Laundry Detergent

Over the weekend I made a new batch of laundry detergent. I really love this stuff. It make our clothes feel so much cleaner than premade detergent.

I assembled all my ingredients. Borax, baking soda, super washing soda, oxiclean, and fels naptha.

I decided to try microwaving the soap and crushing it instead of grating it. This saved tons of time! I unwrapped the bars one at a time and put them in the microwave.

After 2 minutes of nuking, they were all puffed up and funny looking. The house also reeked of soap. Fels Naptha doesn’t have much of a scent normally, but for some reason microwaving it really releases the smell.

After a few minutes of cooling I broke apart the puffed up bars. This was super easy. The result looked bizarrely like scrambled eggs.

After another few minutes of cooling, I scooped the soap bits into our little Ninja a bit at a time and processed them for a few seconds.

The result is powdered Fels Naptha. I decided to do it this way because I almost always wash clothes in cold water and even though I didn’t have an issue with the grated soap dissolving fully, I figured this way might be better. Plus it mixes with the other ingredient powdered better than grated.

I poured about half the ingredients (the recipe is here) into my bucket and mixed well and then added the other half and mixed again.

I put the newly mixed up detergent into my fabric softener crystals container (from last time – I didn’t use the crystals this time) so it’s all ready and convenient to use.

My last batch lasted about 14 months so I expect this batch will as well meaning I won’t have to worry about making laundry detergent until at least May of 2015.

Cost
4 lb 12 oz box of Borax – $3.38
3 lb 7 oz box of Super Washing Soda – $3.24
3 lb container of Oxiclean – $7.52
4 lb box of Baking Soda – $2.18
4 bars Fels Naptha – $3.88 (97 cents each)
Total Cost: $20.20

Figuring about 300 loads of laundry (which is probably figuring low), this works out to about 6 1/2 cents per load. Honestly, I’d use this stuff even if it was more expensive than regular detergent because it gets the clothes so much cleaner looking and feeling. The fact that it’s really cheap is a great bonus.