Homemade Laundry Detergent

I was doing some cleaning/ decluttering under the kitchen sink today and decided to go ahead and mix up another batch of homemade laundry detergent since the small batch I made has been working so well for us. This got 2 boxes of ingredients mixed up into 1 smaller bucket and saved me some space.

For my Hotpoint Super Capacity washer which according to the Hotpoint/ GE website is about 3.2 cu ft, I use 2 tablespoons per load. Sometimes I only use 1 scoop but that's rare. Only if it is a whole load of stuff that isn't very dirty. You can see pictures of the ingredients HERE in my All Purpose Cleaner post.

Cost of Ingredients:
1 box Borax $3.74
1 box Washing Soda $3.38
1 bar of soap - $1.00

To make the detergent, just mix 1/2 box Borax, 1 box washing soda, and 1 bar finely grated soap.

Total initially spent $8.12 since you can't buy 1/2 box of borax.
Actual cost per load=
1/2 box borax $1.87
1 box washing soda $3.38
1 bar soap $1.00
= $6.25

This makes enough for 165 loads of laundry using 2 tbsp per load for a total cost of 3.8 cents per load.

Compare to windfresh powder at Sam's @ 6.7 cents per load.

You wouldn't think this would be the case, but the soap is honestly the hardest ingredient to find. You don't want to use these extra moisturising dolled up soaps, but a good all purpose actual cleaning soap. I used my own homemade soap. Fels Naptha works great at cleaning, but it irritated Abby's eczema, so I just use homemade b/c I know exactly what is in it and it doesn't bother her. I also found Octagon for $0.79/ bar at Hometown Grocery in Seneca. Haven't tried that one with Abby yet. Zote is another brand you may be able to find.


And for what it's worth to anybody, through lots of prayer, trial, and error, we figured out that MILK was the thing making Abby's eczema really flare up. Turns out, I guess she's not so much allergic, but just sensitive to milk. We eliminated just milk, not all milk products from her diet and the eczema has gotten anywhere from 75-90% better. She still has dry itchy skin, but not the all over red flared up burning patches to go along with it. It would probably improve even more if we eliminated yogurt and cheese too, but the girl has to get calcium from somewhere and we can handle the level she is at now.