Laundry Soap

Jan 21, 2013 by Amanda

By the time laundry is gathered up, washed and dried in my house it seems that there is enough for another load. Never ending! Probably doesn’t help that my two girls seem to be changing clothes constantly. And when they are putting dress up clothes on they like to throw the clothes they were wearing under the bed into the toy totes. So when I decide to organize their room a bit I find a whole other load of laundry under the bed. We are also a sensitive skin family, a lot of laundry soaps we cannot use at all. That’s what made me start making my own laundry soap a long time ago. I always used the same recipe- 2 cups borax, 2 cups Arm and Hammer washing soda and 2 grated bars of Sunlight laundry detergent bars. Easy peasy! I would cut the bars into small chunks then run them through my food processor. I tried grating by hand and not going to lie, it sucked. A lot. So food processor them up, then put your processor in the dishwasher or wash thoroughly by hand.

About a month or two before Christmas the schedules we were running on were getting to me and I was horribly disorganized. More so than usual, even! Went to do laundry one day, realized I had not made more laundry soap. Urgh. Decided to grab a small bottle of liquid detergent to use for now. The price of the stuff is crazy to me, but seeing as how I never seemed to get around to making more of my own I went on buying it .

I believe it was Pinterest that I saw a post for laundry soap. The website itself is here.  Had the same items as I normally use plus more and everyone raved about how good it smelled so thought I would give it a try. It is a little expensive to buy everything at first, but the recipe makes a lot and you only use a little scoop per load. I only used one bottle of Purex crystals and half the amount of the Oxi-clean. And it was a generic brand of Oxi-clean. Cause I’m cheap like that. Also I can’t seem to find Fels Naptha or Zote soap around here so I used the Sunlight laundry bars again.

You may need to be a little wary of this soap to begin with as it does have the scented product in it. I have noticed a bit of an increase in dry skin but we are in the middle of winter so not sure it is from the soap for us. On that note, people were not joking when they said soap smells good. It smells amazing!

I used the scoop from the Oxi-clean and use one scoop per load and still use the warm setting on my machine, which generally is cold and everything comes out clean and smelling delicious.

Here is my slightly altered recipe…

1 box Borax. (Size was 2kg)

1 box Arm and Hammer Washing Soda. (3kg)

1 tub Oxi-clean. (1.5lb)

2 bars Sunlight Laundry bars (you should be able to find these down laundry isle. Both Walmart and Superstore carry them here)

1 Arm and Hammer Baking Soda (lg box, do not remember exact size and was long ago taken to recycling)

1 Bottle Purex Crystals ( I used the purple one, not sure of  scent, fresh spring waters maybe? Honestly it was the only one the store had and I wasn’t blown away by the smell at first)

Grate your soap and mix all ingredients.