Tuesday, July 27, 2010

homemade clothes soap aka laundry detergent

i started making my own clothes soap earlier this summer.  its so simple and much cheaper.  plus, its better for the environment.  

3 ingredients


1 55 oz box of arm and hammer washing soda
1 76 oz box of 20 mule team borax
10 pack of 4.5 oz ivory bar soap

(you dont have to use ivory.  you can also use bar soap that is specifically made for the laundry such as zote or fels-naptha)

the recipe

1 bar of soap
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup washing soda


using whatever you have, you will need to shave down the bar of soap.  you can use a hand grater or even a food processor.  i used my ninja mixer.  it made the process quick and fairly simple.  i added the soda and borax at the same time which made the soap a little drier and easier to break down.  

once everything is pretty well mixed, i emptied into a container and stirred until having a power like this...


i usually make larger batches so i dont have to do this so often.  today i used 5 bars of soap, 1 1/2 cup soda and 1 1/2 cup borax.

you only need to use 1 tablespoon per load, depending on how nasty the clothes are.  :)

this can be used in  front loading machines too since this detergent is very low suds.   

2 comments:

  1. We are gonna have our own wash machine in pittsburgh and so I am finally going to start making this detergent too! i already got all the stuff to do it, wouldn't have ever tried had you not wrote about this on facebook before! Thanks!

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  2. What a great idea. I will be trying it immediately.

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