Brewing your own… Laundry Detergent

So, the last time Andrea made laundry detergent I was in Kuwait. She did pass along to me that it was a miserable experience, especially grating the soap. That stayed in the back of my mind, but the 5 gallon bucket of liquid laundry detergent seemed to last forever. ..

Last week, I had a close friend and his family drop in to visit, and because I know how to show a buddy a good time I set off to make some powdered laundry detergent using my food processor instead of hand grating the soap. I read in multiple places on-line that the best way to do it was to first microwave the bar soap. Sounded crazy, but it worked like a champ. The picture below is of me about to knosh on the Fels-Naptha bar of soap after it’s been nuked for almost 3 minutes. The entire process from start to finish took less than 10 minutes. In the months to come I’ll report on how the homemade concoction is holding up.

Here’s the ingredient list:
Fels-Naptha Bar Soap (to be nuked 2-3 minutes)                $0.99
2 cups 20 Mule Team Borax Laundry Soap                         $3.97
2 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda                        $3.97
½ cup Oxi-Clean powder                                                     $8.00

Wal-Mart has all of these ingredients on the shelf at their “Neighborhood Market” stores. I wanted to see how I like the Fel-Naptha bar before I went buck wild and made a huge batch. I will admit that the microwaving of the soap made me a tad nervous but it was painless, no explosion, and the microwave has never smelt better!

After nuking the soap I cut it into eighths, just to make it easier to fit into the food processor. I pulsed it until the soap looked to be just a smidge bigger than normal looking laundry detergent crystals, then added in the 2 cups of borax, 2 cups of washing soda, and ½ cup of Oxi-Clean. I turned the food processor back on for about 30 seconds to mix the ingredients, dumped the new invention into a Rubbermaid container, and that was that.

I am using 1-2 tablespoons per load. This should get me somewhere in the 75 load range. In breaking down costs, it cost me $4.08 before tax. The Fels-Naptha bar does add a distinctive “laundry soap” fragrance that I liked more than I thought I would. We’ll see how it works and I’ll write more later on performance.

The next batch will be made with Ivory Soap bars, stay tuned for that.