I have been watching a lot of house cleaning and decluttering videos lately. I noticed several vloggers have been using their own homemade laundry detergent. I decided I wanted to give it a try and make my own laundry detergent.
I did a little reading to find out what exactly goes into making your own laundry detergent. The recipe I decided on is not my own; it was from another blog and I thought it was perfect timing since we are talking about TikTok hacks on the podcast. I am happy with the results and recommend this recipe from The Spruce if you want to try it out yourself.
The recipe makes about 5 cups of detergent, so I purchased a tight-sealing container that was the right size to store it in. What I was not planning on was having extra ingredients leftover. I will have to go back and get better storage containers for the back stock, and I will explain that later. Here is a breakdown on what the recipe makes:
Ingredients:
- 2 cups of Borax
- 2 Cups of Washing Soda
- 1 Cup of shredded washing Soap
1 recipe yields 5 Cups of detergent which comes to approximately 80 Loads in an HE front load washer by using 1 Tablespoon in the wash (two tablespoons for non HE)
Cost: $13.97 after taxes
I probably spent more on the plastic locking container that I have it stored in. I also wound up with more leftover ingredients than what the recipe called for; I could probably make at least 2 more batches. To be conservative, let's say that I get 240 loads from the supplies purchased…I am looking at about $0.05 per load! With the standard liquid laundry detergent, I was spending about $21.59 after taxes on the 100 load size container. This cost me roughly $0.22 per load, which can really add up. For my family of three, we generally have about 10 loads a week, therefore, we were spending about $115 on laundry detergent a year! With this homemade detergent, we could save about $89 on detergent per year.
Other factors
Not only can I save money by making my own detergent, I can reduce the plastic waste that I create. All three products come in cardboard boxes, which can be broken down and recycled. The boxes, however, are not great for long term storage because they are not sealed well. I had noticed that they were leaving powder behind wherever I stored them, and little sprinkles would spill out when I moved them around. I took the contents out of their boxes and put them in labeled Ziplocs to make sure they are airtight. It is very humid here in North Texas, and my washing machine is in the garage, so I want to make sure my supplies last. If the detergent gets clumpy, it will not dissolve in the wash and will leave residue on the clothing. Another thing to factor in is time. The bar of soap does need to be grated, but it took no time at all, and it seems like it will be a very long time before I need to grate more because I have more than enough ready to use.
Although I am a lover of all things fragrant, I have been enjoying the light smell of the shredded washing soap. It is not an overbearing scent. I have thought about trying out other recipes and possibly other alternatives to enhance the scent because I do miss the smell of Tide from time to time. If you are wondering if my clothes are coming out clean, the recipe only recommended 1 tablespoon for my high efficiency. I was a little skeptical that my clothes wouldn't come out clean with such a little amount of soap but I am not finding any clothes that are not coming out clean from the wash. Travis does come home with stains set in stains on some of his work clothes and so I still have to use a stain remover on those to spot clean.
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| The Final Product |
Let me know what you think! Would you ever use a homemade laundry detergent or cleaning supply? Let me know if you try out the recipe above and if it worked for you.
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