Homemade Laundry Detergent

So I heard about homemade laundry detergent from a friend on FB and started doing a little research into it. Almost every site I found had the same recipe and everyone that used it raved about it.  What I loved about the idea was that it claimed to last for months and the cost of the ingredients was $20!!

For a family of 6 that does at least a load of laundry, if not 2 every day...I can use savings like this!

The site that I found and saved the recipe is here...she has some reviews etc so check it out!!

So here are the details....

1 Box of Super Washing Soda 3 lb. 7 oz. 

1 Box of Borax 4 lbs 12 oz. size 

1 Box of Pure Baking Soda 4 lb. 

3 bars of Fels-Naptha 5.5 oz. or you could also use Ivory soap (I used Fels-Naptha)

1 container of Oxy-Clean 3.0 lb (My container was 6.0 lbs so I used 1/2)

Oh and if you like scented detergent you can add Purex Crystals to the mix - I prefer unscented so I left those out.

I was able to find everything at Wal-mart in 1 place - they are smart and know people are doing this and had everything I needed in the laundry detergent isle! Loved that!!

I forgot to take a picture of all the ingredients before I started...

The worst part is grating the bars of soap.  I started with my cheese grater and then used my food processor to chop it up even finer.

And I forgot to take a picture after I ground it up even more too! :)

It was suggested that you dump everything into a 5 gallon bucket to mix....

Which I did initially - but Dominic found a long Rubbermaid bin that seemed to work better for me.

So you just stir everything together and then put it in airtight containers for storage.

So there you have it! I have read this IS safe in HE washers (which is what we have) but you add it to the load directly and don't use the filler spot on the top of the machine. The sites have also said you only need 1-2 Tbls for each load....so this could last a long time!

I am running my first load right now so I am excited to see how it turns out!