DIY Laundry Soap

That's right. This week I made homemade laundry soap. It was easy, and incredibly inexpensive.

By making your own laundry soap, you are saving money, and then you know exactly what is in it. That reason is why I love making so many things myself. Then you gain a knowledge of what is in things, but you also usual simplify the ingredients, which we know is a good thing these days, with so many sketchy chemicals and processing.

My recipe is based off of this website. Her knowledge is totally informative, and she even calculated the cost per load.
 http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm

I used:
approx 1/6 of "Island Essentials" Natural Soap Bar. I purchased it from Thrifty Foods, and it is Lemon Grass Scented. A nice scent for laundry.
1/4 cup of washing soda
1/4 cup of borax
2 litres plus 8 cups of water

 Grate the soap into a small-medium saucepan.

Grated soap.

 Add 3 cups of water and heat on medium heat, stirring until the soap dissolves.

3 cups of water added to the soap and put on medium heat. 

 Add the washing soda and borax to the soap mix and stir until dissolved.

 Add 2 cups of hot water to your container of choice. Your container will need to be large enough to hold about 3 litres.

 Add the soap mixture to the container with hot water in it.

I used this old pickle jar to measure water. I don't know about you, but I own any litre measurer. This made it simple.
After mixing the hot water in the container and the soap mixture, add an additional 2 litres and 3 cups of water to the mix. 

 Leave the mix to sit for 24 hours.

Here's what you'll have. The top of this was much firmer then the contents actually, but it was still quite solid and gel like. 

I put my soap in this old pickle jar (yes, I have lots of pickle jars. At my work, we feed the children pickles. Everyone knows to keep the pickle jars so me to take home). It holds 2.25 L, but it was the biggest container I had. I kept what didn't fit in the container from earlier and we are using that stuff first. Hence, I advice finding a 3L container. 

The results: 

Use about 1/2 cup per load of laundry. Since we live in an apartment, our laundry room is downstairs. We just measure out what we will need and put it in a container. We used the soap for a few loads of laundry. All the clothes turned out nice and clean. You actually really couldn't detect the scent of the lemongrass soap, but that's totally fine. I'm sure that will be beneficial to people with sensitive noses. But it works! It's easy to make! And it is so cheap! The boxes of washing soda and borax were an initial investment, but they will last a long long time. 

Please remember to refer to the link above if you want to know more. 

Blessings,