Here is Sarah examining the first batch of laundry washed with our homemade laundry soap. It was just coming out of the dryer (no clothesline; autumn is pretty rainy around here) when Sarah, age 2, came galloping in to help. She put her head into the dryer and –which is cuter, a dumb old batch o’ laundry or a two-year old getting into the job? So you get Sarah instead of fresh laundry. (She’s a great little helper. Reminds us a lot of Becca at that age.)

Well anyway, homemade laundry detergent. I got the recipe off the internet somewhere; I can’t seem to find it again or I’d give credit where credit was due. I was a little apprehensive about trying it out, but it seems to work beautifully. All our clothes are getting clean, nobody’s breaking out in hives, and best of all, I made about several gallons of detergent for less than a dollar’s worth of materials.

Here’s what I did:
Bring about six cups of water to a boil on the stove. Using a potato grater set on a plate, grate up a bar of soap or so and throw it in the pot. (I’ve been saving those little soap slivers that are too small to use in the shower, so I grated up about five of those plus half a bar of Fels-Naphtha.) Stir the whole schmere until it’s big gloppy perfumey mess. While it’s simmerin’, go the the bathtub and fill a (clean) 5-gallon bucket about half full with hot water. Dump in half a cup of baking soda (I read you need to use washing soda, but I can’t find any of that around here. Huh.) and half a cup of borax. Take your boiling glop off the stove and dump that in. Stir the whole mess together (it’ll be watery). Put the lid on the bucket and the bucket in the laundry room, and let it sit overnight. Stir and enjoy.

We refilled our plastic commercial detergent dispenser and still have a bunch in the bucket. We do quite a bit of laundry and this stuff has worked well for us. I’m just sayin’, I won’t vouch for this stuff if you try it and it ruins your Aunt Maud’s heirloom tablecloth. But it’s pretty hard to beat it for the value.