Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Laundry Soap Recipe

Laundry Tips-Part 2
I had started a series on Laundry Tips... Well, last week was a blur and the week before I was posting Our Love Story. So it was shoved off... Sorry!!

This time I'll share my Laundry Soap Recipe. My cousin had used this recipe and I thought her strange for going to the work of making it, when it was so easy to just buy it!! She made it because all her babies would get bad diaper rashes when using store bought stuff. How times have changed and now I make my own ALL the time!! For one it is MUCH much cheaper!

Ingredients & Things You Need

  • 1 Fels Naptha Bar Soap

  • 1 1/2 c. Borax

  • 1 1/2 c. Washing Soda

  • 5 Gallon Bucket with lid

  • Water









Shred the Fels Naptha bar. I use my food processor, so fast and easy.


Put in kettle with 12 c. of water. On Med. heat - heat til soap is dissolved.
Add Borax and washing soda. Then stir until dissolved.
Pour 8 Cups HOT water into your bucket. Add the soap, Borax, soda mix to the water and stir.
Then add 2 Gallons and 12 Cups of water. I generally just do cold.
Then stir really well. And let sit 24 hours.

Then use a whisk or mixer to make smooth. A mixer works much better then the whisk. It is very glumpy!!! I use a long handled spoon, and make sure I get all the lumps worked up to the mixer, and yes, my arm gets half way down the bucket too. The one time I made it, I didn't get to the bottom very good, and when I got down to that point, I could tell it, it was more watery and not mixed so well.

It took about 2 months to use this amount of laundry soap. And I average 2 loads of wash a day!! If not more!!! And we really like it. You use 1/3 c. soap per load. I often throw in a bit more when washing Delvyn's barn stuff. There isn't really any smell that I can tell. But there is when you are heating it to melt the bar soap. Makes your whole house smell like you cleaned it from top to bottom!!! :)

A breakdown of the costs-
Fels Naptha bar of Soap- $.99
Borax-$4.99                6 buckets can be made from 1 box
Washing Soda- $2.49  4 buckets can be made from 1 box

So it costs $2.45 per 5 gals of laundry soap.
If I figure 2 loads a day on average-30 days a month, beings it lasted me 2 mths, would be 120 loads
= about $.02 a load!!! About $15 a year for your Laundry soap!!!:)And it really doesn't take much time at all to make it.

Just a note-Washing Soda IS different then Baking Soda. You can find washing soda at Walmart and most grocery stores. Same with the Borax.

Happy Laundry Day!!!:)

For printer friendly version click HERE.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for this. I have always wanted to know how to make this.

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  2. Thank you! From Scratch doesn't always mean FOOD! This is a great way to save money!

    Thanks for linking up to "from Scratch...". :)

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  3. I am humored that I just posted this! Our recipes are slightly different but same basic thing. Oh, and I can't get anything but the borax at our Wal-marts. We aren't in good ole north country you know. :(

    ReplyDelete