Adventures in Laundry

We recently bought a used electric washer and dryer after not having any for over six years. When we moved into our house there was a washer and dryer but no hot water. This was fine until we had the back yard remodeled and it turns out the gas line for the washer and dryer were set just six inches below the surface when they should have been set eighteen inches below. That explained why I always smelled gas when in that section of the backyard...

So we got this great backyard and lost the washer and dryer. Fine. But then the piles and piles of laundry started to accumulate and trips to the laundromat became more and more tedious, especially once our second daughter arrived...

Seriously. This is a typical trip.

Well, once we got the machines up and running (which is a long story itself), I started researching DIY detergent on my favorite website Pinterest. Ahhhh, Pinterest, you wonderful addicting, often cruelly inspiring temptress. I found some amazing websites through Pinterest and started experimenting on my own. So many great successes, almost as many horrible and terrific failures. Let's start with my adventures in laundry.

There are a lot of laundry recipes out there. Some are more natural than others. Most recipes required large amounts of ingredients and a five gallon bucket to mix and I don't have that kind of storage, so I made my own recipe. Here it is:

 1 bar laundry soap (Fels Naptha, Kirk's, Zote or even better handmade soap)

1 cup Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)











1 cup Borax

1 cup scented crystals (optional. I don't use them anymore.)









Water

Equipment
Grater
GIANT Pot
Big Spoon
Funnel
Container for detergent (reuse your old ones or juice containers/milk jugs)

Grate the laundry soap and mix everything together. It yields about 32 oz of dry detergent.

BUT, after finding THIS recipe at "One Good Thing" by Jillee, I found that if I melt the laundry soap in a gallon of water on the stove and mix everything into the water until it dissolves and add one more gallon of water I get over two gallons of laundry detergent!!!  I fudged the recipe a little and didn't add all the water at once because I didn't have a container large enough but now I have a large liquid detergent bottle with what looks like pinkish pudding and all I have to do is add hot water to loosen it up a bit to pour into a smaller container. I use approx. 3 oz per load.

Here's my husband's favorite part:

 The $avings 

Item	Price	Total Ounces	Price per oz.	oz. needed for Recipe	Recipe Cost
Washing Soda	$3.24	55	0.06	8	$0.47
Borax	$4.99	76	0.07	8	$0.53
Laundry Soap	$0.59	7	0.08	7	$0.59
Scent Crystals	$4.76	28	0.17	8	$1.36
Total Cost	$13.58				$2.95
Total Yield 2 Gallons = 256 oz.	$0.01	per ounce

It's even less if you leave out the scent crystals, which I found to contain phthalates. I also recently stopped using Fels Naptha because it is petroleum based. You can use any bar soap your family uses. I have started using my own handmade soap, but I've noticed it doesn't gel up like the batches made with FN. It's still really effective, though.

Oh! And I should mention this is HE (high efficiency) machine safe. Even though there is soap in the recipe, it is a low-sudsing detergent, making it perfect for HE machines.

Also, I don't use OxyClean in my recipes. I tried adding it to my liquid recipe and it ended up exploding all over my husband and our dinner on the stove. It heats up everything too quickly, but it would definitely work in a powder recipe. If our clothes are extra dingy, I'll just add a scoop of the stuff.

What have you tried? What works best for your family?