Homemade Laundry Soap

With between 5 and 7 people living here at any time, plus running a home daycare, we do A LOT of laundry here at The Homestead! Since I don’t want all kinds of harsh chemicals in my family’s clothes, and all-natural detergents are expensive, I choose to make my own Laundry Soap! It’s easy, economical, all-natural and effective. I put its effectiveness to the test several months ago, as I tried to drink coffee in the car while wearing a white blouse. Oops. I thought for sure the blouse was ruined, but I washed it with this soap and the stains came out, first try!

Before you begin, make sure you have a really big bowl (we use a big plastic one from the dollar store) some rubber gloves, and all your ingredients together.  Note: These ingredients are all found on my Simple Living Shopping List.

Mama’s Homemade Laundry Soap

2 cups borax

2 cups washing soda

2 cups baking soda

½ cup castile soap (we use Dr. Bronner’s baby mild, unscented)

1 ¾ cup white vinegar

20 drops of essential oil, your choice (we use lavender, but you can used whatever scent you prefer!)

Put on your rubber gloves. Dump all the dry ingredients into your big bowl. Break up any lumps. Add the remaining ingredients, and start mixing it together with your hands. At first, the mixture will be like a thin paste, but as you mix it will get thicker. Just keep mixing with your hands, doing your best to break up lumps with your fingers. After a couple of minutes, it will get to what I call “The Feta Cheese Stage” which means it will become the consistency of crumbled feta. Still keep squishing and mixing until it becomes powdery again. There will still be a few small lumps, but that’s ok. They will dissolve in the wash when you use it.

Now, just transfer your finished laundry soap into a covered container. I use an old glass flour canister, which used to belong to my grandmother, but a simple Tupperware container is fine, too. Use ¼ cup per load of wash.