4 Comments

  1. Sanz

    Cool! We’ve never done homemade dishwasher detergent, though we’ve talked about it. I REALLY want to know how you are making your laundry detergent. (Wait, maybe you emailed me that.) I only made it once because it wasn’t cost effective. It cost me $12 to make a large box. It also costs $12 to BUY the same box.

    • Okay, for my laundry detergent, I use one bar of Fels Naptha ($1.33), one cup of borax, one cup of washing soda (each of those boxes costs about $4, but it makes WAY more than one batch of detergent), and tap water to fill the bucket (5 gallons). Say you calculate the borax & washing soda at $1 apiece (which is high, because those boxes would make more than 4 batches, too, but I’m not sure exactly how many), and the water at 50 cents a gallon (again, WAY overestimating – you could bottled water for that price, lol!), it comes in at $5. Since those are overestimates, I can comfortably say it costs less than $5 for a 4-month supply 🙂

      The method is simple. Grate the Fels Naptha. Combine it, the borax, soda, and about a gallon of water in a large pot. Cook over high heat to melt the soap and dissolve the powders. Take the time to be thorough here. Once you think it’s all melted, let it simmer another 3-5 minutes to be sure. Carefully pour the soapy water into a 5-gallon bucket and add enough HOT water to fill the bucket. Let sit for 24 hours.
      This soap isn’t as “smooth” as commercial detergents, but it gets our clothes clean, and that’s all that matters 🙂

  2. Robin

    Awesome! I am going to get the items I need to make your dishwasher detergent and I would like to make your laundry detergent also…but not sure what some of the ingredients are and where I would get them. Fels Naptha? And what is ‘washing soda?’ Also, how do you store the detergent? In the 5 gallon bucket?
    Thank you so much for the info

    • Looks like I’ll need to do a thorough post on this next week! 🙂 In the meantime, let me answer your questions. Fels Naptha is a laundry bar. Just like a regular bar of soap, but on the laundry aisle of the store. In my store, it’s on the top shelf. Washing soda is in the same general area. You can also make washing by cooking baking soda in the oven @ 400 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour. Come back next week for a full tutorial with pictures! It’s just about time for me to make another batch anyway 😉 . (The last time I made it was in mid-October.) And yes, I store it in a 5-gallon bucket that I got from Home Depot.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.