Clean clothes for less!

Here's a quick and easy way to save a little cash!

Make your own laundry detergent :) It's easy to do and doesn't take much time! I made it during the kid's nap one day almost a month ago and it's lasted me until now! I'm gearing up to make another batch soon. The ingredients are all very inexpensive and will be enough for making many batches!

What you will need;

*1/2 cup Borax
*1 cup Washing Soda
*Laundry Bar Soap (such as Fels-Naptha)
*5 Gallon Bucket (with lid preferably)
*Long handled spoon (wooden spoon works best)
*Grater
*Medium saucepan
*Bowl
*latex gloves (optional)

The Felz-naptha can dry out/irritate your skin if you don't use them while grating seeing as it's concentrated. I do know however, that the finished product is not irritating unless you have an allergy to one of the ingredients used. Both of my children have very sensitive skin and our family has used this home-made soap with success. It's also a "free and clear" detergent because it doesn't have all of the extra perfumes and dyes like many you would buy. I do like nice smelling clothes so we choose to use Bounce dryer sheets instead of having perfume in our soap... it works awesome! I've used this soap for about a month and I love it! I still tend to add bleach to my white loads to achieve bright white results but this is definitely money saving :)

Simple steps include;

*Boil 4 cups water in medium saucepan

*Grate bar soap (I only used half of the 5.5oz bar of Fels-Naptha - if you have a small bar use the whole thing)The picture above shows the yellow bar soap, grated in a bowl.

*Add grated soap to boiling water in SMALL AMOUNTS to ensure soap boils down and doesn't clump as much. This took me about 10- 15 minutes.

*Add 3 Gallons of water to your bucket as HOT as you can get it out of your tap. Be careful :) The sink hose works nicely for this.

*Add your boiling water/soap mixture once all of the soap has boiled down, to your 3 gallons of hot water inside the bucket.

*Stir with long handled spoon. I used a wooden spoon, but you may also want to try using a slotted spoon just in case there are soap chunks to smush into the sides and try to dissolve. Stir for 1-2 minutes.

*Add 1 cup washing soda to bucket. Stir 1 minute, scraping bottom of bucket.

*Add 1/2 cup borax to bucket. Stir 1 minute, scraping bottom of bucket.

*Place lid on loosely ( I didn't have a lid yet so I used saran wrap and ribbon to improvise :))

*Wait 24 hours to reach the right consistency. You may find it to be somewhat watery, which is perfectly normal. It all depends on the laundry bar soap you choose. Some will be more like a gel when they are finished and some more watery. Mine tends to be a mix of the two and works great!

The savings comes out to around 2.5 cents a load which, compared to brands like Tide or Era saves you about 8 dollars a container!

Happy Washing!!


I linked up with J&M's Eye Candy Today! Check out "Help a Momma Out" Tuesday!