Making laundry soap

I am one of those nutty people making a lot of homemade things instead of buying them. I started working on laundry soap about a month or so ago. It is incredibly cheap to make your own laundry soap. It's also good for the environment (no boxes and bottles to put in a landfill or try to recycle, and it cuts way down on the amount of chemicals and dyes you end up putting n your clothes and the waste water. I mainly make it because of the cost, I am a tightwad at heart. Saving a bundle on laundry soap just appealed to me. I'll tell ya just how little this costs per paod at the bottom. People will be shocked.

There are a lot of recipes out there for laundry soap. Almost all of them contain vinegar and baking soda or washing powder and some base of soap. I have always been a firm believer in the power of both vinegar and baking soda to clean all kinds of things. I have discovered that homemade laundry soap cleans just as well if not better than the commercial stuff. I have four kids that have made it a mission to see how much dirt and food they can keep by applying it to there clothes and a husband who always has a mystery stain on something by the end of the day. I haven't had any problems cleaning any of it with this, and it smells good to.

After reading a lot and tweaking many things to suit my needs here is what I have come up with.

Washing powder 1 cup
vinegar 3 cups
zote bar soap 1/8 bar grated
tea tree oil 1/4 tsp
water 16 cups

It's really that simple. Now my first experiment was a little different. It had baking soda instead of washing powder, oxy clean, no tea tree oil and more zote soap and water. I have also read of people putting glycerin in the mixture.

This time I found the washing powder and cut the recipe down to fit into a smaller container. I had a 170 ounce, empty laundry soap bottle and it was my goal to make it fit in that. The first time I had enough for two of those and it was to much for me to try and store.

To make this you will need a big pot to fit about 18 - 20 cups of liquid and still have room to stir.

1) Fill your pot with the water and vinegar. Bring it to a low boil.

2) While it boils dig out a cheese grater and grate about an 1/8 to 1/4 of a bar of zote soap into a bowl. You can use a knife to carve it off but it's messy that way. You need the soap in small pieces or chips to work well.

3)Stir in the washing powder until it is dissolved. Your mixture will get foamy, maybe very foamy, just stir it until you aren't afraid of it going over the side anymore.

4)Once the powder is dissolved and the water is still at a low boil, pour in the soap pieces. Stir them until they begin to melt. Once they begin to melt a little turn the heat down to a high medium. Keep stirring them occasionally for the next half hour or until they are completely melted. It is very important that the water be hot and that it be stirred every few minutes or the soap pieces won't dissolve and you will end up with a very chunky soap.

5) When the soap is melted you will probably have a soapy scum on top still and that is fine. Add the tea tree oil, stir it in and let it cool. Let it cool completely before transferring. It will gel up a lot when it is cooled.

Two important things to remember.

*Add the soap pieces when the water is very hot or they will clump together and not melt right no matter how long you boil it for. it will look very chunky, almost barf like.I didn't do this the first time and it looked really weird but it still washed and the soap did dissolve in the machine.

*Let the soap cool completely to room temp before transferring it. It gels up and concentrates a lot upon cooling. It doesn't become solid but it may become to gelled to easily get in or out of some containers with narrow openings. I didn't let this batch cool enough before putting it in an empty detergent bottle. When it had finally cooled it was thick and very hard to get out of the bottle without pounding on it and even digging it out with a spoon. I transferred it to a big ice cream bucket and it works fine now.

You only need to use 1 - 2 tablespoons of this per load. Huge difference from even the most concentrated ones on the market.

I used a pink bar of Zote but I'm not crazy about the dye aspect so when this bar is gone I'm going to look for the white version of it or a regular bar of ivory bath soap. If you use ivory I'd go with about half the bar per batch. I chose to add tea tree oil because of it's anti bacterial properties. It just makes me feel good knowing one more thing is in there killing germs lol. If it isn't your thing or you can't find it (Walmart carries it with the vitamins), then you could add some lavender or Rosemary oil for a nice scent. Of course you could eliminate it to, it's not essential to the cleaning aspect of the soap.

When I did the math the whole batch of laundry soap cost about $1.50 (including water). There are roughly 300 loads in this batch. The cost per load is somehwere around a penny. I actually think it is a bit less than a penny but I need to double check the actual cost of each item before I say that for sure. I am in cheap heaven!!

Soon I'll load the pictures I have of the process on here. I know seeing other peoples pictures helped me figure out what was going on a lot better.