Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Homemade Laundry Detergent


So here's the recipe that I use to make my own Laundry Detergent. 
I've been meaning to post this for months now, but just found time this morning. 

I first was introduced to this idea by watching one of my favorite shows on TLC: 
The Duggar Family's 18 Kids and Counting. 

They have it posted here:  Duggar's Homemade Laundry Soap Recipe

Ingredients:


1 Fels Naptha soap bar, grated

1 cup washing soda

1/2 cup borax

I use the old laudry detergent containers to put the mix in. 
I also wrote the recipe on the container so I wouldn't loose it.
I had to divide the recipe because the Duggars use so much,
and I didn't have enough storage in my home for a 5 gallon bucket!


Grate the soap bar into a small saucepan. Cover with hot water.
Cook over medium-low heat, stirring continually, until the soap completely dissolves.




Put washing soda and borax in a 5-gallon bucket. Pour in the hot, melted soap mixture. Stir well, until all the powder is dissolved. Fill the bucket to the top with more hot tap water. Stir, cover securely, and let set overnight. The next morning, stir the mixture. Mix equal amounts of soap concentrate and water in a smaller laundry-detergent dispenser or container. Shake before using.

For top-loading machines: Use 1 cup of the soap mixture per load.

For front-loading machines: Use 1/2 cup per load.

3 comments:

Lela Paden said...

Wow! You amaze me with all you do. so I have a question. does the laundry soap have a fragrance? If not do you add something to make it a have a little smell? I normally use the costco powder laundry soap. It does not have a fragrance, however I would like to have a little smell to my laundry soap. what do you do? Have a blessed day.

Rachel said...

Does this work for he washers? I've thought about making my detergent too, but then I figured that it wouldn't work in my washer. I bet that detergent works well, too, because I use Fels Naptha as a pretreating stain bar. And it works REALLY well.
And Lela, I bet you could add some lemon or lavender essential oil to this mixture and it would give you a nice fragrance.

Olivia Orsborn said...

it has a light fragrance from the bar of soap, but you could add some like Rachel suggested, not sure about the HE washer, but I could give you some to try out if you'd like...