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This post contains affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I may be compensated for purchases made via these links; thank you for your support of my blog.

It had never occurred to me to make laundry detergent before my sister-in-law Mireya pinned a recipe for homemade laundry soap, and I thought “Hey, I could make that!”

Like any good blogger, I took to Pinterest to find other laundry detergent recipes and figure out my ingredient list.  If you aren’t following me on Pinterest, you can do so HERE

I ultimately decided to use this recipe for DIY Laundry Detergent as a guide, and the Mister and I went shopping. I thought that we’d have a hard time finding some the ingredients so we went to a few difference stores. Surprisingly, Publix had just about everything we needed. I’d suggest that you start with your local grocery store, or you can order it all from Amazon.

Laundry Soap Ingredients

1 box (65 oz) 20 Mule Team Borax
1 box (55 oz) Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 container (3 lb) Oxy Clean Stain Remover or Seventh Generation Stain Remover
2 bars (5 oz. each) Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap Bars
4 lb Arm & Hammer Baking Soda
2 Bottles (18 oz each) Purex Crystal Fragrance Booster

Laundry Soap DIY

Mireya had warned me that when she made her homemade laundry soap (see her tutorial HERE), the smell had burned her nose a little. So even though many of the tutorial I read talked about the house smelling amazing, I decided to take my project outside.

The first step is grating the Fels-Naptha bars. This is the most time-consuming part if you do it manually. My mother-in-law and I each grated a bar, and it took about 10 minutes total. However, if you have a food processor that you can dedicate to household use, it goes much faster.

Then line a 5-gallon bucket (with lid) and mix the ingredients well in it. After mixing the ingredients, we fill the plastic Oxy Clean or Seventh Generation container to keep the detergent in the laundry room, refilling from our bucket as necessary.

Depending on how large my laundry load is, I simply add 1 to 2 tablespoons of the homemade laundry soap to my machine as it fills before putting my laundry in the machine.

2016 Update

We have made this soap three times in the last four years. We don’t have children so our laundry schedule is pretty tame, but I cannot beat the cost effectiveness of only buying laundry detergent ingredients every 1 to 1 1/2 years, especially if pick the ingredients up at the store as they go on sale.

I definitely recommend using a food processor to shred your laundry soap bars, after breaking it into smaller pieces – you have a new bucket of homemade laundry soap in just 15 minutes.

Do you make your own household cleaners and detergents? What’s your best tip for saving time and money when doing laundry?

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