DIY Recipe: How to make frontloader washing machine laundry soap

I’m not buying laundry soap again. This recipe is too easy and cheap, and it works too well to go back to buying commercial laundry soap products.

by Leon Pantenburg

About two weeks ago, I got back from a backpacking trip with the usual assortment of grimy, smelly, smoky clothes.  These clothes were particularly rank:  I’d hiked over 11 miles, in the 90-degree-plus heat, in

one t-shirt, and it stunk to high heaven.  As is my custom, after a shower, I piled all the clothes in a filthy heap in the laundry room and prepared to wash them.

But we had no laundry soap.  I headed down to the local Safeway, and went directly to the laundry aisle.  But there were no good deals, and I got sticker shock.  For some reason, all laundry soap has gone sky-high, and the usual large Tide we buy for our frontloader washing machine was more than $15!

My penny-pinching, Depression-era, Do-It Yourself mentality kicked into gear.

“This is just soap,” I thought. “I should be able to make it a lot cheaper than this!”

So I got on the internet and found this recipe on the Busy At Home blog.  The ingredients to make this liquid soap are simple and cheap, and the savings are substantial.  You can buy everything you need at Walmart or Safeway.

To quote Busy At Home author Glenda Embree:

“I pay, on average, $8.00 for a 75-load bottle of my old detergent.  I would have been happy to cut that price in half.  Instead, I discovered that by making the recipe I am going to share with you, a 75-load bottle of DIY detergent saved me $7.79¾!!!  That is a little more than a 97% savings!  Hello!  Making my own is no longer JUST an option.  It’s ridiculous not to. It cost only 20¼¢ for the ingredients to make a 75-load bottle of detergent!  Translate that savings over a year’s worth of laundry and that put’s a tidy sum back into our family’s budget.”

The ingredients are simple and cheap, (I already had everything but the Fels Naptha soap) and the DIY soap worked very well on my backpacking clothes, as well as several other less-challenging loads of normal clothing over the past couple weeks.

Here’s how to make frontloader laundry soap:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 bar of Fels Naptha soap

  This is what the DIY laundry soap concentrate looks like after setting overnight. It will be diluted 1:1 with water before using.

• 2 Tablespoons Borax powder
• 1/4 cup (4 Tablespoons) Arm and Hammer Washing Soda (not baking soda)

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