DIY Laundry Detergent

If you are like me, you have wasted oh I mean spent a lot of time on this little old website known as Pinterest. I have this love hate relationship with this site. I love it because it has given me so many great ideas from food to crafts to clothes and home improvements. And I hate it for all the same reasons. It seems like there is a never ending supply of new great  ideas that I just HAVE to try out. Some good and even more not so good. I can spend hours on Pinterest and talk about these great things I have seen. But HIM does NOT like Pinterest, not at all. He says that it is an evil site and there is a never ending supply of eye rolls when it is even mentioned.

Anyways on to why you are really reading this...for a while now I have seen and heard people talk about making their own laundry detergents. And have thought hum that could be useful....but do I really want to shred, cook, mix, separate and whatever else... It just sounded like a lot of work and way too time consuming. Even if it saved me money. Well with our ever growing household there comes the never ending mountain of laundry...yes mountain(I will take pictures so you will believe me). Last week I did 13 loads of laundry....granted we washed bedding as well but still 13 loads is A LOT of laundry. I usually use Purex Natural Elements 66 loads for $6 with Snuggle's white lavender and sandalwood fabric softener 50 loads for $4.50. For a year doing about 8 loads of laundry a week I can easily spend $80.50 on just detergent and softener. And with our new additions that price was guaranteed to be a lot more.

After reading several blogs on homemade laundry detergent I settled on a dry mix (howdoesshe.com) that is suppose to last a year for a household that does 6 loads a week. I only spent $31.16 for everything and didn't even use all of the items. So the next batch will cost even less. Here is the items list:

1 (4 lb 12 oz) Box of Borax- Found in the detergent aisle

1 (3 lb 7 oz) Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda- Found in the detergent aisle

1 (3 lb) Container of OxyClean- Found in the detergent aisle. (This is optional, I only used half of it)

5 (5.5oz) bars of Fels Naptha - Found in the detergent aisle (could also use zote soap)

1 (4 lb) Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda- Found in the cooking aisle (You could also get two 2 lb box, we couldn’t find the larger 4lb box when we went)

1 (55 oz) Bottle of Purex Crystals Fabric Softener- Found in the detergent aisle

I forgot to take a picture before I started but here they are after

So armed with all the ingredients, an old school hand grater, bowl and large container to mix it all it, I was ready to get started. Unfortunately I still had to grate/shred the Fels Naptha, but it really wasn't as bad as I anticipated it to be.  It looked a lot like cheddar cheese and Little miss S would come up to me saying cheese, bites please and getting mad because I had to tell her no. She is such a mess...but back to the detergent....after all 5 bars were shredded I started to add a little bit of the other items and mix with a spoon. But that didn't last long at all. I ended up just dumping everything in the bucket at once and used my hands to mix it all up. The spoon just wasn't getting it all mixed up so I just dug right in. It took me about 30 minutes from start to finish and that was with me taking some breaks to check on dinner. And to sooth Little miss S...she has been an emotional mess these past few days. I wasn't thinking about how I was gonna store it when I was at the store, so I filled the Purex bottle up with some and just covered the bucket with a blanket until I can go back and get something to store it in. I was thinking that I will just get a medium sized Rubbermaid plastic container the next time I went to the store. 

I made this batch on Saturday but didn't get to use it until Monday. I don't think I have been this excited to do laundry in my life. I figured I would test it out on my towels first since they are the one that I expect to look, feel and smell clean no matter what. And it PAST the test!!! I used the cap off of the Bottle of Purex Crystals Fabric Softener and it worked great. I will not be going back to store bought detergent any time soon. I am now excited to see how long this will last our ever fluctuating household. So now I have to say a big thank you to Pinterest and to howdoesshe.com for this recipe!