Ingredients
to make laundry detergent you only need 8 items:
-one bar of soap (any kind)
-1 cup washing soda
-1/2 cup borax
-around 3 gallons of water
-a 5 gallon bucket
-a cheese grater
-a medium sized pot
-a long thing for stirring (i used a stick)
washing soda was the hardest ingredient to track down. nevertheless, i tracked it down in grants pass so it should be find-able anywhere. i found a big box of arm & hammer washing soda at fred meyer in the laundry aisle near the borax. best to call shops ahead of time to save yourself the misery, since many places don't seem to carry it.
borax is optional, as some people think it's harsh on colors, but i use it because with all jay's nasty woodworking-welding-painting-roofing-handymaning clothes we need all the cleaning power we can get.
the first batch i made with a bar of dr. bronner's unscented soap. this second batch i made using fels naptha laundry soap, since i had most of a bar still sitting around (i used a bit of it to dry my skin out when i got NASTY poison oak this summer...should prob blog about that later). if you have those mini bars of soap you get from hotels, i read about a lady using them in this recipe, and i thought that was a great use for useless soap.
we have a lot of 5 gallon buckets lying around, but if you don't then you can usually get one from a hardware store for 3-4 bucks. or you could get a free one from a restaurant, they throw them away all the time. if you have another 4+ gallon sized container handy, feel free to use that.
Directions
1. in a medium sized pan, bring 4 cups of water to a boil
2. while the water is boiling, grate the whole bar of soap
3. once a boil is reached, turn the water down to a simmer. add the grated soap bit by bit into the water, constantly stirring the pot so that the soap dissolves. you'll end up with really soapy soupy water.
4. put the washing soda, borax and 3 gallons of warm water into the bucket and stir
5. next add the dissolved soapy water into the bucket and stir. it'll just look like mildly soapy water at this point, but wait for the magic to happen
6. put the lid or cover on the bucket and let it stand for 24 hours.
7. the next day, marvel at your creation and use 1-2 cups per load (im more lax about using more of this detergent since its so cheap).
this is what mine looked like in the morning the day after i made it:
just looks like yellowish (from the fels naptha soap) soapy water right? but here's what it looked like when i started stirring it:
WHOA! its gelatinous! this is by far my favorite bit about laundry detergent making....for some reason with these ingredients, once you let it sit it thickens into a gel! so cool. i read that this varies depending on what kind of soap you use, and probably on if you use borax or not.
so my cost break-downs were something like:
$4 for washing soda
$3 for borax
$3 for bar of soap
but the washing soda and borax are big enough that you have enough of these ingredients for 5 or 6 batches of homemade detergent. so for us, that's 3 years worth of detergent! oh, and i checked out the ingredients for some 'natural' laundry detergent from the store, and it had washing soda as the chief washing agent too...soooo might as well make it ourselves and save hella money.
one more thing- jay is really sensitive to scents in laundry detergent, otherwise i'd probably use some essential oils to make our clothes smell yummy. lavender and tea tree oil are both cleansing and smell damnnnn good (would be a nasty combination though).
for a real price breakdown and a test between tide and homemade detergent check this out. this is also the full recipe i use. this guy found that homemade detergent works just as well as tide, but costs only $6.97 for 312 loads of laundry, whereas tide costs $62.60 for the same amount of loads.
bottom line: making your own laundry detergent = fun+money saving+clean clothes+weird gelatinous goo+awesome. so now i have another 6 month supply of laundry detergent. you should make some too!
No comments:
Post a Comment