Homemade Laundry Soap

There are about as many recipes online for homemade laundry soap as there are for chocolate chip cookies! And the same rule of thumb goes for the soap as the cookies, just try them until you find one you like!

I have lots of friends that make their own laundry soap so I figured I'd give it a try. My friend Holly was kind enough to make up a "kit" for me the last time she made hers, all I had to do was add the water. With the kit she included a list of 10 recipes I could try the next time. Well, that batch of soap finally ran out last weekend, so it was time to go buy our own ingredients and make our own.

Since this was my first time buying the ingredients and making it on my own I decided to stick with the recipe she had ready for me last time. (Side note, this is sounding all so complicated and technical that you have to follow someone's lead to make it - really it's not! But since I learned from someone else, I figured I'd pass along what I learned!) Most of the recipes suggest experimenting with the various ingredients until you find a combination that you prefer. You an even buy essential oils that smell like name brand detergents so your homemade soap smells the same as your store bought stuff!

Here's what I did. (note: this recipe calls for a 2 gallon pail or bucket that you fill with water at the end, to make 2 gallons of soap. I only have a 5 gallon bucket so I estimate what 2 gallons looks like!)

Ingredients: Boax, Washing Soda, Fels-Naptha bar soap, and water. I got everything at Wal-Mart in the laundry soap aisle. Every box of Borax was crushed, hence the mangled looking box! But everything you see here maybe cost me $8 and I only used a 1/2 cup of each of the powders and a 1/3 cup of the bar, so you can see how this is definitely a cost effective way to do laundry soap!!


Step One: Grate the bar of soap. You only need 1/3 cup for this particular recipe so I just grated the whole bar and it made almost a full 3 cups
So at $.97 a bar, you can get just about 9 batches worth = $.12 per batch (after tax.) :)

(I put the extra in a ziploc bag - just be sure to label it well - it looks just like shredded cheddar!!!)


Step Two: In a large pot, heat 3 pints (6 cups) of water. Add 1/3 cup grated bar soap and stir until dissolved. Then add 1/2 cup of both washing soda and borax. Stir until powders are dissolved then remove from heat.




Step Three:  In a 2 gallon clean pail or bucket (I used a 5 gallon bucket) pour 2 cups of hot water and add the heated soap mixture. Top off the pail with cold water and stir well. (This is where I had to estimate how much extra water to add. There are other recipes that use larger buckets and more water.)

Storage: You can choose to leave your soap in your bucket if you have a lid. Or you can put it into old (clean) laundry soap containers. This recipe uses about 1/2 cup per load, but be sure to stir/shake your soap well as it tends to gel.
My friend Holly said this recipe costs about $.83 a batch and this photo gives you an idea of how many containers I was able to fill with just one batch!! Sure "free" soap is good when you can find it, but now I know exactly what is in my soap and I can keep the ingredients on hand in much smaller containers than I used to do when I stocked up on "premade" laundry soap.

Well, I can't use the excuse that we don't have soap, so I guess it's time to go start the laundry!