Homemade Laundry Soap

For some time I have had the desire to make my own laundry detergent. I have purchased home made laundry detergent and loved using it. Doing some searches online, I found many helpful sites.

I made the basic powder detergent which requires only three ingredients.  Fels-Naptha bar soap which claims to be ideal for pre-treating stains, Arm & Hammer all Natural Super Washing Soda and borax.  I found all three ingredients in my Harris Teeter Grocery store. The washing soda is good for removing odors and treating greasy dirt stains such as perspiration and collar and cuff stains, plus food stains (mustard, chocolate, blueberry, meat, grease spatters) and many more stains.  The borax is also good to remove stains, deodorizing and it's an alternative to color safe bleach.

For this basic recipe you will use:

One 5-1/2 oz Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap (strange little name, don't you think?)
One cup of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
One cup of 20 Mule Team Borax
A grater to grate the laundry bar soap
A wooden spoon
A Food processor (to pulverize the mix)

Using the grater, grate the laundry bar soap.

After grating, this is how the flakes look.

Add the washing soda and the borax to the soap flakes.  At this point you can use your wooden spoon to mix and mix until the flakes become smaller.  I decided to use my small food processor to speed up this process and it worked well.

Store the detergent in a jar.  You will only need to use 2 tablespoons according to this recipe.  This is a very economical way to wash your clothes.  Somewhere else I read  that one load will cost approximately a nickel. 

The next thing I want to try is to add a scent to the mix.  I need to do some more research and reading.  Check out this site  for even more homemade laundry detergent recipes.