A couple years ago, my supervisor at work gave me a recipe and told me how she made her own laundry detergent, it lasted her a year at least, and only cost $13. I wanted to try it then, but was scared and didn't really have a reason to since my mom still bought everything. I've lost the recipe she gave me, so I turned to Pinterest (of course) to find a similiar recipe to use. Her's was liquid and I chose to do a powdered kind, but the ingredients were very similiar:
1 cup borax
1 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda
1 bar of Fels-Naptha (soap)
You start out by grating the bar of soap just like you would cheese. It's the same color too so other than the smell it looks exactly like cheese.
Then you add the Borax and washing soda (1 cup each). Mix as best you can.
You can leave it in th same container you made it in, but I found a large mason jar around the house to put it in. Then I used my Cricut to label it with the correct measurement for use. (1 tbsp)
And there you have it! Homemade laundry detergent. I spent less than $10 and still have enough Borax and washing soda to make at least 5 more batches. The soap is less than a dollar too. All you do is use 1 tbsp of the mix per load of laundry so it lasts a long time!
I tried it out on a load of laundry (without fabric softner) and it doesn't really leave much of a smell. It has a faint hint of the soap, but it doesn't smell like all the fancy detergent we pay $$ for. Hopefully it won't let me down...I'm going to try it with fabric softner to see if that will make my clothes smell good. Let me know what you think if you've tried this before!
