0 How to make laundry detergent

So as you all know I made a batch of soap (olive oil, castor oil, cocoa butter and lye mixture). I got about 12 bars of soap out of that batch so I decided to try my hand at making homemade laundry detergent.
Want to know how I made it? Okay here we go!

Ingredients:

2 bars of soap (you grate them), empty laundry detergent, pitcher,Borax 1 cup, baking soda 1 cup

This is a 9 gallon jug. I love this stuff! It has lasted me from March 2010 until now (December 2010) and I still have a lot left. (I poured it out into empty bottles)

Now here is where is gets un-homemade... I love Pine-Sol. It does a wonderful job in clothes. I love the smell and had to add 1 1/2 cups of it to my recipe. A lot of people add Oxi-Clean, vinegar, or Washing Soda to help "brighten" and get any extra stains out. Without any additives, this detergent is very gentle. It works great alone but, can use a little boost...




How to mix it all up:

*Take to 2 liters of boiling hot water (hot enough to melt the soap) and mix the soap in and stir until all of the soap is melted into liquid.

*Pour the "liquid soap" into a bucket. (I used a 5 gallon bucket)And mix in Borax and baking soda. This mixture may get very foamy. Mine foamed up quite a bit! I took me about 5 solid minutes to get everything dissolved.

*Add about 4 more liters of water and mix.

*Add Pine-Sol and mix.

To get it out of the bucket I used a pitcher (2 liter) and poured that into a measuring cup and pour that into the jug. Yeah... it took a while but, I got it all in there.

*Let the mixture sit over night before using. After a few days it will look like this:

A nice gelatinous mixture! Liquid laundry detergent! It took about 30 minutes to make this whole 6-7 liter batch of detergent! I use about 1/8 of a cup with each wash.

Now there are some cons to this detergent:

1. Very low sudsing- Now this may not matter you but, it does to me! I need suds and bubbles! So I add a small squirt of Purex washing detergent to each load just to get the bubbles (about a tablespoon).
2. Best if added to washer machine before you add clothes. I put in the detergent and let the washer fill up a little before I add the clothes. Seems to clean better that way because it gets evenly distributed.
3. Has no smell. If you don't add Pine-sol or some other scented additive, you will have no scent AT ALL. I need scent! I have to have scent!

But other than these 3 cons, this laundry detergent is fine for us. I only need to purchase each ingredient once a year (Pine-Sol and Borax) and I always have baking soda. I think this detergent will last me for about 4 months. I only do about 3 loads a week so yours may last more or less.

It cleaned my husbands ol stinky work clothes really well, better than any commercial laundry detergent we have tried. It really stripped the crud off of his pants! He was talking about how clean his uniform was all week!

I have never really had a problem with stains. I never pre-soak clothes and all stains usually come right out.

Now, even if you choose not to use this as your main detergent, it is a great addtive to your commercial laundry detergent. It will help your detergent stretch! If you had a jug of liquid detergent and added this homemade recipe to it, I bet it would last a whole year!

Enjoy! :)