Making Laundry Detergent

One of my most recent frugal efforts has been making our own laundry detergent.  It's really easy & usually done while watching a movie.  After making a batch a liquid detergent that I thoroughly disliked, I decided the powder form was for me.  The liquid detergent was gloppy & solidified to a hard gel after a while.  Even shaking the bottle didn't help.  The powder form is easier to make & stores much longer, even in our drafty, old house.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Here's the recipe I use:

1.  Grate 1 laundry bar soap.  Felz Naptha works great for us.  I tried Zote, but it didn't seem to clean the clothes at all.  I read that you can use Ivory soap, but I haven't tried it yet.  I think choosing the base soap is a matter of trial & error.  Everyone has different water types and levels of dirtiness.  Our water is rather hard and all of our clothes tend to get pretty dirty by the of the day.  (Dirt, oil, grease, dirt, food, kids' paint, boogers, did I mention dirt yet??)

2. Place grated soap in a blender and add 1 1/2 cups of Arm & Hammer All-Natural Super Washing Soda & 1 cup of 20 Mule Team All-Natural Borax.  Blend it for about 30 seconds, until it's an evenly mixed fine powder.
I have an old blender that I no longer use for food, only for making the detergent.  The blending step could be skipped if you're concerned about possibly breathing in the borax.  I just try to be very careful, & never do it around the kids.  I like to blend it because it gives each scoop an even mix of all 3 ingredients.

3.  Then pour it into a container & you're done!  I store ours in an empty rice container with a lid and use an old scoop to measure.  I use 2 scoops (4 Tbsp), but like I said, our water is hard and our clothes are always really dirty.

The detergent WILL NOT make lots of suds/bubbles in washer & it's not supposed to.  It works great on all our clothes, even my husband's really dirty clothes and my baby girl's clothes.

One thing I'm wondering about though.....
We use cloth diapers and using borax on them is a big No-No.  Supposedly it wears the cotton & hemp fabrics down really bad.  For the diapers, we use different diaper-safe soaps, like Bum Genius diaper detergent, Rockin' Green Hard Rock soap, and Nellie's All-Natural Laundry Soda.
If borax is bad for the cotton/hemp diapers, is it not bad for the cotton clothes?  I've been using our homemade laundry detergent consistently for about 5 months now and haven't had a problem.  Has anyone had any problems using borax on regular clothes??

Fast forward

Well, a lot has changed since my last post.  I am now a busy mother of three!  My little girl is now 10 months old and she has filled our hearts to the top!  Her big brothers have been so wonderful & loving towards her.  It's been nice having a little pink in the laundry.

This past Fall & Winter held lots of excitement for us.  My husband returned home from his deployment from the Middle East & was Finally able to hold his daughter!  She was 3.5 months old when he made it home.  I'll always remember he first time he held & kissed her.  The boys and I were so completely happy to have him home.  He had planned a trip for us- Disney World.  The boys had SO MUCH FUN!  They still talk about it almost everyday!  Even little G rode quite a few rides!  Having their daddy home for Christmas was a blessing.  We also extracted our first sizable amount of honey from our hive.  That was fun & delicious.  I'll have to make another post on that.

Before all the bags were unpacked, we started to make progress on our house... starting from scratch, no utilities, just the land.  My husband & I decided to be our own contractor.  We also decided not to get a mortgage.  So for us, that meant the process would be slower and we'd be doing quite a bit of the work ourselves.  We are still under construction, but thankfully the house is dried in now. It has been kind of crazy & hectic... a whirlwind of excitement & totally worth it!