How to Make Natural Homemade Laundry Detergent

Making your own  laundry soap is one of the easiest parts of a transition to natural living. It is also a great way to save money on laundry detergent and is incredibly easy to do.

Why switch to natural laundry soap you ask? Conventional laundry detergent is loaded with chemicals like sulfates, fragrances, phenols and more. Many brands contain things like petroleum distillates, which are linked to cancer and lung disease. Fragrances in these detergents are made of a mix of harmful chemicals.

Luckily, making your own laundry soap is an easy and fast process! You only need three basic ingredients:

• Washing Soda (Arm and Hammer Brand available at most stores)
• Borax (20 Mule Team Borax available at most grocery stores)
• Bar Soap (Dr. Bronner’s, Fels-Naptha, Ivory, or other natural, unscented bar soap)

All of these things should be available at your local grocery store on the laundry aisle. You can also add a couple tablespoons of baking soda to help freshen clothes.

Wonder what’s in these ingredients? Borax is a naturally occurring mineral made up of sodium, boron, oxygen, and water. It is an ingredient in most of the natural soaps available now (Seventh Generation, etc) but it is much more inexpensive to make yourself.

Washing Soda, sometimes called sodium carbonate or soda ash, is made from common salt and limestone or found as natural deposits.

Dr. Bronner’s soaps are free trade and made with vegetable castille soap and pure organic oils.

To Make the laundry detergent:

1. Grate the bar soap or mix in food processor until finely ground. Use the soap of your choice. I personally use Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Bar Soap because of its exceptional quality, and because it is available in several different natural scents like lavender, tea tree, peppermint, almond and others.
2. In a large bowl, mix 2 parts washing soda, 2 parts Borax and 1 part grated soap. (Add a few teaspoons of baking soda if desired).
3. Store in closed container. I keep mine in quart or half gallon mason jars. If you are using a big enough container, you can skip step 2 and just put all ingredients in storage container or jar and shake.
4. Use 1/8 to 1/4 cup per load of laundry.

This recipe is also a great way to save money on laundry. By my calculations, I am saving over half on my laundry bill by switching:

On this recipe, I spent:

• One 55 ounce box Washing Soda- $3.49
• One 76 ounce box of Borax – $4.99
• One Bar Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Bar Soap- $2.99

With the amount this mixture I use (1/4 cup) per load of laundry, this recipe works out to $0.09 cents per load of laundry. This saves me almost $0.15 per load over using Arm and Hammer or Tide.

Happy Washing and have a healthy week!!

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