Laundry Soap

One area of a budget that usually takes a sizable hit is the cost of laundry soap. Since I cloth diaper my daughter, I've been buying a diaper safe soap that tends to be more expensive in addition to our regular laundry soap. While our family doesn't go through a whole lot of soap right now, I'm worried that when we have more kids and all of them are playing outside and working on our land, I will be doing a lot more laundry and spending a lot more money on soap. I have been doing some research on making my own laundry soap for a few weeks now and have finally landed on a recipe that promises to be safe on clothes as well as cloth diapers. I've tweaked it a bit to my preferences and combined a couple of recipes. I was able to find all of the ingredients at Walmart for a good price.

2 5.5oz bars Fels Naptha ($0.97 a bar)
1 1.3lb tub Oxi Clean ($3.86)
1 box Washing Soda ($3.24)
1/2 box Borax ($3.38 a box/$1.69 half box)
1 4.5 oz bar Yardley Lavender soap ($0.97)

(Just don't try to make mac-n-cheese at the same time!)

Use a small holed cheese grater (the kind you would use for zesting an orange) or a food processor to grate up the bars of Fels Naptha and soap.

If you use a grater, I would recommend stirring and 'chopping' a bit to make the Fels Naptha a little bit finer.












Add in the Oxi Clean, Washing Soda, and Borax and mix well. Store in an air-tight container. When running a load of laundry, all you need to use is 1 tablespoon.










I tried this just this afternoon and my laundry is now hanging out on the line smelling great! I have yet to try it in a load of diapers but plan on doing so tomorrow.

The grand total comes out to $11.70 not including tax. I figure I can get 260 loads of laundry out of this recipe using only 1 tablespoon of powder per load. That comes out to only $0.05 per load!

Leave a comment and let me know what you think!




This recipe derived from here