DIY

Laundry Detergent

Click here to view blog post by GirlCreative

One night I was visiting one of my favorite photo sharing spots, Instagram.  A friend had posted a picture showing the above ingredients and said that she had just mixed enough laundry detergent to last her family of 6 for a year.   All for around $ 20.    

What???

Laundry Detergent for a year for the same price I pay for 1 bottle of the name brand stuff at Costco?

Needless to say I was intrigued.  I asked my friend where she purchased the ingredients,  because I hadn't seen them before.  She told me she got them at Wal Mart, but had seen them in pretty much every grocery store.

A couple of days later, at my local Wal-Mart I walked up and down the laundry aisle looking for the stuff.  I passed it twice!  In a double sided aisle 20 feet or longer, there in the middle on one side of the aisle in a section about 2 feet wide were the ingredients.  

I was struck by the thought, standing there among who knows how many name brands of laundry detergent that I had been completely conditioned to think that I needed to buy the name brand detergent made especially for my HE washer.  And guessing from the sheer number of bottles lining the aisle, I'm not the only one.  

There were all kinds of cool stuff in this little section.  Stuff made by companies that have probably been in business for a hundred years.  Stuff that you would picture your grandmother using.  Stuff that probably works just as good or better than the stuff that smells nice in a pretty container.

So I purchased my ingredients, brought them home and got to work mixing.  If you click on the link below the picture, the instructions this girl has are better than the way I went about it.  If you don't have a food processor, you can do it the way I did.

My husband offered to help me, and I assigned him the task of grating the Fels-Naptha soap for me.  He grated the bar for me,  and I chopped the grated soap as fine as I could with a knife.  After everything was mixed, this is what it looked like:

I have an HE washer, and use 1 heaping tablespoon per load.  We've been using it for about a week now and I am pleased with the results.  I will definitely continue to use it!

And of course now I am wondering.........what else can I make myself? ;)