Luckily for me, this store also carried Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, an ingredient in the recipe I'd seen. For about $7, I obtained my first step! Next, I headed to Walmart to find the other two. The package of two bars, Sunlight Pure Soap ($2) and box of Borax ($5) were both found in the laundry aisle.
When I got home, I found/dug out an old 5 gallon pail with a lid, a cheap old canning pot, an extra cheese grater, wooden spoon and measuring cup.
The kids wanted to help, so I let little C grate the cheese..er...bar of soap and little N stir the pot!
Recipe
1 Grated Bar Sunlight
1 Gallon water (16 C.)
1 C. Super Washing Soda
1/2 C. Borax
3 Gallons water(48 C.)
Grate Sunlight Bar while bringing 1 Gal. water to a boil in large pot. Add grated soap to boiling water and stir until dissolved. Add washing soda & borax, stir until dissolved. Place 3 Gal. water into 5 Gal. bucket, add dissolved solution and stir to combine. Let sit overnight. Solution will become thick, stir and pour into desired dispenser or scoop directly from bucket.
Use 1/2 C. for normal loads. Use 1 C. for heavily soiled.
*I've read that this is a low sudsing soap.
I tried to find the original post to credit the blog but when I did a search for homemade laundry soap, so many came up that I never did find the one I was looking for. This was the recipe most cited and I even saw a few for dry powder. These have the same ingredients minus the water and the bar of soap should be run through a food processor to create smaller pieces. Mix and use 3 Tablespoons per load.
Easy Peasy right? I'll let you know how it goes and once I do the math (again) to work out the price per load.
Until next time, I'm off to do some laundry....
