Homemade Laundry Detergent

Original Recipe found online

I have looked at so many different places not sure where I found this the first or who made it but thank you!

1 bar Fels-Naptha soap ($1 per bar)

1 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda ($3.00? for 55 oz)

1 cup 20 Mule Team Borax ($ 3.38 for 76 oz)

All of these things can be found at Wal-Mart or any store like it in the laundry isle and beside the soap each box will do several batches of soap

The recipe says to grate up the soap as small as possible (We used food processor but you can use a cheese grater) then stir in the other two ingredients and use 1-2 tablespoons per load.

We have been using this soap for about a year now with no problems it cleans the clothes really well and does not leave any scent. I have also read online that since it does not make a lot of suds it is ok for HE washers (not a professional so could not say for sure, but it has not messed up ours) 

I also put about ¼ cup of vinegar in the fabric softer dispenser of my washer to soften and deodorize clothes. 

Today mom and I made some more of this detergent up and decided to tweak it a bit so here is what we used.

 

6 cups Arm & hammer Washing Soda  

6 cups 20 mule team Borax

1 bar Zote pink

6 bar Fels-Naptha soap

¾ ml Tea tree oil in ½ of batch

Lotus blossom and vanilla fragrance oil in ½ of batch

6 cups Epsom salt

Measuring cup

Knife

Food processor 

 

What we did

1. cut up bars of soap so that they will fit into food processor 
2. Put in 1 bar of Fels-Naptha soap and 1/6 bar of Zote. turn on processor and grate until all the pieces are small
3. add in washing soda and borax and mix until well blended (he had to do one batch at a time because that is what would fit into my processor)
4. I also added ¼ ml of tea tree oil to each of the first 3 batches. 
5. After all 3 batches were made we put in 3 cups of Epsom salt and mixed in really well.

The 2^nd half of the soap we did not put in tea tree oil but added 9 drops of vanilla and 21 drops of lotus blossom

      After mixing everything in it still did not have a very good scent of the vanilla and lotus blossom so I took 4 cups of detergent out and added in 14 more drops of lotus blossom and 9 more drops of the vanilla

I hope that this is not to confusing we have decided to just add the scent drops after we fill up our containers so we could add what scent we like and how much we want.  

I also will not be using the vinegar this time because we added in Epsom salt. We have not used our tweaked recipe yet but I will share a review post when we have used it a while.   

What each ingredient does for the soap

Washing soda is a detergent booster

Borax is also a detergent booster, it fights stains, softens hard water, and gets rid of any odor. 

Zote brightens clothes,

Fels-Naptha is a stain fighter

Epsom salt is a fabric softener.  

If you try out our recipe or have you own tell us about it in the comments below.

 

-Becca & Debra