Homemade Laundry Detergent

I had been seeing posts on pinterest on how to make your own laundry detergent- so I decided I needed to try it!

 A few months ago (sometime around thanksgiving), I made my first batch and it has worked pretty well. We use the homemade for clothes, towels and bedding- pretty much everything. We have a front loading HE machine, and after about a month of using the homemade detergent, I noticed water building up in the tray where you put the detergent. I googled, and found out there is an ingredient in store detergent that cleans the lines, so once a week I do our work uniforms with the store bought detergent, and the lines get cleaned out. Since I started that, there has been no water left in the trays! Lines are clean!

The basis of the recipe is from the duggar family website((and I tweaked it a bit)).

You will need:::

Borax

Super Washing Soda

a bar of Fels-Naptha

and a bucket of some sort- that holds about 5 gals

Grate a little more than half of the fels-naptha bar (I used a cheese grater and it worked pretty well).

Put the grated fels-naptha in a pot along with 4 cups of water. Stir until the soap has dissolved.

Fill the bucket with about two gallons of hot water.

Add the dissolved fels naptha.

Add 1 cup of the super washing soda and a half cup of borax to the bucket.

Stir until dissolved.

Add warm water to fill up the bucket. Put a lid on her, and wait til the next morning!

The next morning it should be gelled.

 The easiest way I found to transfer is to stir the top layer, about two inches until its more liquidy((great term, I know)).

Then, fill up a container of somesort- old laundry container, or milk jug about a quarter full of water,

and then add the gelatinous mixture into the rest of the jug. I haven't had any luck using a funnel- so I fill my little jug over the big one, and just laddle the soap into the jug. It gets a bit messy, but everything that doesn't make it's way in the jug, just goes back into the bucket.

You're done! The hands on part only took about 40 minutes. So easy! And so cheap- about 1cent per load!

I normally wait a day to use the detergent that I just put in the jug, because it needs time to gel up again.

Then, shake the jug once or twice before you put it in the washing machine, and voila!!

Enjoy your laundry detergent for months! (my last batch lasted about 4 months) :)