A Little of this and that.....

Saturday, September 10, 2011

How to Make Your Own Laundry Soap

I know that there have been many posts recently showing how to make your own laundry washing soap for your clothes.  Well a few weeks ago I decided that I would try my hand at making laundry soap of all things!  My 3 sisters responses were almost the same.  They all said " Why?" 

Well I thought it might be fun to try it.  I have also been very sensitive to chemicals for most of my life and it seems that lately it is getting to be a little more of a problem. I had also heard it is much less expensive and better for your plumbing to use more "filler free" products  My daughter is always telling me to think about the planet and try to be greener so that is one of the reasons I thought I would try it too.

It was really easy and simple to make.  It also only took 3 simple ingredients to make!  It was pretty cheap too!  All you need is Washing Soda, Borax and Fels Naptha or Ivory soap.  I quadrupled the following recipe and it turned out great.  The only thing I would change is that I would switch to Zote soap next time just because I would like to make pretty pink soap instead of the yellow soap.  I know!  What is with me and pink?  You can also add in some pure lavender oil or any other pure essential oil that you like to make it smell even better.  I was also told that to make it even stronger you could add in some Oxy Clean.  But here is the simple basic recipe that I used:

1/2 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
1cup Fels Naptha or Ivory soap (grated finely)
1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax 










The most tedious part is grating the Fels Naptha soap.  I used an old metal grater and had no problem at all.  It was a little larger pieces then I wanted so I then put it in a small old food processor that I wasn't using anymore.  That worked out great!  Mix all the ingredients and stir well.  Put your new laundry soap in a pretty container with a lid.  For lightly soiled loads I use 1 TBS and for heavily soiled loads I use 2 TBS.


















Of course I needed an antique silver scoop to put in my container with my laundry soap.  I found this beautiful one on E-Bay.  I know I don't need that big of a scoop since you only use 1 to 2 TBS. but I just thought this would look cute in the container.