Wednesday, January 18, 2012

DIY Laundry Detergent

I can't tell you how excited I am about this project. It was truly so much fun to do. My sweet cousin, Amy, pointed me to this project on Pinterest.
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As soon as we were getting low on our regular detergent I decided to make this. Everything cost me about $20 and it is supposed to last 9 months to a year!

These are the ingredients for my detergent:
  • 1 4lb 12oz box Borax (found in the detergent aisle)
  • 1 55oz box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (detergent aisle)
  • 2 and 2/3 small containers of Oxyclean or about 3.5lbs total (detergent aisle)
  • 2 2lb boxes of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (in the baking aisle)
  • 3 bars of Fels-naptha soap (detergent aisle)
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Before I did this I had not even heard of some of those ingredients. But, I found every last one of them at Walmart. It is crazy how you can walk by this stuff day in and day out and have not ever seen it!

First, you grate the bars of soap with a cheese grater. This Fels-naptha soap smells amazing! I just loved it. I want to think of more ways to use this soap. The soap dissolves when you wash.
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It also looks a lot like cheese...so maybe don't do this with kids awake who might mistakenly think it is cheese.
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Then you just pour all the ingredients together inside a trash sac in a 5-gallon bucket and stir it up. I transferred it back and forth between the sack and my glass container a couple times to get it good and mixed. I also picked up the trash sac (over the bucket) and shook it around a little.
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*Note - keep one of the Oxyclean scoops and put it in your finished container. You will just need one scoop of your finished mix for each load of laundry!

I bought this glass container at Walmart too for $9.97 and used my Silhouette to cut out a vinyl label.
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I already did a couple loads of laundry with this and it works great and has a very subtle smell. I just love it and it kind of makes me excited to do laundry. So crazy!

5 comments:

Camila said...

Oooh! I love this! Are you happy with the way your clothes look/smell? And where do you keep the trashcan full of detergent? Thanks for sharing!

kristen said...

i love this!!! i am going to copy you- i love it!

Alexis said...

Love this post and am so glad to find it! I have always hesitated to make it because I was afraid it wouldn't smell good or at all. I am glad to know it smells yummy!

Your babies are beautiful and I love reading your blog!

Allison said...

How awesome! I'm willing to try anything that might make me excited about doing laundry. I love the vinyl letters too!

Lifethrualinds said...

@camila I am happy with the job it does cleaning. The smell after washing is very subtle so if you like a smell to your laundry you may add some scented fabric softener to your load too. Also, I think if you tend to have bigger loads I would use 2 scoops instead of 1. All of the detergent stores in that glass container in my cabinet above the washer.