A couple weeks ago, I got the idea to make our own laundry detergent from this blog. I have never met the people who are in this blog, but I found them through Pinterest and I find their lives very interesting. Seth would say I stalk them ;) When he found out I wanted to make my own laundry detergent, along with so many other cost-saving ideas, Seth said that he needed to fly to Arizona, meet these people and buy them presents ;) Then, after I decided to make the detergent, I said "why not?" and decided to make fabric softener as well.
Honestly, I don't know why everyone doesn't do this! After buying all the ingredients, I spent pretty much the same amount I would have on the regular large jug of detergent we usually buy. And it makes so much more! And it works so well! Just as good as, if not better than, the regular detergent.
Laundry Detergent
You will need a box of Borax, a box of washing soda (not baking)
and a bar of Fels.naptha laundry soap.
You can get all of these ingredients at Walmart in the laundry section.
I didn't take step by step pictures, but the process is pretty simple.
Cut a third of the bar of soap off, and grate or cut it up into little pieces. Add the little pieces to a pot of 6 C of water. Put the pot over the heat and leave it there until the soap completely melts. There should be no soap chunks left!
Take the pot off the stove, and add 1/2 C each of the Borax and washing soda. Stir until all of the ingredients are dissolved.
Pour 4 C of hot water into a five-gallon container. Then pour in the soap mixture. Stir until well mixed. Add 1 gallon and 6 cups of water. Stir again.
Cover and let sit for 24 hours. When you open the container, the mixture will be very thick! The blog described it as the consistency of mutilated jellyfish :) Stir the mix until it breaks down and becomes pourable.
At this point, you can just leave the detergent in the container or put it in cute bottles like I did :) Then, just add 1/4-1/2 C to a load of wash depending on how soiled it is.
Fabric Softener
The fabric softener is even easier to make than the detergent. For this, all you need is 6 C hot water, 3 C white vinegar and 2 C hair conditioner. It really doesn't matter what type of conditioner you use. Seth and I just sniffed random bottles at the store until we found a smell we liked, and that's all that matters in this!
Mix conditioner and hot water until the conditioner dissolves. Once again, make sure there are no chunks!
Add the vinegar and mix well.
We stored the fabric softener in an old milk gallon container, as well as our cute bottles. But, you can store it however you like!
Add 2 tbsp to the wash load in the normal fabric softener spot.
I'm so excited to see how long this batch lasts us :) So far, it's saving us tons of money!
