This Isn't Even Edible!

How about a recipe that is not plant based?  In fact, it isn't even edible.  My husband suggested that I should share a recipe that has saved us an incredible amount of money over the last five or more years. 

When I started making this soap, it seemed too good to be true.  Well, it has worked out very well for me.  It cleans the dirtiest of clothes.  If I am not sharing the soap with other people, one recipe of this lasts almost a year for this two person household. 

The recipe takes me about one hour of hands on work, from grating the soap bar, to packaging up several gallons of it.  Usually I only mix up a few gallons at a time, and leave the rest of it in the five gallon bucket. 

HOMEMADE LIQUID LAUNDRY DETERGENT

1 bar Fels Naptha laundry soap

1 cup washing soda
½ cup borax, (such as 20 Mule Borax)

Grate the bar of soap and add to saucepan filled with 4 cups of hot water.  Stir constantly over medium-low heat until soap is melted.

Fill a 5-gallon pail ½ full of hot water.  Add melted soap solution, washing soda, and borax.  Stir  
well until the powder is dissolved.

Fill bucket with more hot water, up to the four gallon mark.  Stir well, cover, and let sit 24 hours.  Do not stir the solution during this initial 24 hours.

After the 24 hours have passed, the solution will be gelled and very   Stir and break this gel up into the solution.  Fill a laundry jug or container half full of the detergent and top off the container with  water, leaving enough room to shake the mixture.  thick on the top, with a thin mixture underneath.

Shake the mixture well each time before adding to clothes washer.  Use ½ cup for top loaders and ¼ cup for front loaders. 

NOTES:  The Fels Naptha can be located by city on the Dial Corporation website.  I was able to find it in the Tulsa area.  If it cannot be found, regular Ivory bath bar can be used instead.  I have used it, and it was fine.  I found the washing soda in a Tulsa area grocery store, under the label of Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda.  It is not the same as baking soda.  The 20 Mule Borax seems to be available in most all grocery stores. 

Warning:  In the five years I have used this soap, in one laundry load, I had some color come out of a blouse.  I had purchased a low water use washing machine, (which I hate by the way), and realized that so little water was used, that the laundry soap had not been rinsed out correctly.  Now I make sure the laundry soap is diluted just a bit more, and have not had that trouble again.  Please be careful!  Saving money on soap, only to lose a piece of clothing, is a bummer. 

I tried to figure out cost of the final product-  It costs less than $2 to mix up a batch, which equals 10 gallons of detergent, which equals 3,200 loads of laundry.  If my math is correct, that is  less than 1 cent, (.000625)  per load.   Wowzer, I had no idea it was THAT low!

What you need to begin.

Grate the bar of soap.

Melt it.

Mix solution with water.

After 24 hours it is a gel.

After mixing well, funnel into old one gallon containers.



Final product!  You just saved yourself a lot of money.