How about a year?
The last bottle of detergent I bought was $13. It lasted me about a month.
1 bottle a month = $156 a year. Yikes!
When I was a little girl my best friend's amazing mom always made her own laundry detergent. I thought she was a magician because I far as I knew that stuff only came from the grocery store, and the grocery store got it from some factory far far away.
She would break out the lye, the rubber gloves, the whole sha-bang! She was a genuine domestic diva!
I'm not so good with making the soap from scratch. . . so I'll give you a recipe for laundry detergent that most of you can make right now.
And it is a lot easier than "make your own laundry soap" sounds.
Baking Soda Laundry Detergent recipe:
1/2 bar of mild bar soap (I use Ivory. Fels Naptha also works Great!)
1 gallon hot water
1 cup baking soda (not washing soda)
1/2 cup borax
(Please forgive the terrible pictures. These are from 2 years ago. In digital years that's like 50 years old.)
1. Finely grate your 1/2 bar of soap.
3. Heat your gallon of water. Boiling water is optimal because it will dissolve the soap quicker. I use a canning pot. You can also heat the water and pour it into a bucket to mix.
4. Add your melted soap. Stir well. Then add the baking soda and borax. This is the fun part! Watch it foam as you stir.
I feel like a mad scientist. Or a witch.
Bubble Bubble Toil and Trouble
6. Pour your concotion into a jug. Make sure there is some room left at the top. You are going to need that space for shaking.
This is what it looks like after it has sat for a day. The soap seperates from the water.
1/2 Cup per load. (1 Cup for heavily soiled or extra large loads)
It doesn't look like the stuff you buy in the stores but you know exactly what is in it. There are no dyes, perfumes, or chemicals added.
How does it compare? I have noticed that the homemade detergent performs just as good, and in some cases better than the $13 bottle I used to use.
Your cost = from .60 to 2.00 depending on your soap.
I have used it off and on for the past 3 years and I LOVE it!
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3 fabulous people said. . .:
I keep hearing about people making their own soap and it blows my mind. The list of things I need to aspire too keeps getting longer and longer. oiy!
Every homemade laundry detergent recipe I've seen on the web the last few years always calls for Washing soda, nit baking soda unless you can't find the other. It's supposed to work more effectively in laundry. So I'm wondering why you use baking soda and not washing soda. Do you find that this works better?
I make my own soap. It is epseically nice becasue both of my kiddos have sensitive skin + excema and it really helps to not add any irritants. I used to make liquid soap too, but ran out of space to store a 5 gallon bucket of laudry soap... now I make it dry and use 1 bar finely grated, 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup washing soda. Use 1 tablespoon per load of laundry. I was amazed when I walked down the aisle at target and thought about how often we do laudry and what the savings are!
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