Saturday, March 10, 2012

Natural Cleaning-- Homemade Laundry Soap (dry)

I have been interested in making my own laundry soap for a while now, but it looked like so much work. Grating soap, melting it on the stove, mixing in five gallon buckets. Then I found a recipe for dry soap, its sooooo much easier!! Really its the same recipe but you don't have to melt it on the stove and mix it with gallons of water, you just mix all the ingredients together and scoop it into the wash like any other dry laundry soap. I turn the water to warm, start the cycle, add the soap to the warm running water. Once it is mostly melted (about 30 seconds) I turn the water back to cold if I'm doing colors or leave it on warm for whites. I also add a cup of distilled white vinegar to the water if I am doing whites in place of bleach. Then you add your clothes. I am very happy with this soap. I think it works just as well if not better then the national brand of soap I had been using (that was not "green" at all). It is also much cheaper then buying my old brand, but I'm not going to break it down by cost for you here, if you are interested in the math you can see it here http://www.diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/

LAUNDRY SOAP RECIPE
1 bar of soap (Ivory is my favorite but any natural detergent type soap will work for this)
1 cup Borax (found in the laundry isle of just about any grocery store)
1 cup washing soda (not the same as baking soda, also in the laundry isle)
2 T baking soda (optional)

grate the bar of soap (I like to use my grater blade in my food processor) then mix together with the remaining ingredients. *optional, I like to add all the ingredients to my food processor and process it with the regular blade until the soap is all incorporated into the other ingredients, I find this helps it dissolve better in the wash.

You typically use 1-2 T per wash load depending on the size of your washer, how hard your water is, how soiled your clothes are, etc. I've heard of people using up to 1/4 cup (or 4T) per wash load for really soiled clothes. I find 2 T is perfect for us

Yield- 32(2T/load)-64(1T/load) loads