1 qt. plus 2 gallons water
2 cups borax
2 cups washing soda
1 bar Lavender scented Dr. Bronner's bar soap, finely grated
- You can also use Zote laundry soap, which is cheaper, but I wanted to go with a more natural option. If you use Zote, only use about 1/2 bar.
Melt grated soap in 1 qt. water. Bring to boil - WATCH it - it boils over very quickly! Remove from heat, stir in borax and washing soda. Pour soap mixture into 2 gallon bucket. Stir well to make sure powders are dissolved. Fill bucket with water and let sit. It will gel as it sits. You may want to stir periodically to break up any large chunks. Pour into gallon containers. Use about 1/2 c per full load.
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| Melting the soap |
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| Waiting to gel. Got a little crazy with the water sprayer and ended up all sudsy... |
Hopefully this will gel. Last time I used a similar recipe, but for some reason, it didn't work right. I think I used too much water.
You can also make a powdered version - same ingredients as above, just don't melt the soap. Stir the borax, washing soda, and soap together and you're done. I made some powdered with Ivory soap once and it didn't work very well. I would recommend sticking with either Zote or Dr. Bronner's. If I made this again, I would add some generic oxyclean, which I get at Walmart for about $2.
I use the following recipe for my cloth diapers, as it's recommended not to use soap on them:
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
1 cup oxyclean
Just mix and use! Only use about 2 tablespoons of this or any other powdered detergent that you make.
All in all, this is a great way to save money, and you don't end up with quite so many chemicals in your detergent. The borax and washing soda are about $3 each, and last for atleast a few batches. Zote soap is less than $1. Dr. Bronner's is about $3-$4. So you will usually end up spending about $.05 per load. We all hate to do laundry, but maybe it will make it a little better if we know we're saving money in the process!
