Home Made Laundry Detergent

It was still raining hard yesterday and since I got a lot of the chores done I thought I might as well made another batch of the laundry detergent because it was about to run out.

As I got all of the stuff ready, I thought I will do another step-by-step instruction with photos since I had so much fun "documenting" my home made yogurt steps.

Here is how I make my laundry detergent:

The "equipment": Food Processor, "Slice" blade and "Ground" blade.

Ingredients: (1) Fels-Naptha soap, (1 cup) Baking Soda, (1 cup) Super Washing Soda and (1 cup) Borax.

I sliced the bar soap(s) first to prep it for grinding. I only did one batch at a time when I first started. Now I double the batches but grind them one at a time so they have room to "pulse".

Poured out the first sliced bar soap in a bowl and proceeded with the second bar soap.

After that I switched the blade and ground up the soap (again, one batch at a time).

After one minute of grinding, this was what it looked like. It was a beautiful sight (to me). :) Poured that out to the second bowl and ground the other batch of sliced soap from the first bowl.

When the soap is all ground up, I then poured in the Baking soda. One cup in the processor with the soap already in and one cup into the "waiting" bowl. It doesn't really matter which powder goes in first but I usually do the baking soda first since I have to dig into the bag and touch the soda with the measuring cup. I use baking soda for cooking as well so I don't want the cross contamination of the measuring cup with the other powder. Hope this make sense.

Now one cup of the Super Washing soda. If you only have one ingredient on the counter at one time, the procedure goes very smoothly. I put all of the powder bag/boxes on the ground after I photographed them for this post.

Since the boxes these powder came with are so hard to pour, I found an extra Tupperware container and dumped the Borax in there for easy scooping. I cut out the name and tips and taped them on the container. I have to look for a container for the Washing soda soon.

Here, the last cup of powder - Borax.

Grind/blend them for one minute.

Done! I mixed it for a minute so they are well blended.

I then poured the detergent into my detergent container. Note: It's a good idea to leave your window opened when making the detergent as the smell is pretty strong (which I like) and if you noticed I placed the container in the sink before the pouring so if some "escaped" they will land inside the sink and I won't have a mess to clean up on the counter.

Here is the second batch from the second bowl.

When the second batch is done I poured it into the same container...

...and gave it a good shake (with the lid closed).

Then I poured the left over from the old batch in on the top of the freshly made detergent so I will scoop that one first when I am ready for a load of laundry.

I leave an extra measuring cup in the container so I don't have to look for one when it is laundry time.

When I brought my laundry container back out to put away, I saw the eye sore rust that was spreading on top of my very old dryer (I think it happened when I left it sitting outside the house for a few months during one of my many moves years ago). So I decided to stick down a piece of left over "peel and stick" tile we had saved. I like how it looks and now I can have a "new" surface. The dryer has been broken down a few times through the years after it got settled in the garage but Robert kept fixing it so it couldn't just died for me to get a new one. LOL!

This is my home made detergent spot, on top of the dryer next to the washer. The detergent container, the vinegar (transferred from the huge bottle to a smaller apple juice bottle for easier handling), the old spreader stick (to stir the detergent with the water), the old measuring cup and a little basket to hold whatever we would find in the pockets (looks like it's time to clear out the stuff in there).

So this is how I make my home made detergent. Hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.