DIY Laundry Soap
Hi everyone! Long time no see! You can check out all of our new ventures at Mount View Homestead, but today I just wanted to feature a post about homemade laundry soap. I’ve been using this for about a year and I LOVE it!
I had been planning on writing up this post since we started the blog and this week we ran out of laundry soap–perfect timing! I got my inspiration to make our families laundry soap from How Does She and adapted it based on what our local store had in stock.
I’ve been using some variation of this recipe for probably a year now and I’ve only made it twice. This will be the third time. That’s right, two batches of this stuff last’s a year. Maybe you’re thinking I only do a load of laundry a week, that would make sense, right? Well, let me remind you, there are two parents and two very messy young children in this house and I cloth diapered Noah for the first 6-8 months of his life. Cloth diapers excluded, I do about two loads of laundry every week day and sometimes more! So for two batches of detergent to last this long is amazing.
Just a disclaimer, I’ll be linking to my Amazon Affiliate account when I give you the prices of the laundry supplies so you can get your own and help us out! If you’re interested in a 30-day trial of Amazon Prime (we recommend it!) click here.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Ingredients:
- 2 Cups Baking Soda (Purchased at Costco for around $7, or here)
- 1 Box Borax ($11.49, here)
- 1 Box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda ($9.68, here)
- 2 Cups OxyClean (Purchased in bulk at Costco, but you can get it here)
- 1 Container Purex Laundry Crystals, any scent ($9.30, here)
- 1 Zote Laundry Soap Bar ($4.25, here)
To begin, I recommend finding a big bucket to dump all the ingredients into. It will make mixing much easier. I added all the powdered ingredients first.
Why yes, I do prepare all of my laundry soap outdoors on a beautiful old tree stump, thanks for asking.
After all the plain white ingredients (borax, baking soda, washing soda, and OxyClean), I added some color with the Purex Crystals and Zote Soap.
The Purex is added as a laundry softener and to make things smell nice, but you could leave it out if you wanted. The Zote Soap was the most work, because you have to grate it into the mix, but it is a magnificent neon pink.
Grate the entire bar into your bucket and you’re ready to mix it all together. The bucket we’re using is actually a recycled laundry detergent bucket. I like our detergent better.
Once it’s mixed, keep it in an air-tight container so that moisture isn’t an issue. I like to use one of the little scoops that came in a formula container to measure out my soap for each load of laundry. I use 1 scoop for normal loads and 2 scoops for the kid’s laundry (or things that tend to be super dirty).
So far, I’ve had no issue with it irritating skin, which is a huge deal with my daughter’s horrible eczema. It smells nice, works well, and lasts forever a really long time.
Have you made your own laundry soap before? How does it perform compared to what you can buy pre-made in the store? Let us know in the comments below!
This post is featured on The Prairie Homestead’s Monday Blog Hop as well as over on Mount View Homestead.
