Making Laundry Soap

I have read on several blogs of homemakers making their own laundry soap.  I had been wanting to give it a try, too, for awhile now.  I bought all the ingredients at the Winco grocery store about a month ago while we were up in Menifee visiting some friends who were camping there.  Sadly, San Diego County does not have a Winco Food store.  I need to request one from the company! (That and a Hobby Lobby Store…. I miss the one I always went to in Iowa).

I did check out the stores around here, though, and I would have to run to a couple different stores to get all the ingredients, but at least I can still make the soap pretty reasonably.

You will need:

 

3 bars - 5 1/2 ounces each - Fels-Naptha laundry soap,  or

2 – 7 ounce bars of Pink Zote Soap. 

I bought this pink soap at the 99c Only store.  I am thinking you could probably even use Ivory bar soap maybe???  You think?  The Fels-Naptha soap says it is a heavy duty laundry soap.  You can use the Fels-Naptha to pretreat your stained clothes by wetting the stain and rubbing the bar of Fels-Naptha on it.

I used the Fels-Naptha soap in my homemade laundry soap recipe  today.

You will also need a 3 pound 7 ounce box of Washing Soda.

a 4 pound 12 ounce box of Borax soap and

and 4 – 1 pound boxes of baking soda (or a 4 pound box if you can find one).

Grate the soap bars.  I have read where some homemakers use a food processor or meat grinder.  I used a cheese grater which took me about half an hour to grate all 3 bars.  My arms tend to get weak really fast from an injury they haven’t healed from yet…. you may be able to grate the soaps faster. 

Be sure to wash your hands when you are finished.  Fels-Naptha can be irritating to your skin if you don’t at least rinse them.

Next open each of the boxes of other ingredients and dump into a large plastic container.  I am storing the soap in a used 28 pound Costco laundry soap bucket. 

I dumped in the Borax first and mixed it with the grated bar soap.  Then I dumped in the washing soda and baking sodas. 

I used a large plastic spoon to mix the soaps and baking soda altogether.  I tried to get all the clumps from the Borax broken up, but there are a few small lumps left.  The spoon in the picture above is the measuring spoon for when using the soap.  I used a large plastic serving spoon from the kitchen to mix the soaps with.

The homemade laundry soap filled the 28 pound bucket up to the top of the baking soda box, or just below the red words ‘laundry detergent’. 

All in all, it took me less than an hour to mix all the ingredients.  If you use a food processor to grate the bar soap you could probably have the laundry soap made up in about 15 minutes or less.

The directions for use say to use 1 to 2 tablespoons of laundry soap per washer load of laundry.  You should get about 150 loads washed with this soap.  I had saved my receipt so I could tell you exactly how much it cost to buy all the ingredients…. but wouldn’t you know I can’t find what I did with that receipt! 

I do know that I paid almost $20 for the 28 pound Costco bucket of laundry soap.  For the 2 of us, that bucketful lasts us about 3 1/2 months of washing.  The bucket says it does 200 loads of laundry.

I paid a little over $10 for all the ingredients to make my own laundry soap and I should get roughly the same amount of loads washed as the Costco brand. 

I will begin using the soap tomorrow, so I will let you know how well it does then!