Homemade Laundry Soap {Tutorial}

I have been seeing a lot of homemade cleaner recipes all over blogland.  My first thought, was, "What a pain!" and "Do they really work as well?"  Then I read a post about homemade laundry soap written by Kadie over and Seven Alive who wrote this great tutorial for powdered laundry soap.  Kadie totally changed my mind.  I decided to try out my own laundry soap.  I was very interested and asked her if she knew if her recipe was safe for high-efficiency washers.  She gave me a link to where she found her recipe, and I was able to find a liquid soap this is He safe.  So, I am going to share with you my adventure in making my own laundry soap.

I found these simple ingredients at my nearest Walmart in the laundry soap section.  They were surprisingly easy to find, and extremely affordable:

Fels-Naptha Soap Bar ($0.97)
Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda ($3.24)
Borax ($2.98)
(You will also need one 5 gallon bucket with a lid - I also found this at Walmart for a total of $3.71)
(You can also add 1-2 drops of essential oils per 2 gallons once it has cooled)

 The first thing you'll need to do is add 4 cups of hot tap water to a large saucepan.  Then, grate the whole Fels-Naptha bar into the pan.

 Stir continuously over med-low heat until the soap is dissolved.  This took about 45 minutes.  Your house will smell soapy and clean.

 Then fill up your five gallon buck halfway with hot tap water.  Once it is halfway full, add the melted soap mixture, 1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, and 1/2 cup Borax and stir until well-mixed.  I used a plastic spoon with a really long handle.

 Add more hot tap water until the bucket is full, and stir to mix.

 Cover your bucket with the lid and allow to sit overnight.  The mixture will gel.  When I read this from the recipe, I figured it would be this consistent-looking yellow gel.  Well, guess again.  I was wrong.  It looks like something you may have seen in a science class.

 Yep.  That's what it looked like after sitting all night.  I became very skeptical at this point, and wondered how this was going to work out.  THAT is supposed to clean MY clothes?

 I grabbed my plastic spoon and started stirring.  I had to put my hand in it a little bit to reach the bottom.

 Then, I thought of this amazing idea, that I introduced yesterday.

 It worked so well!  I still had to use the spoon to stir up the stuff from the bottom, but it worked so fast!  I was so excited to try it out!  If you are using an empty laundry soap container, fill it half full with the soap and half full with water (the total yield is 10 gallons).  Also, it is important to shake before each use because it will gel and separate!

I used this bowl to try it out with.  All you need is 1/4 cup (1/8 c. soap + 1/8 c. water) for each load if you have a front-load washer and 5/8 cup for a top load.  This is extremely frugalistic soap.  There is a total of 640 loads (front-load) in this 10-gallon recipe with a total cost of about $1.60 per batch.  (This costs $0.075 for 30 loads!)

I was very pleased with how well this soap cleans.  The last time I bought laundry soap, I got the cheapest one I could find (and it doesn't clean at all!).  With this recipe, the clothes come out smelling clean and they feel clean too.