Clean Clothes and a Full Wallet

A few months back I did a post about where I said I really wanted to try making my own laundry detergent. Well, today was that day my friends. I bought the ingredients this weekend and today I decided to make up a batch and try it. I've done 3 loads of laundry today and so far so good! It smells nice, my clothes are clean and best of all... I'm going to save BOATLOADS of money!

We ususally buy the 110 load Tide Original (liquid) from Costco for about $20. It lasts us about 1 1/2-2 months and I've always been satisfied with its performance. However, when I can buy 3 ingredients for less than half that amount that will last me a lot longer (I'm thinking at the very least 5 or 6 months worth of laundry) then it really makes me wonder why I've been throwing away that money for so long.

Here's the ingredients:

Borax, Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (NOT baking soda- as a sidenote our Walmart had a big box of baking soda right next to the Borax with no washing soda in sight. I had to go to another store to find the washing kind) and Fels-Naptha Laundry soap.

To make 1 batch of this stuff you need 1/2 cup of Borax, 1/2 cup washing soda, and 1 bar of laundry soap. But because I wanted to make a larger batch so I wouldn't have to make more again so soon, I doubled the recipe. And instead of using 2 bars of laundry soap, I read online that you can add a bar of ivory or homemade soap to it for fragrence (but only those 2 options- I'll talk about that more later). So I added a bar of soap for a good smell and mixed in the borax and soda.
First you need to grate up your laundry soap. To make it a little easier on myself, I went out and bought one of those fancy rotating cheese graters just for grating up my soap. I think it was $5 at Walmart. Let me just say I highly recommend doing that as opposed to using a normal stand up grater. It would have taken way too long to do it that way... So I cut it up into chunks and grated away.

The soap should look like this when you're done:


Because the soap curls seemed to clump together and the soda and borax settled at the bottom, I took a mesh sieve and pushed the soap thru that to have a better consistancy. It seemed to really help. All in all this only took about 10-15 minutes to make, if that. I kept stopping and checking in on Kenzie who was being way too quiet in the other room... if you know what I mean ;)


You only need to use 2 Tbsp of detergent per load of laundry (maybe 3 if it's a pretty big load) You can also use a large tupperware container or ziploc bag to keep this in. But because we had a pretty cold Spring, we used up all of our hot chocolate and I decided to just use that. I wrote down the ingredients on the box so I wouldn't forget. (I wrote our name on it because we share a laundry room with the guys in the basement and I just have a habit of writing our name on stuff that stays in there.)

And no, your eyes aren't going crazy. That is in fact a freakishly large hot chocolate container... I love me some hot chocolate and Costco sells Stephens in a perfect jumbo size just for me ;)

So about the soap thing- you don't actually have to use Dove or homemade soap for fragrence. You can just use the laundry soap (2 bars if you make a double batch) but because the smell is pretty strong and I'm not a huge fan of it, I wanted something that smelled a little more... me. I have about 6 bars of Dove in my hall closet because I use it to wash my face so I figured that'd work nicely. But this time around I decided to use a bar of soap I had bought a while back from my sister's MIL Linda who makes and sells soap. She has a huge variety of fragrences. If you'd like to take a look at Linda's many different products click here or on "Mitchell Creations" on my sidebar.

So anywho, here's how the pricing breaks down:

Borax: $2.89 for a 4 lb box
Washing Soda: $3.99 for a 3 lb box
Laundry Soap: $1.59/bar

(Keep in mind that I only used 1 cup each of borax and washing soda and I still have several pounds to go before I've used up the entire box, and you only use 2 Tbsp of the mixture per load)

So for $8.47 I have at the very least a 6 month supply of laundry detergent. The only cost from now on is when I need to make a new batch I'll have to buy another bar of laundry soap. So just for the sake of making this as accurate as I can, I'll add in 2 more bars of soap to round off the total to $11.65.

In a normal 6 month period I would have normally spent around $60 in detergent (If I'm lucky to make each bottle last that long) and now I'll only be spending $11 and some change. How's that for saving money?!

*I know some of you might be skeptical about how well it cleans and if you really want to, just add a scoop of Oxiclean to each load as well. I've always seen the 6 lb tubs at Walmart/Target/chain grocery stores for about $10, but if you have a Costco membership buy it there. They sell a 15 lb box for $16 and about every other month they have a $4 off coupon in their mailer, so wait until then to buy it. We took advantage of that when they had a coupon come in the mail last month. For any of you locals, let me know if you ever want to borrow our coupons. This Oxiclean one is good for 5 more days and I still have it, so swing by my place and pick it up if you want it :)

**UPDATE** I found the laundry soap and washing soda at our local Macey's grocery store. Walmart did not carry either and I didn't look around at any other stores. Good luck with finding the ingredients!