Frugal Hack — Homemade Laundry Detergent

Laundry detergent is expensive, yo. Even in my little household of two, I end up running two or three loads of laundry each week — Len is a diesel mechanic, a pretty dirty job — and that stuff adds up. He’s also been developing more and more sensitive skin, and more and more commercial detergents seem to irritate it. (The worst offender, ironically, is the Tide Simply line.)

I’ve made homemade detergent before and it’s always worked wonderfully, so this time, I bought some washing soda, some borax, some Zote flakes, and some lavender essential oil and got to work.

Did you know there are approximately fifty billion recipes for homemade laundry detergent on the internet? I sure do, now!

Many of these recipes create a powdered detergent that I don’t expect would work well in my front-loader, so they were out. Most of those remaining were calculated for mixing in a 5-gallon bucket. I have a 5-gallon bucket — I have two of them, in fact — but for some reason I don’t have a lid for either of them. I know that I did in fact purchase a lid for one of them; I remember it clearly; where that lid has squirreled itself away is anyone’s guess.

What I do have, though, is a 2-gallon bucket with a lid. I don’t consider mixing detergent an arduous enough task that I necessarily need to do it 5 gallons at a time, and the 2-gallon bucket fits nicely on the shelf in my “laundry room.” So I read through a zillion different recipes and did some calculations — wrongly at first, just to keep things interesting — and came up with my own formula.

The results are good! It was quick and easy to put together, it works well, and it doesn’t irritate Len’s skin. Plus, it only cost about $10 for the ingredients — the price of a big bottle of commercial detergent — and I’ll be able to make something like — *does math* — 12 gallons of the stuff before I need to re-up on soap flakes. Not bad for 15 minutes of work. (And 4 hours of web surfing reading recipes, but never mind that part.)

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First, assemble your ingredients and tools. You will need:

• 1/2 cup Borax
• 1/2 cup Washing soda
• 1-1/3 cups Zote laundry flakes
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of essential oil (optional; I used this)
• A 2-gallon bucket with a lid
• A stockpot
• An implement for stirring — a wooden spoon or a paint stirrer will work fine
• A small dog in a Christmas sweater to supervise (optional but highly recommended)

You can also use a bar of castille soap, Fels Naptha, or Zote. Just use a cheese grater to grate it. I found the flakes a huge time and labor saver.

One 17.6-ounce box of Zote flakes is equal to, according to the box, two bars of Zote. I needed about 1/3 of a bar of soap for this formula, so I needed about 1/6 of the box.

Upon measuring, the box came out to exactly 8 cups of flakes. So I used 1-1/3 cups of flakes.

At least I did eventually. At first I mathed wrong, because it was like 6 in the morning and I wasn’t quite awake yet, and only used 1/3 cup.

1. Add a few cups of water — let’s say 3 — to your stockpot and pour in your soap flakes. Put the stockpot on the stove over medium heat.

2. And stir. Keep stirring until the soap melts fully. It’ll take 5 to 10 minutes and get nice and sudsy.

3. Fill your bucket about halfway with warm-to-hot water.

4. Add the soap mixture to the bucket and stir to incorporate. It was at this point that I realized I had dramatically messed up the amount of soap I should use, so I melted another cup real quick and added that too.

5. Add half a cup of Borax…

6. Half a cup of washing soda…

7. And your essential oil if you’re using it. I probably used a teaspoon or two.

8. Give it all a good stir to mix, then top the bucket off with more hot water.

9. Keep stirring. You want to make sure everything is well mixed and the powders are dissolved. You’ll end up with something that looks like this, and it’ll start gelling together.

10. Pop the lid on tight and let it sit for at least 24 hours.

Make sure you thoroughly clean anything you might use for food down the line. Borax and laundry soap are not good eats.

Once you’re ready to do the laundry — the best day of the week, am I right? Everyone LOVES laundry day! — pop the lid off, give the mix a quick stir to make sure it gelled up properly, and measure out what you need.

It should look something like this. It’s really rather gross and pretty slimy. Try not to think about it too much.

I have an HE front-loader, and 1/4 cup of this glop is plenty.

Now, get working on that laundry. Launder to your heart’s delight! Wash, dry, fold! It’s so much fun and not at all the very worst chore in all of creation!

True story: My grandmother, along with tons of women of her vintage, when asked about the greatest invention of her lifetimes, replied without hesitation, “the washing machine.” You think laundry sucks now? Phew. At least we don’t need to do it by hand. For a family of 11. Like my grandmother.

Bonus pics of my ridiculous “laundry room”:

That’s the pot rack there on the right. I smack my shoulder into it every time.

Our chest freezer lived outside while we were still in the RV, so it’s seen better days. I do wonder if I could maybe clean it up with a Magic Eraser?

We put the shelving in ourselves. It gets the job done.