For those of you that know me well you know I’m a big coupon clipper and sale shopper.  I don’t think I pay full price for anything.  :p  It’s like a contest for me to see how much I can get off my grocery bill and such each time.  With that I got starting thinking about how much we spend on laundry soap.  There are five of us in the house and that equals a lot of laundry.  Not much I can do about the amount of laundry, but I can cut the cost of the soap we use!!  Yesterday night I started my own batch of laundry soap for which I found the recipe online.  I finished it up today, and I’m please to report that it went very well.  When you break down the cost of the recipe it comes out to around $2.00 for 10 gallons.

Here is the recipe:

Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap- Front or top load machine- best value

4  Cups hot tap water
1  Fels-Naptha soap bar
1  Cup Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill
a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing
soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to
top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir
and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and
then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Optional:
You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap
has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.  (I didn’t do this as I really liked the smell of the Fels-Naptha soap bar.)

-Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.

-Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

You should be able to find all the ingredients at your grocery store, or probably even Target.  I had the washing soda and borax already on hand though.  I use the washing soda to polish my silver and I’ve always used the borax as a laundry booster anyway.  So at least these items will have other uses when you aren’t making soap.

I went to Lowes for two 5 gallon buckets.  You need one to make the recipe, and I’ll be using the other to split the recipe in half and store it in it’s diluted state being I don’t have a ton of empty detergent bottles on hand.  Plus its just easier to store in the big bucket till I need it to fill on of my empties.

Off to do some laundry!!

~j