Homemade Laundry Soap

Last year M made some laundry soap from a recipe she found online.  She sent us a package with several loads' worth of soap.  It was very well received here.

Ingredients for one batch of homemade laundry soap

Over the last month or so, I have been collecting the various ingredients for the soap.  The Oxy Clean generic was harder to find.  The Dollar Store did not have it in stock the day I was there so I went to Family Dollar and found it...quite a bit more expensive than $1.00 per box!

To make this soap you need six ingredients:  20 mule team Borax--76-ounce box, 3 bars Fels Naptha soap, Washing Soda--55-ounce box, Baking Soda--2 cups, 2 containers Dollar Tree "Oxyclean"-40-ounces in each box, and Purex Fabric Sofener Crystals--28-ounce container.

Fels Naptha soap, grated in Cuisinart

In your food processor, or with a box grater, finely grate the three bars Fels Naptha soap.  In a 5-gallon bucket lined with a double (or preferably, triple) layer of kitchen wastebasket trash bags, pour in all the ingredients, starting with the Borax and ending with the grated Fels Naptha soap.  Mix well with your hands then close the garbage bags and swish back and forth until the mixture is completely homogenized.

Use 2 Tablespoons of soap mixture per load of clothes.  I found that the little scoop in the Family Dollar (the Dollar Tree was out of Oxyclean when I stopped there...) Oxyclean was just 2 Tablespoons so I can use that as a measure for each load of laundry.

Combined ingredients in triple garbage bags in 5-gallon bucket

Because I was making this soap as a demo for a "Family Preparedness Night" at our women's organization at Church,  I printed up labels with the ingredients and "Use 2 Tablespoons per load" on them, which I affixed to some zipper-top snack bags which I then filled with one-quarter cup of soap so the ladies can run two loads of laundry to see if they want to make this themselves.  It is supposedly less than $30 to make this batch.  I made up 30 snack bags which equals 60 loads of laundry and have A LOT left in my bucket.  It may just be a year's worth of laundry soap!

 Happy cleaning!