I have several friends that use homemade laundry soap. The number one reason - cost! I haven't done the math, but it's pennies a load. I made liquid laundry soap a time or two and while it did save a lot of money, it was a pain. Cooking it. Storing it. Shaking it before every load. Too much work for lazy old me! I stumbled across a recipe for dry laundry soap and thought I would give it a try. I've been using it pretty much exclusively ever since. It's super easy to make/store/use. And is just as cheap as the liquid version. The only hard part is finding the ingredients. Kroger carries them all in the laundry aisle. Not sure about other stores, but if you ask around, I'm sure you can find them.
The ingredients are:
2 cups Washing Soda (not baking soda, although it is made by Arm & Hammer too),
2 cups Borax,
1 bar Fels-Naptha soap (I've heard that you can use other bar soaps, but have never tried).
First grate the bar of Fels-Naptha onto a piece of waxed paper.
If your kids are cheese lovers like mine, warn them not to eat the soap that looks deceptively like freshly grated cheddar!
Spread the soap out and let it air dry for a day or two. This isn't a crucial step, but if you have the time it helps the soap break into smaller particles in the finished product.
Using the waxed paper as a funnel, put dried soap along with one cup each of Washing Soda and Borax into a food processor. Save waxed paper to use again as a funnel later. You can use your every day food processor. It's just soap. Wash it when your done and you can still use it for food.
Process until WELL combined and the Fels-Naptha has broken down into small particles. Add another cup each of Washing Soda and Borax (2 cups total each) and process until combined again.
Dump onto the waxed paper that you saved.
Used waxed paper as a funnel again and store in an air-tight container. I use quart canning jars because I had them on hand. My sister gave me a plastic lid that fits onto a wide-mouthed jar. It's super handy because I don't have to fight with the lid and rim every time I open the jar. You could also glue a lid into a rim to keep them together. From one batch I get over one quart. I store the extra in a regular sized mouth canning jar, which makes it easy to dump into the wide-mouth jar when I need a refill.
Now, here's the part you're going to have a hard time believing, but you're just going to have to take my word for it. USE ONE TABLESPOON PER LOAD!!!! I have washed hundreds of loads with this stuff and it works! Trust me! If you use too much it will build up on your clothes and washer parts. Don't ask me how it works with so little, just trust that it does.
Using 1 TBSP at a time, you can see that a batch lasts a LONG time! I don't know for sure how many loads it does. Assuming that the end result yields about 5 cups, then you get 80 TBSP (thank you unit converter on my computer - ha!). So, 80 loads. I don't remember exact amounts, but let's say the Washing Soda and Borax each cost about $4.00 and the Fels-Naptha is about $2.00. Also, you can get at least 4 batches out of each box of Washing Soda and Borax. So, basically $3.00 for 80 loads of laundry - less than 4 cents per load. And that's probably figuring high.
Some people have said that they don't want to use it because they like their laundry to have a certain smell. That doesn't bother me, but I use softner in the washer and just buy a scent that I like for that.
I also dilute my softner with half white vinegar. You can actually use just white vinegar as a softner, but I like to have the scent in there too.
Another laundry money saving tip...use cold water on most loads. Unless you've got some really dirty, nasty, smelly stuff, cold water will get it clean.
One last money and time saving tip - Bounce dryer bars. I bought one in March 2010 and haven't had to replace it yet! It's just starting to show through to the bottom and will probably need replaced this March. I think they cost about $3. Can't beat that price. And not having to throw a dryer sheet in with each load is just one more little time saver.
With 3 kids, I do a lot of laundry. Probably averages out to a load a day. So I've done anything I can to make it simpler and cheaper. Hope what I have learned helps you out too.
