Homemade Laundry Detergent

Is this on anyone's list? I have wanted to do this for a long time and I finally did it today. About a month or so ago we went for a shopping trip in the Sacramento area where we stopped at a Winco and stocked up on food supplies. I was excited to find everything I needed to make my own laundry detergent there. We normally buy a big thing of powder detergent at Costco and since I was running low on it Today I figured it was a good time to whip this up. I followed my SIL's tutorial found here. Here is the recipe:

1 bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap (grated, then food-processed)
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1/4 C Baking Soda

After grating the bar soap (the kids called it soap cheese) I pulled out my trusty Magic Bullet to get it as fine as I could then I mixed it all  together in my big Costco laundry detergent bucket. I also wrote the recipe on the lid so I can find it easily the next time I make it and I also wrote down how much to use 2 TB/load.

I filled my bucket about quarter of the way (which was about 4x the recipe) and I think it will last at least twice as long as my big costco bucket and probably longer. I had originally bought 4 bars of soap 2 boxes of Borax and 2 boxes of Washing Soda. I ended up only using about half a box of the Borax and Washing Soda. So really this is WAY cheaper than buying laundry soap.

The "cheese soap" (pre-food-processed)

The kids loved helping with the whole process

Here is what it looks like all mixed together

Here is the bucket with the recipe written on it (also makes a nice drum)

Oh, and Buddy and Bella also insisted that I write on the bucket that it was made by us - so I wrote all of our names on it - just so we don't forget :)

XO

Maren