Homemade Suds

I did it! I finallly did it! I made homemade laundry soap. I have been putting it off thinking it would need a huge chunk of time but it only took about 15 minutes. Dave was interested in learning so I let him in on the process. *wink* Here is what we did:

I got the recipe from http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm

First I grated 2 bars of Ivory soap. It was easy to do.

Here it is all grated.

I only ended up using 1 bar of soap. I saved the rest of the shavings in a plastic bag for next time.

Next I added the soap flakes to 6 cups of water & heated it until the soap melted & mixed.

Here is the washing baking soda & Borax the recipe calls for. I found the Borax at Walmart & the soda at our local grocery store.

I added a 1/2 cup of Borax & 1/2 cup of washing soda to the water & soap on the stove. Make sure to stir until they dissolve.

While I was adding the Borax & washing soda Dave put 4 cups of hot water in our big pot.

Then I added the mix on the stove, (melted soap flakes, water, Borax, washing soda), to the 4 cups of hot water & stirred. Isn't it pretty?

We then added a gallon + 6 cups of hot water to the big pot. We measured out the gallon of water by getting an empty milk jug from the basement. We cleaned it out first, of course. After giving it a good stir Dave poured it into the empty laundry jugs I had saved. I like this way of saving it b/c I don't feel comfortable having a large tub of liquid around with a 2-yo who gets into everything. It scares me.

The entire thing made 2.5 jugs of laundry soap. We are waiting the suggested 24 hours to allow it to gel. I hope to try it out in our washing machine this weekend. (1/2 cup per load)

If you'd like to see the math on this Crystal has done it on her website. It is listed above. According to her this recipe figures out to 1 cent a load. WOW!