Make Your Own Laundry Soap

1 cup grated Fels Naptha Soap

1/2 cup washing soda

1/2 cup 20 mule team borax

Mix and store in airtight container or bag. For light or small loads, use 1 tablespoon. For normal loads, use 2 tablespoons. For heavy loads, use 3 tablespoons.

To make a large batch – grate 6 bars of Fels Naptha Soap and then add 3 cups of Washing Soda and 3 cups of 20 Mule Team Borax.  Mix well and store in covered container.

I always make the large batch.  Takes 15 minutes and lasts for about 2 months.  Using this soap cuts the cost of your load to about .15 cents!

Now, I did recently run into a problem trying to make this up.  I was buying my Fels Naptha from a local grocery store.  I think the bars must have been sitting in storage for a while because they were dry and very easy to pulverize in my food processor.  Then I decided to go ahead and buy a case of soap from Soaps Gone Buy.  Their soap is fresh.  Now, ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a bad thing, but I found that fresh soap doesn’t break up well in the food processor.  I broke 2 little processors trying to grate one bar of soap!

I went out and bought a new, large food processor.  It still didn’t break this stuff up!  So I emailed the very nice people at Soaps Gone Buy to ask for help.  I got a reply telling me to grate the soap, freeze it, then process it with the powders (borax & washing soda) through the food processor.  Viola!  It worked.  She also mentioned that you can cut the bars into chunks, or grate, then just leave them out on a tray under a fan.  This will also dry the soap enough to send through the food processor.

Either way, it’s a simple way to help save my budget and the environment.