Homemade Laundry Soap

May 19, 2008

I've been trying for a couple years now to make all our own cleaning products. I've succeeded fairly well with cold process hand & body soaps.

Clean, Naturally: Recipes for Body, Home, and Spirit by Sandy Maine is a great start for basic soap making. (This is an older book and is now out of print. Newer books have since been published. And now of course there is a proliferation of soapmaking blogs.)

Vinegar, baking soda and borax work for most household cleaning. Add a little Dr. Bronner's (we like peppermint, though tea tree sounds great too) when you want a liquid cleaner for floors or toilets.

I am now making our own laundry soap and it's a bit complicated so it may not be for everyone. But a friend asked me how I do it and I thought I'd share it here.

First, I make a batch of cold process soap. This is the hardest part. I have a tutorial called 4 Steps to Making Homemade Soap to get you started. You could also watch my video tutorial How to Make Simple Soap.

Once I make that Simple Soap I mix it with borax and washing soda. Voila. Laundry soap.

Simple Soap:

4 lbs of lard or vegetable shortening
28 oz water
8.5 oz of lye

When the soap is ready (takes about a month to cure) I grate most of it in the food processor, saving some for basic cleaning bars.

Laundry Mix:

12 cups washing soda, not the same as baking soda
8 cups borax
6 cups grated Simple Soap

Directions:

I use cold water wash and rinse. For an extra large laundry load I use 1/2 cup of laundry mix. The Laundry Mix doesn't dissolve well in cold water so I whisk the 1/2 cup with 1 cup or so of hot water to help it dissolve before I add it to the washing machine.

For stains I scrub and lather a bar of Simple Soap into the stain, or soak in a concentrated solution of water and Laundry Mix. I'll be honest, our clothes get stained and all the scrubbing in the world doesn't take some of them out, oh well.

Note:

You can use any bar soap to make this recipe. I have also made laundry soap with failed soap batches. If a batch of soap doesn't turn out, especially if its caustic and not moisturizing for our skin, I grate the soap as I would simple soap and make it into laundry soap following this recipe.

More FIMBY make-your-own recipes:

Laundry Soap Recipes from Other Blogs: