There are a few cleaners that I'm working on ridding myself of. Toothpaste is high on the list, but I know I won't shift my family from their traditional usage. Floor cleaner is another. But a few days ago, I tackled laundry soap. Since I do the bulk of the laundry, this showed promise.
I've known for a couple of years that to make laundry soap, I would need borax. Looked in hardware stores, grocery stores, etc. and hadn't been able to find it until recently.
There are a few recipes out there, and after reading and patching together, this is what I came up with:
1c. Borax
1c. Washing Soda (can't find it? read this tutorial here on how to make it!)
1 bar of soap, shredded (not beauty bar. Fels naptha is an excellent choice, Ivory would be--though I'm personally allergic.) between 5-8 oz.
1/2 c. baking soda (not to be confused with washing soda)
another possibility that I found in a number of recipes that I didn't add, but you could, is a cup of Oxyclean.
First, you are going to need to shred your soap. Use the fine side of a shredder. (Thank goodness I got a box shredder for Christmas!)Now, I will also say, I made a double batch, and the second bar of soap was one of my homemade varieties. When I shredded it, it was a much moister, softer soap than the Fels-Naptha. My mother had also told me, that the Fels-Naptha became popular during WWII because of its ability to wash in hard and salt waters. So for me, I feel more comfortable using half and half, than ALL homemade soap.)
Now, while Borax is NOT boric acid, it is caustic to your eyes. It is also dusty, which I knew, but didn't take into consideration.
Please learn from my mistake, and even if you feel a bit foolish, wear eye protection.I had put all the ingredients in my gallon glass jar, and started to mix it up--and flung some right in my eye.
Tip of the day:
If you have a pull out sprayer on your sink. pull it out, and flip it upsidedown. Turn the water on only slightly, enough so it bubbles up about an inch over where the water exits on cool, but not cold. This will allow you to use this as an eye wash. Use for 5 minutes, blinking your eye slowly. You may want to use eye drops after to return the salinity to your eye.
Some bloggers/creators suggest after shredding your soap, putting it through your blender. I have to admit, I didn't like this idea. It's only soap. I get that. So what I did instead was use my immersion blender that I use for making soap. I wouldn't let it run continuously, but would shimmy it around and work in pulses. The shaft of my comes off, so in future batches, I'm going to cut off the top of a soda bottle, fit it on the shaft to create a sort of splash guard over the top of the jar as it can kick up dust if you aren't careful.
The result is safe to use in front loading HE washers, and takes 2 tablespoons. I use an old medicine cup to measure out the soap. (I think the scoops from powdered lemonade, etc would work as well.)
The laundry came out of the drier smelling like I had hung them out on the line--beautifully fresh, and soft and clean. Bonus too, my washer, which can sometimes smell a bit mildewy also smelled clean!
I've heard cost breakdowns between 3-5 cents a load. Since half my soap is homemade, that would go down, and when I run out of bought washing soda, I'll make my own--which costs about 1/2 of what you would buy it for, even less still.
The last note is in all my reading, I have heard this soap is very hypo allergenic, so it can replace baby laundry soap and be used for people who have other soap allergies. (of course, this probably wouldn't be true for everyone...but in general a good thing to know!)
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