Making Homemade Laundry Soap

I first discovered this when a good friend (Jody! Thank you!) made me a sample which I held on to for a really long time before I actually tried it.  I thought, ok, whatever.  I finally used it one day just because I had run out of detergent.  

I was so surprised--IT WORKS GREAT!  

Since then, I looked up several recipes online, tried a liquid version, but decided that this one is the easiest and least messy one for me (as well as the most similar one to my friend Jody's).  I have not bought laundry soap since.  

Check it out:

These are the ingredients you'll need.

 You should be able to find the Washing Soda and Borax in the laundry aisle.  If you're like me, you probably never noticed either of those products before.  They are all-natural and have been around forever.  

Secondly, the soap--I'm using Kirk's Castile soap because it is readily available at my little local grocery store.  Other soap products you could use are Ivory Soap or a product called Fels-Naptha which is a 'laundry' bar soap great for stains.  That would be my ideal one to use, but I would have to go out of town to get it.  Basically, you want to use a very mild, natural, not too heavily perfumed soap that will rinse very clean and dissolve well.

Step 1.  Grate the bar soap.

OK, the first thing that you do is to grate the soap.  This is the only "hard" step.  If you have any children who need something to do or who need to be punished, have them sit in a corner and grate up your soap!  Just kidding.  It's not horribly difficult.  I use a regular cheese grater for this part, nothing special.

This is what it will look like.  (This is a triple batch, by the way.)

Once you've grated the soap, you'll need to make it much finer, otherwise it probably won't break down as quickly in the wash.  I use a little food processor for this step.

Make it as fine as your chopper is able.

This is what it will look like.

Next, you'll add the washing soda and the borax.  The ratio is:

2 cups grated soap (1 bar = 1 cup)

1 cup Borax

1 cup Washing soda

Mix it all together and you're done!

1 cup washing soda, 1 cup Borax.  Add these to 2 cups of the soap.

Finished product!

The BEST part about this soap is that you only need to use 2 TBSP. per load!  What a huge money saver this has been.  I didn't even start making it to save money, what I like is that I can avoid whole aisles in the store, it's pure and natural, and I'm the one making it (which I like).  I don't have to be sucked in to the whole laundry aisle hype.  This stuff works GREAT and smells really nice but not in an overpowering way like so many of the store-bought detergents.  

If you wish to add fragrance you can add a few drops of essential oil in whatever scent you prefer.  I happen to like it just the way it is.  

Now--go on and get dirrrrty!