Homemade Laundry Soap

***REMEMBER: This laundry soap will not cause the water to suds up. This soap does not have additives in it, meaning you will need less than you think and it rinses clean.*****

We made this about a year ago and used roughly 80% of it so far.  It is amazing how little it costs to clean clothes with quality laundry soap. Total cost of ingredients is around $25-30 at Wal-Mart. The cost of the bucket was a one-time $8. We no longer spend $20 a month or two on laundry soap to clean our clothes. The cost of the following is a less than 10 cents a load and lasts approximately 300 loads. We do still buy dryer sheets to control the static, however, that is around $3 every few months.  
(I put current Wal-Mart Prices beside the ingredients)

First start with the following ingredients: 

• 1 Box of Borax ($3.38)
• 4 Bars of Fels-Naptha Bar Laundry Soap ($1 ea)
• 1 Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda - ($3.25)
• 1 - 2 Containers of your preference of Laundry Chrystals - I prefer Purex Lavender. ($4.75 for a 28 oz. or $8.96 for 55 oz.) Here's a link to make your own.  http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2013/01/make-your-own-fabric-softener-crystals.html
• 4 lb Boxes of Baking Soda. ($2.25)
• 1 Large container of Oxy Clean-89 loads.   Preferably the plastic bucket so you can store some near your washer. The large bucket will be too much/big to keep on your dryer. ($9.47)
• 1 Large container with a lid - A 15 gallon size will do and give you mixing room. 
• A laundry scoop. 

 

Start with shredding the Fels-Naptha in a food processor. Place the shredder plate on top along with the blade below. What you will do is feed the bars of soap through the top to shred like cheese then the blade with chop it into tiny balls/pieces. Don't worry about it being perfect, some shredded cheese pieces is OK. It will dissolve in the laundry water just fine. 

After you have the soap bars shredded, take your bucket and start layering everything. Put about 1/8-1/4  of each ingredient into the bucket and repeat until all ingredients are used.

 You may want to mix the ingredients with your hands half-way through and then start layering again. Mix the ingredients all together very well. You don't want to see the lines such as this still left.

After you are done layering and mixing really well, put some of the mix into the plastic Oxy Clean Container that you kept. Measure out 3 heaping Tablespoons into the scoop. Tap it to level it. Mark it off so you don't have to measure again. This is the correct portion of the laundry soap.  The mark is about 1/4 of a normal laundry soap scoop; however, I typically use a bit more when I have a heavy / really large load of laundry. 

This is the well-mixed end product: 

Enjoy and happy cleaning!