Lessons in frugality: The homemade laundry soap edition

So, now that this sister is hanging out at home full time, I figured I'd do what I could to reduce our overhead.  Because I'm nice that way.  Also, I'd rather buy cake then pay for spendierish things.  Like laundry soap.

If you throw a cyber rock here on the innernets, you'll find a blogpost that talks about how to make homemade laundry soap.  My personal favorite is this awesome ladyfriend and her post on the abovereferencedthingIjustsaid.

I trolled the Walmarts and found these items:

*Three bars of Ivory soap.  It was like, idk, somewhere around $1.09 for all three.
*Borax.  Our Walmart carries it, but some don't.  But they were out so I had to troll the Safeway aisles and I suspect they're highish, so I spent around $5.49 for this big ole box.
*Arm & Hammer Washing Soda.  Also at my Walmart.  But surely at some randomish store near you should your Walmart not be as cool as mine.  It will be in the Detergent aisle.  I spent around $2.49 for this.

So I spent in total somewhere around $8.00ish dollars.

You'll also need:

*A bowl.  Color need not matter.  You can relax on that.
*Cheese grater.  Or a fancypants food processor.  I am not fancypants.
*Air tight container.  I used one I just had around the house, because I'm resourceful like that.
*Measuring Cups.  Which is not pictured.  Because I forgot.  Alas.

So first thing you'll need to do is grate a bar of soap.  It's way easy.  It took like, 47 seconds.  I'm just guessing because I didn't actually time myself or anything but dude, the point is, it's way easy.  I just said that.

See?  Easy peasy grated soapy.  Now add in the Borax and Washing Soda and mix well.  I just chucked mine into the container, closed it up and pretended I was playing the maracas.  Look, it's kind of boring around here.  I gotta make my own fun.

THE RECIPE:


1 bar of grated Ivory soap (or some crazy kind called Fels-Naptha that I didn't feel like hunting down)
1/2 cup Borax
1/2 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda


Use 1 Tablespoon for each load.

Aaaaand voila.  You've got your homemade powder laundry soap.  

Now because I had 3 bars of Ivory Soap, I tripled my recipe which gave me this bounty:

So as time goes on, I'll probably add to my bounty with more batches, because I'm psycho and like to see a full container.  And the soap bars are all I'll need for eons because there's still tons left in the Borax and Washing Soda.

**This recipe does not suds up.  So don't be alarmed if you don't see giant soapy bubbles in your washing machine.
**This recipe also doesn't give the clean-laundry-smelly-good-perfumy-fragrance that most commercial laundry soaps have.  So don't be alarmed if the first few days you find yourself shoving socks into your spouse's face going "Does this smell clean?  I can't tell if it's clean. What do you think?" You can always add a few drops of essential oils to your batch.
**You can add bleach if you feel like you need to, just be careful to not mix it with something that will make a ka-boom, like vinegar.  Also, I'm assuming it makes a ka-boom.  I've not yet tried it.  Homeschool project, anyone?  Just kidding.  Maybe.


You can also make liquid homemade laundry soap if you're into the liquid thing.  I found a great site here that has 10 recipes.

Supposedly this stuff lasts for months at a time.  And if you do complicated Pythagorean Theorem mathematics I'm probably averaging somewhere around 4 cents a load.  Or something.

Happy Laundering.