Homemade Laundry Detergent - Dry

For the last several months I have been tossing around the idea of making our own laundry detergent, so yesterday as I walked through walmart I decided I wasn't going to ponder of the thought any longer. No, I was going to make my own laundry detergent and I was going to like it! 

I went straight to the laundry aisle and picked up a box of 20 Mule Team Borax ($3.48 at walmart and kmart had them 2/$5 but I had already purchased some), Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda ($3.24 at walmart) and a bar of Fels Naptha ($.97 at walmart). All of these are located right by each other in case you were wondering. I informed the husband when he got home from work that I would be making our own laundry soap and he didn't even question me. He's actually very supportive in us doing as much as we can on our own to save a buck and maybe do something beneficial for ourselves. Speaking of finances, the total I spent on everything today was only $6.69 and next few times I will only need to buy a Fels Naptha bar. I think that's pretty good considering we normally use Tide and it's NOT cheap in my opinion.

So here is my recipe

4 cups 20 Mule Borax 

4 Cup Super Washing Soda

1 Bar Fels Naptha

Cheese Grater

1 Cup Measuring Cup

Container with lid for finished detergent. I used a Cereal bin.

You will need to grind the Fels Naptha bar. I used a cheese grater and it worked great, just took a little time. You can also use a food processor but I didn't see the need for that as I have problem with doing some manual labor. If you have a blender you can put the shredded soap in there to make it even more fine.  This entire process took me maybe 15minutes and that included taking care of Rory at the same time.

Here is what I ended up with

This is with just one cup of the borax and super wash. I ended up making it with four cups each after I took photo. This also has the one bar of fels naptha already in it which is why it's yellow.

As you can see I went ahead and stuck in a TBSP measuring utensil. I will be trying to wash with 1 TBSP for normal washes and 2 TBSP for soiled washes like Rory's diapers. I'm not really sure how many loads of laundry this amount of detergent will do but I will soon find out. I'm hoping that it will last at least a month or one load a day for 30 days.This will of course be a trial run. It may need tweaked when it comes to how much I use. I can tell you already though that it smells really good!

Oh and one more note I got from a friend (same one who gave me this recipe). If you are wanting to get away from using a dryer sheet, you can use a piece of clean cloth, with two safety pins attached to help alleviate the static cling build-up. I'm going to be trying this out as well! I will be thrilled if it works!