DIY Laundry Detergent

Making your own laundry detergent is super easy and extremely cheap in the long run. I have always read stuff about making your own soaps and cleaning products and thought, yeah I could that, but laziness got the best of me and I'd end buying the in store products anyways.  It was really my husband who motivated me to actually make the detergent. He looked up several recipes online, found one he liked, bought the ingredients and made the first batch.   I watched him do the whole thing and it was stupid easy.  So that was a little over a year ago and I've been making detergent and other cleaning products ever since. 

Here's what you'll need

This fills up a 5 gallon bucket about halfway

2 boxes of borax

2 boxes of arm & hammer washing soda

1 bar of fels-naptha

1 bar of regular soap...it can be scented or unscented. It's personal preference at this point

Then you dump the borax and washing soda into a mixing bucket, stir together to combine. Next bust out your regular ole cheese grater and grate the fels-naptha and bar of soap into the detergent mix. This is the only slightly time consuming part of this project. It's not bad though. Once everything is grated up, just give the mixture a few good stirs to make sure everything is combined.  

It'll look like this with the fels-naptha and soap shavings mixed in

You can find all these ingredients in the laundry detergent isle at the grocery store or walmart. I had never even heard of fels-naptha or even seen it. That's because they hide it on the bottom shelf at the store. So you can't even hardly find it.  Anyways, all these ingredients are gonna cost you $15.39 and it lasts for months.  I made my last batch in April and I still have a little less than half left

It's already lasted me about 3 months and I've got plenty left. Also, it's not like I never do laundry either. I have a 2yr old boy, a husband who is a builder, 3 dogs and 9 chickens. Trust me, the laundry piles up quick. 

You can customize your detergent any way you want, like adding scented soaps or essential oils.  In my current batch I have lemon scented soap and it smells great.  This homemade detergent isn't only practical and economical, but it's not full of all the weird chemical ingredients that you can't even pronounce like in the brand name laundry detergents.  The homemade stuff cleans well, gets out stains and leaves your clothes feeling fresh. 

I love making my own laundry detergent. I love how cheap it is and how long it lasts.