A friend of mine has been making her own laundry detergent for a while now. For the past few months, I've brought over a couple empty containers and filled them up when she made a batch.
In my house laundry is a never-ending chore so we go through lots of laundry detergent. We were out again and I had to go to the store anyway so I thought I'd give it a go on my own.
I thought of one family that certainly makes more family than mine–the Duggar's–so I Googled and, naturally, they make their own laundry detergent. I checked out the recipe and headed to the store.
What You Need
- Fels-Naptha soap bar
- Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
- Borax
- 5-gallon bucket
What I Used
- Ivory soap (bar)
- 20 Mule Team Borax
- Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
- Large storage tote
What to Do
Grate the Ivory soap into shavings and melt into four cups of water on the stove. Put 2 1/2 gallons of hot water into the bucket and add 1 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax, plus the melty soap mixture. Stir until powders are dissolved.
Add another 2 1/2 gallons of hot water and mix. Fill clean empty containers halfway with your mixture and top off with water. I used a funnel to pour it in. E
What It Cost
It cost me $22.49 (according to Amazon) and took about half hour to make 10 gallons (that's right, 10 gallons!) of laundry detergent. Even with my mass-laundry making family, that'll last a pretty long time.
- Borax: $10.79
- Washing Soda: $8.43
- Ivory soap (4-count): $3.07
- Total: $22.29
What I Saved
The Purex laundry detergent (100 ounces) retails for $7.49 on Amazon. I got the Xtra (110 ounces) at Walmart and I couldn't find an online price for it, but the 58-ounce one on Amazon is $5.68 so let's figure around $9.
Making this detergent not only filled two Purex bottles and one 110-ounce Xtra bottle, which would've cost $23.98, but it also filled a small liquid fabric softener bottle, a milk gallon container and, yes, that's an empty 1.75-liter vodka bottle.
And to top it all off, I realized that because the kids were 'helping,' I missed the step that said to only fill the bottles halfway...so double it all! On top of that, I still have enough leftover ingredients to make three more batches and at that point, I'll only need to buy more bars of soap as the boxes of borax and washing soda are huge.
- Cheap laundry detergent: .07/ounce
- Make your own: .02/ounce (and that's only counting this batch, the cost goes down if you use the remainder of your ingredients to make more!)
- Savings: .05/ounce and beyond. And if you go through detergent like we do, those savings can add up fast!
