Guest Post: Homemade Laundry Soap

The following is a guest post from Sarah at Give Me Neither.  You can catch her sharing how she lives simply, richly and thanfully.

Over a year ago, in a quest to find a detergent that cleaned cloth diapers well, I found this laundry detergent recipe on the Diaper Sewing Divas website. It’s worked great on diapers and the rest of our clothes too. Here are the posted instructions for Diva Detergent. She doesn’t mention it, but I wear rubber cleaning gloves when mixing it. It gets a little warm while mixing. I also mix all the dry ingredients first and then add the simple green.

• 1 55 oz. box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
• 1/2 cup Mule Team Borax
• 2 Cups Oxygen Cleaner-She recommends Sun ($5 @ Dollar General)
• 1/2 cup Simple Green
• 1/2 cup Calgon Water Softening Powder

Empty all into a bucket and mix together with your hands. Use 1 heaping scoop (1/8 cup) for diapers, 2 scoops for regular laundry. After we’ve used this for a while some have had to increase to 2 scoops for diapers, 3-4 for regular laundry….you will probably have to experiment a bit to see what works best with your water.

I store it in an airtight container. It’s actually one that I used for flour in the past, but it’s not food worthy anymore (it’s one of the bad plastics). I’ll post about the homemade dishwasher detergent I use tomorrow.

These prices are approximate.
Oxiclean approx. $6.99/$2.00 (total cost/cost per batch)
Washing soda $2.99/$2.99
Simple Green $4.24/$0.53
Calgon $8.99/$0.56
Borax $2.99/$0.16
Cost/batch $6.24
Cost/oz. $0.08

You’ll have to experiment with how much you need depending on the type of washer you have and the type of water. I’ve used anywhere from 1/2oz. to 2ozs per load. If you have a front loader, it’s a good idea to dissolve it in hot water before adding into the detergent dispenser.