Making Your Own Laundry Soap

We've not yet gotten all of our concrete goals in place so I thought I'd go ahead and show you how to make your own laundry soap.

As I mentioned before, I got to attend a class recently taught by a woman who lives in our area. She has been making her own laundry soap since this summer and she showed us how. I was extremely skeptical. I figured it would be lumpy or wouldn't clean as well. I thought it might fade out our clothes or be hard to make, etc. Nope. I love it. It works great! I've been using it for a couple of months now. The cost? It figures out to around 78 cents for ten gallons. Can't beat that. It's practically free.

The ingredients:

1 bar Ivory soap (If you are allergic to Ivory - try this recipe)

1 Cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (this may be hard to find. Call 800-524-1328, 9-5 ET to find a local relailer)

1/2 Cup Borax

You are also going to need a 5 gallon bucket with a lid (we purchased ours from a local farm supply store) and a container for daily use of your laundry soap (I used an old liquid laundry container).

1. First, grate the bar of Ivory soap. This may sound labor intensive, but it's not that bad. It only takes a couple of minutes. Add the grated soap to a saucepan of 4 Cups hot tap water. Stir continually over medium heat until completely melted and dissolved.

2. Next, fill your 5 gallon bucket 1/2 full with hot tap water. Add the melted soap, washing soda and Borax and stir until the powder is well dissolved.

3. Fill the bucket to the top with more tap water. Stir, cover and let stand overnight to thicken.

4. The next day your laundry soap is going to have thickened quite a bit. It may remind you of Jell-O. It's hard to stir at first but you want to mix it all together thoroughly. If you want to scent your laundry soap you may now add 10 - 15 drops of essential oil.

5. Now it's time to fill your clean laundry soap dispenser. Measure out a cup at a time and fill half of your laundry soap dispenser. Fill the other half (and you know exactly how much water to add because you measured how much soap you put in) with water.

6. SHAKE WELL BEFORE EACH USE. For this reason, I chose to use a smaller laundry soap dispenser. Use 5/8 Cup for regular washing machines and 1/4 Cup for HE machines (This is after it's been mixed with water in your daily laundry soap dispenser).

Don't forget to stir your soap in the big bucket before each time you fill your laundry soap dispenser. It will always appear clumpy in the bucket, but when you put it in your dispenser and shake it, it gets rid of the clumps. Like I said, my clothes are clean and smell fresh. I couldn't be happier! You will notice that you go through your daily dispenser a lot quicker than if it were store bought - because you are using more - but it's still SO much cheaper. And you have that HUGE bucket when mixed with water will make 10 gallons, so no worries!

I'm curious to hear if any of you try it and what you think! Best of luck!