Frugal Friday ~ Homemade Laundry Soap

My family of six makes LOTS of dirty laundry. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw the bottom of my hampers, because lets be real here, LAUNDRY IS NEVER DONE. This means I'd have to buy laundry soap almost as frequently as Lauren changes clothes.

If you have a little girl living at your house, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I stumbled onto the homemade laundry soap movement purely out of necessity. We were going through some financial struggles and had to find ways to pinch pennies. After making our first batch we realized how much money were were going to save, and we haven't gone back to the store-bought stuff since. That was probably 5 or 6 years ago.

Now, I know there are a million and one laundry soap recipes floating around out there on the web, and maybe you've tried a few, but since I'm asked so often about mine, I figured I'd make mine number one million and two. (Hey, that rhymed! I'm a poet and don't know it! Oh, never mind.) 

Anyway, I started out making a liquid laundry soap. We used this recipe from The Family Homestead for several years. It seemed to last forever, and I LOVED that, but hated have to grate the soap, melt the soap, and then wait 24 hours for the gel to set up. Plus, my whites started looking dingy and always had a wet dog smell no matter what we did. Definitely not good. So, I set out to find a different recipe. 

I found a powder recipe I liked and decided to give it a try.

Our cast of characters are: 

1 - 4 lb. box of Borax
1 - 4 lb. box of Baking Soda
1 - 4 lb. box of Super Washing Soda
1 - bar of Zote Soap (Some recipes call for 1 1/2 bars. I think you can adjust the soap to your liking.)

You will need something to store the laundry soap in (a mop bucket or a gallon-size ice cream bucket will work, but make sure it's big enough to give you room to stir everything together) and a tablespoon OR one of those nifty little coffee scoops from the kitchen gadget aisle at Walmart.

Ok . . . here comes the hard part.

Open all of your boxes and pour ingredients into your bucket. Stir well to make sure everything is evenly distributed. Break out your trusty cheese grater and grate your soap.

If you want to be really fancy, cut the soap into cubes and pop them into your food processor. I've been told the food processor works great, but if you want to get an awesome arm workout for the day, go with the cheese grater.

Alrighty, add the grated soap in with the rest of the ingredients and give them another good mixing.

This is what you'll get.

The recipe makes about twice the amount that you see in my bucket. We've been working on this batch for a little while.

Maybe one day I'll remember to take pictures of the whole process.

See my nifty little coffee scoop? One scoop equals 2 tablespoons (which is the amount you need per load, by the way), and it's PERFECT for the job. I love this thing. And I don't have to sacrifice one of my measuring spoons.

One batch will last my family 2 months. I did some calculating . . . ok, guesstimating . . . and you can get all of the ingredients for right around $10. That breaks down to $5 per month for laundry soap.

If you want to get really technical and break it down even more . . . 2 loads per day x 6 days (I try to not do laundry on Sundays) = 12 loads per week. 12 loads x 4 weeks in a month = 48 loads per month. $5.00 divided by 48 loads = $0.10 per load. Not too shabby, right?

Oh, and this is great for high efficiency machines because it doesn't make suds. I hope you'll give it a try.