Sunday, May 31, 2009

Homemade Laundry Soap

In the event of a long-term crisis, there may not be laundry soap available to you. You can store some simple ingredients in your home to be able to make your own should the need arise.

Also, this soap is fabulous for people with skin conditions. A case of skin eczema at our house was completely cleaned up after we started making our own laundry soap!

Here are the ingredients:

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Borax
Washing Soda
Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap

Homemade Laundry Soap

1/3 bar Fels Naptha or other type of soap
½ cup washing soda
½ cup borax powder

~You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size~

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Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

**A few things to note about the soap**

~The finished soap will not be a solid gel. It will be more of a watery gel that has been accurately described as an "egg drop soup" look.

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~The soap is a low sudsing soap. So if you don’t see suds, that is ok. Suds are not what does the cleaning, it is the ingredients in the soap.

Optional: If you want your soap to have some sort of scent you can scent this with ½ to 1 oz. of essential oil or fragrance oil of your choice.

Estimated cost per load: $ .02 (two cents)

The following recipe is for a powdered laundry soap if that is easier for some of you!

Simple Homemade Laundry Detergent Recipe

1. Grate 1/2 bar Fels Naptha soap (or you can try other soaps) in a food processor.
2. Add 1 cup Borax,
3. 1 cup Washing Soda, and,
4. 1 cup Baking soda.
5. Process until mixed.

That’s it. It takes 5 minutes. Use about 2 tablespoons per full load of laundry. You’ll be surprised at how little detergent it takes to get your clothes clean!

2 comments:

  1. Super cool Emily! Thanks for sharing! Does it smell very strong when you are making it?

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  2. okay so this post was a long time ago but I had a big bucket of Sam's detergent I just finished and I finally made this for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to find the ingredients (and cheap) and how easily this all came together (especially with the Sams bucket I already had). Thanks for sharing!

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