What ingredients do you need?
1/3 bar of Fels Naptha
1/2 cup Borax
1/2 cup Washing Soda
1 bucket
But how do you make the detergent?
Put 6 cups of water in a saucepan over medium heat. Cut the bar of Fels Naptha into thirds. Grate 1/3 of the bar and add it to the saucepan. Heat the mixture until the Fels Naptha melts completely. Once it is dissolved, remove the pan from the heat. Heat 4 cups of water in the microwave (or you can heat on the stove but it takes longer) then add it to the empty bucket. Add your melted Fels Naptha mixture to the bucket and stir. Mix in an additional 24 cups (1 gallon, 6 cups) of water and stir completely. Let it sit in the bucket for 24 hours or until it becomes a gel. Once it becomes a gel, add the mixture to the container of your choice. Use approximately 1/2 cup per load.
NOTE:
The finished soap will not be a solid gel. It will be a watery gel and will have the consistency of egg noodle soup. The soap is low-sudsing. The ingredients do the cleaning, not the suds.
But what does the soap smell like?
It smells clean and fresh with a very light scent. Personally, I have continued to use my fabric softener, as it adds more of the fragrance I like. If you'd like to add fragrance to the laundry soap, you can add 1/2 to 1 ounce of essential oil or fragrance oil to the entire batch. *I have not done this, so let me know what you think if you try it.
But how much does one batch make?
Once batch fills one 150 fluid ounce tide bottle (the one with the pour spout) and leaves about 80 oz. soap to spare. I usually just put the spare amount into a tupperware container with a lid. Once I use enough in my pour-spout Tide bottle, I'll transfer the extra from the tupperware into the Tide bottle. *As mentioned above, for storage, I saved an old Tide bottle I was going to recyle and it works great. The spout on the front really makes pouring and measuring the soap very easy.
But why go through all that trouble?
It may seem like a lot of work, but it's honestly about 15 minutes from start to finish. I was overwhelmed the first time I tried the recipe, but it's very simple. It's not much trouble and it saves you a lot of money. An extra advantage is knowing exactly what is going into your laundry soap and onto your clothes.
But is it really less expensive?
Here is the breakdown of my calculations:
1 bar Fels Naptha = $1.23
Since you only use 1/3 of bar per batch, 1.23 divided by 3 = $.41 per batch
76 oz. box Borax = $3.19
$3.19 divided by 76 oz. = $.04 per oz
Since you only use 1/2 cup (3.5 oz) in each batch, 3.5 x .04 = $.14 per batch
55 oz. box Washing Soda = $2.29
$2.29 divided by 55 oz. = $.04 per oz
Since you only use 1/2 cup (4.2 oz) in each batch, 4.2 x .04 = $.17 per batch
TOTAL:
$.41 (Fels Naptha) + $.14 (Borax) + $.17 (Washing Soda) = $.72 for 230 oz. Laundry Soap
Each load of laundry uses 1/2 cup of soap (4 oz). Therefore, a 230 oz. batch makes 57.5 loads of laundry. If you break that down to cost, a $.72 batch divided by 57.5 loads = .0125 rounded to a grand total of $.01 per load of laundry. That, my friends, is definitely worth the effort.
