homemade laundry detergent

I have been making my own laundry detergent for several months now. The first batch I made was the testing phase. If I had been thinking about it I would have tracked how many loads I was doing and all that. But I wasn't. I went through the first batch and loved it. My clothes came clean every time. They came out smelling fresh, yet didn't have an overpowering scent. The second batch I made, I quadrupled the recipe. I didn't think about the fact that by doing this it would take me even longer to calculate how many loads I can get out of a batch. I was just so excited to make a whole dang tub of it! I also didn't think to take a picture of the ingredients for a groovy little blog post I could do later in case this worked out. Are we seeing a pattern here? Better late than never. That is my motto. So here's a random picture I found online:


There are a lot of different recipes out there to try, but I liked this one because it's only 3 ingredients, and is very simple to put together.

1 bar of Fels Naptha - $.97
1 cup Borax - $2.98/76oz
1 cup Washing Soda - $3.24/55oz

I think you can probably find all of these things in the laundry aisle of your grocery store. I found them in my Wal*Mart Supercenter. I'm sure the prices vary by region, but that is what I paid. For me it came out to about $1.86/42 loads.

Grate the Fels Naptha bar. Mix in the Borax and Washing Soda. Run it through a good food processor to turn the mixture into a really fine powder. Use 1 Tablespoon per load. Maybe add a little more if the load is extra soiled. Voila!