Homemade Laundry Soap

I finally did it! I’ve been talking about it for months and I finally made my laundry soap!

After looking at many recipes, I went with this one. I like that it is a dry detergent, and I didn’t have to deal with boiling a huge batch and the mess of it all.

The recipe:
I found all the ingredients in the laundry aisle at Walmart.

Total cost: $13.80 (more like $12.80 because I had a $1 off two arm and hammer laundry items)
The website I followed estimates this to last about a year, I believe, and estimated the cost to be about $28 a year.  I’m not sure if I got better prices or my interpretation of how long it lasts is off…  The difference in price could be due to my free OxyClean, and that I used a smaller bottle of Purex Crystals (she used 2 large).

I decided to try a half batch just in case I didn’t like it.

I used one soap, my smaller bottle of Purex Crystals, and used this guy to measure half of the boxed ingredients.

It would have been a lot easier to just do the full recipe because I could have opened the whole top of the box instead of dealing with those maddening perforated punch out spouts!

I grated the soap with my new grater and it went very smoothly and worked much better than expected. I layered each set of ingredients about three times and used my grater as a paddle to stir – it worked much better than a spoon.

A word of caution: Don’t layer your ingredients in a small space or with kids around. I never thought about the dust that would fly when layering all these powder ingredients. My (almost) 2-year-old wanted to watch and I felt like world’s worst mom for letting him breath the chemicals and then even worse for keeping him away when he wanted to watch. I don’t know if I needed to worry, but I wouldn’t want to chance it.

After mixing everything, I took a narrow but deep spoon and filled my Purex bottle.

… And then I realized I forgot the OxyClean…

So, I dumped it out, re-mixed everything, and re-filled the bottle. There was still quite a bit left in the bucket, but the small size and easy-pourability (new word???) of the bottle make it nice.

And, check this out! The recipe I followed pointed this out – there are three lines in the Purex Crystals cap. The middle line is about 2 tablespoons – and that’s all you need!!!

That’s it! It smells great and even looks pretty!

I was so excited to try it out! My husband is the laundry guy because he’s pretty fanatical about it. I was worried he wouldn’t give it the thumbs up, so I kept bugging him about it until that first load was done. He approves!!!

I might get two more small bottles or one of the big bottles of the Purex Crystals when I finish the second half of the recipe. He’s all about the smell, and even the small bottle makes it smell pretty good. Did I mention that he tested this out on his work clothes!?! If that isn’t a resounding recommendation, I don’t know what is!