the
 fels naptha that I use, comes in 5 ounce bars so
I just eyeballed a 5th of it. Turns out I wasn't too far off!




Then, take a grater, and grate the soap into a saucepan. This will make the melting process much easier. You're going to then add in three cups of hot water, and heat it up, stirring continuously. It took about 6 minutes for it to melt completely. You'll then add in a 1/4 cup of both the Washing Soda and Borax powders. They'll feel gritty when you first stir them in, when you no longer feel grit in the bottom of the pan with your whisk, it's done. Remove from heat.

While that's cooling off, rinse out very well your old 100oz laundry soap container. The pour spout should screw off so you can just take it off and rinse it too. Fill it with 2 cups of water and add in your soap mixture. Give it a few shakes. I didn't shake up and down, I just sort of swished it around to get it evenly distributed. Now you'll top off the container with water. which is just at 10 cups more. Swish it around again a couple of times, and let it sit overnight. It will gel up a bit, but still be a bit runny, this is perfect.

Now you're ready to use your soap! For a whole load, you'll use 1/2 cup.. For half loads 1/4 cup. This is certainly safe for HE machines (I have one myself) as it doesn't suds very much. Because of the lack of suds, you might think it's not cleaning as well, however, I assure you, it is.

Top off your load with a 1/4 cup of white vinegar in the spot for fabric softener for the benefits of being a fabric softener, whites whitener, an antimicrobial and vinegar is known to kill many strains of E-coli and molds. And of course, for those of us that cloth diaper, fabric softener is a no-no and vinegar is a must!