Laundry Soap (without borax)

A few years ago,  I started making my own laundry soap.  It was easy to find recipes,  it seemed that everyone else was making their own laundry soap too.  I found that there were two basic recipes,  one dry and one liquid, both using borax.  It was very cheap,  so I happily bought all the ingrdients and made my own.  It worked okay.  Then people started telling me that borax was bad.  So,  being true to myself, I instantly donned a hazmat suit and began to rid my home of borax.  After a little bit of research it was obvious that the hazmat suit was a bit of an over-reaction. But,  this fear of borax caused me to think outside the box and create a different recipe for laundry soap,  and low and behold it actually worked better in my ultra hard water.

This is what you need;
one bar of soap
washing soda

So, this is what I do,
this recipe is for 2.5 gallons of soap.  I have a 3 gallon pail.

                                          

I take a bar of soap,  whatever soap was on sale (usually ivory, sometimes jergens)
I grate it in a pot and add 2 cups of water.
Heat it up slowly,  it is a pain to clean up if it boils over.
Pour the melted soap into the bucket
add 3/4  cup washing soda
fill the bucket with hot water while stirring.
let it set for about 24 hours.
What you end up with isn't pretty....
                                                      

    

...But it sure does a nice job!

I use about 1/2 cup for a load,   maybe a cup for really dirty stuff.  I do use this to clean Bennett's cloth diapers too.  Not only does this save a ton of money,  but we could all do with less plastic jugs in our life now couldn't we?                      


This was shared at Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways at frugallysustainable.com