Holy Freakin' Laundry Detergent// A DIY story

I'm gonna go ahead and tell you.. you may just wanna scroll down to the ** section below and just look past this entire rant I am above to embark on.

As you may have seen on my "Projects" page, I have been wanting to make homemade laundry detergent for some time now. I had a few concerns: 1. Is it going to negatively affect the High Efficiency Washer? 2. Is it going to negatively affect my wallet? 3. Is it going to be difficult? Am I going to have to put a lot of effort into something that could potentially not yield the expected results?

Recently, I saw on a friend's blog that she and her husband used homemade laundry detergent. She listed a recipe that she used and noted that for about $15 they used this laundry detergent for over a year. She also addressed some of my concerns about it negatively affecting a high efficiency front loading washing machine. After reading her post (after they had been using it for over a year) I decided to give it a try myself.

Negative Nancy Rant: I had been showing houses all day and had developed a pretty bad migraine headache. I needed a few things from the grocery store anyways and had already kind of promised myself that I would venture into this activity this afternoon and that maybe it would "make me feel better." So, I ventured into Target-- thinking that they would have a super cute container to put the homemade detergent in as well as having all of the ingredients. I also thought it would be a mood boosting and positive experience vs. a negative and stressful experience that Wal-Mart typically evokes. Boy was I wrong. Target didn't have two of the ingredients- even though the worker was really nice and even helped me try to find a substitute for those ingredients, but it just was not happening. At one point (with migraine pounding) I "pretend" rolled my eyes and "pretend" passed out thinking no one saw me... but a 7 year old boy did. And he made a freakin hilarious face. At this point, I decided to completely abandon my cart and leave the store. Step Two: I went to Wal-Mart. Before even making it into the store I thought about laying down in the road and letting someone run over me due to the insanity they call parking/the sheer amount of people at Walmart/the odd and scary cliental/ the fact that someone got murdered at that exact Wal-Mart a short two weeks ago. Anyways, I went into the Wal-Mart and considered falling over/ pretend passing out at least three times just trying to make it to the laundry/detergent/cleaning supplies section. Once I got to the section with all the ingredients I needed I realized they had everything I needed except for Borax. Really, Walmart?! So, Ill shorten this story by saying that I found a manager and he got me some Borax from the back.

**In case you scrolled down to avoid wasting 90 seconds of your life with that crazy rant, start here:

So, after collecting all of the necessary ingredients, I ventured to the kitchen section to find a cute canister style glass container to put it in. Now, here comes the fun part...
Throughout my research in Target for a substitute for the called for Fels-Naptha soap, I found out that Zote is an excellent substitute. Here comes the exciting part: Walmart sells Zote that is pre-grated, which means even less work for making this homemade detergent. Score!!

Finally, the fun and happy part: Putting it together. //This was sooooo easy.

Recipe:

1 4 lb 12 oz box Borax 

1 4 lb box Arm and Hammer Baking Soda

1  3 lb 7 oz box Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda 

1 Package of Zote Pre-grated Soap OR 3 bars of Fels-naptha soap ( You will later grate this yourself into flakes)

2 small containers of oxyclean (optional)

1 package of Downy Unstoppables (I prefer Lavender)

Directions: Mix it all together!! :) Easy enough, right?!

The dinger went off on my dryer as I was typing this post and I was able to experience the first load with this new detergent. Although the scent is very subtle, it is nice and seemed to clean well! If this batch lasts a year (which, based on the quantity of the product, it looks like it will) then that would be quite the savings- not to mention the excitement of having a nice, homemade, fresh and chemical free detergent.