Best Laundry Detergent EVER!

Ok, so I know that (at least around our area and with the people I'm connected to) one of the most popular "tricks of the trade" tips that is being passed around lately has been how to make your own Homemade Laundry Detergent.  Now, for most people (yours truly included) one of the main reasons is the expense....reality check, we're surviving a major economic recession.  Another reason is actually the environment.  If you doubt me, add up all those plastic bottles you're going through for laundry detergent alone and see how many and for how long you can store them before it gets to you....see what I mean? There are other reasons as well, but one of my favorites is that this is one way I have of directly making certain that I don't have to worry about allergic reactions on the part of anyone wearing anything that I'VE washed for them (trust me, this can be a biggie when you have as many nieces and nephews running around with your own kids as we do...especially when you know that some of them have sensitive skin).

Ok, enough of the reasons why....what are we doing about it?  Well, take a look at what is happening with Pinterest.com's user boards lately (if you want to see mine, just go to pinterest.com/HandmadeHeritag).  You're likely to find at least one or two different detergent and other household cleaning DIY tips pinned fairly quickly.  The real question is, though....Does It Work?  Well, after hearing a friend talking about the same pin I'd been seeing for awhile I figured I give it a shot (come on, we're a family of 6 which adds up to a LOT of laundry! lol, What better test source wouldn't you say?).  So I jumped on there, looked up the blog article about it (which you can find at beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com) and tried it out myself.  Goodness, can I even BEGIN to tell you just how surprised we were at not only how good it smelled but also how clean our clothes were without fading!  I'll admit, we tweaked it a little bit to fit our own purposes, but her basic recipe works like a charm and has become something we've even give out to friends to test which they've loved as well.

(Please Note: when you are mixing this you WILL want to have some kind of a face mask for the powder cloud and some plastic gloves with longer sleeves on them.  The powder cloud isn't a danger, but it can be very very irritating to the sinuses and the gloves will explain themselves shortly.)
 

Ok, so we gathered our ingredients (found in the laundry aisle at Walmart and both of the home-town grocery stores in our area so I'd be surprised if you couldn't find them also....just be careful that you gather them together first as it seems that there's been a bit of a run on them lately, lol) in this lovely pile for you to see:

Another note: this picture is missing a couple of the duplicate items, please count them all in the recipe...it makes a HUGE difference though just a couple of ounces here or there won't.

Ingredients:
1 box Borax (usually about 4 lbs 12 ozs of big)
1 box Washing Soda (Arm and Hammer are the only brand I've seen and the box is about 3 lbs 7 ozs)
4 lbs Baking Soda (that's 4 of those little guys or 1 big ol' box, or maybe 2 medium boxes...go by weight.  Oh, and this is something you're more likely to find in the baking aisle.)
3 bars (that's right 3 bars ladies and gents) of Fels Naptha soap (we missed 2 bars the first time we made this recipe, lol) Another note: I'm told if you use Zote (you can find it at Home Depot or Lowe's) soap instead it only takes 2 bars?
3 lbs Oxy-Clean (your favorite generic brand of this will work terrifically)opt'l
For our batches, I'll also use some vinegar and fabric softener sometimes but I'll get to that in a minute.

Ok, so how do you put it all together?  Super easy!  First, grate your soap...I prefer using the fine grate on our to help the soap more thoroughly mix but that is just me.

Then you want to don the gas mask, rubber/plastic gloves, and dump all the rest of your ingredients into a big old bucket (we use a 20 gallon storage bucket for ours).  Mix that all together, then mix in all the grated soap flakes.  We actually did find that if you do this last part by hand and rub the soap in with the powders that it helps the lot of it to actually blend better for dispersing more evenly.

Isn't it lovely? :D It comes out with a natural, lovely kind of citrus scent so you don't need to worry much about adding anything more unless you prefer in which case I recommend a liquid fabric softener that you add to your machine with each batch.  The one other tip I'll share with you that we've begun doing is to add a little bit (probably about a teaspoon? I'm not the best one to measure here, I just dump a quick dash in) of white vinegar to each batch.  The only reason I do this is because I have this habit of starting a load of laundry either right before I go to work or just before bed which then might get forgotten and the vinegar keeps the clothes from turning sour before I manage to remember to put them in the drier....and I just KNOW I'm likely the only one out there doing that one, hahahahaha.

So, yep.  That's all there is to it.  That first, initial batch attempt on our part literally lasted more than 6 months and our clothes are absolutely terrifically clean and bright.  I've actually experienced far less fading versus the other brands thus far, too, which I've LOVED.  The ingredients cost us about $25 or so to put all together, plus the cost of the vinegar and fabric softener that we add to each load.  Can you see the saving yet? :)

Do any of you have any further laundry tips to add?  I'd LOVE to hear them!