Homemade Laundry Detergent

I found the “recipe” on Pinterest to make your own homemade laundry detergent.  I wasn’t looking for a recipe and had never considered making my own. I’m not someone who would normally do something like this. But I haven’t been real happy with the detergent I’ve been using and I don’t want to spend the money I’d need to in order to buy the detergent I’d like.

I decided to give it a go.

The Ingredients

1) A bucket or large container
2) Plastic bag to line the bucket
3) Food Processor
4) 4 lb 12 oz Box of Borax
5)  4 lb Box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda
6) Oxi Clean 3 1/2 lb (This is a 5 lb container)
7) 3 lb 7 oz Box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
8) 3 bars of Fels-Naptha

I found everything other than the Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda at Walmart like best zero turn mower for your big lawn and best above ground pool. My Kroger store had the Washing Soda.

Line your bucket with the plastic bag

Open up your 3 bars of Fels-Naptha.  I’ve never used this before, so this was new to me.

Cut it with a decent knife.

Don’t use the chopping blade, use the blade that slices.

I ended up with some of these little balls of Fels-Naptha left at the top of the blade

Kind of looks like cheese doesn’t it

In the bucket I then layered the ingredients. You don’t have to, but I thought it would just help mix them up a bit better.The woman who made this said she has no problem with the Fels-Naptha dissolving and she uses cold water to wash her clothes.  There were many comments on her post and a few people had problems with it not dissolving.  One person said that after she mixed it all up she then ran it through her food processer again and then she had no problems with it.  So I decided to do that to begin with it.Now is when you want to use the chopping blade.  I learned from a process of elimination.  This is what it looks like before….This is what it looked like after running the food processor for about 45 seconds.   The process of doing this with all of the mixture took me about another 1/2 hour, but I think it will be worth it.Here’s what it looks like all together.

I had a large glass jar and made labels out of chalkboard contact paper. I just used a piece of chalk to write on it (duh).

I thought it would be fun to put the recipe on the jar also… so I put it on the back of the jar.The mixture filled this jar.Now to try a load of clothes with it.  Use 1 – 2 Tablespoons per load.  I have a front load machine and the post I found this on said it is fine to use in front loaders. I normally use HE detergent.  She also put hers in the tub first, not in the dispenser. But the woman who ran hers through the processor again said it now would work fine in the dispenser.  So that is what I tried.  I usually use liquid, so I had to remember to adjust the setting inside my Front Load from liquid to powder setting.

I do not have a top load, but from the source where I got this recipe, it appears that you use the same amount as the front load. She mentions it doesn’t see like enough, but that because there aren’t fillers in this laundry detergent it is enough.I did a load and used warm water. I checked the dispenser after the load and there was nothing left in it. I had a black shirt in the load and pulled it out to check it for any bits of fels-naptha on it.  Yay!*Note – after several loads I started getting a yellow “ring” in the tray, so since then I’ve been putting the detergent directly into the washer tub before I put in the clothes. I haven’t had any problems with residue left in my laundry tub.I think it looks so nice on my dryer, don’t you?Now down to a bit of reality, this glass container sitting on my dryer looks nice – but my washer really rattles around, and in turn this glass jar rattled around… a lot!  It was too heavy to use on my wire shelf, so I adjusted.   This isn’t nearly as cute… but much more practical for my needs in this laundry room.

I peeled off the other labels and since I had just used chalk, of course I messed up the writing.  I used my chalk markers on this one.