New and Improved* Homemade Laundry Soap

My latest adventure started after a discussion with my girlfriend about removing grease spots from clothes. ( I know quite intense conversations I have with my friends... I should write a book of one liners called "You Know You're A Mom When...") Anyhow, she was telling me how great a little dab of Dawn soap works to get out grease stains, so I tried it! And wouldn't you know it worked great!! So got me thinkin'. Here I am spending $25 bucks for laundry soap and my $2 bottle of dawn does a better job.  So I started researching and found a couple different recipes for homemade laundry soap, and it's soooo cheap to make!

So here are the ingredients....

1 box of Borax
1 box of Super Washing Soda
1 box of powdered color-safe bleach
Ivory soap (There were other types of soap you could use, but I like the smell of this one best.)
Purex Crystals softener
You also need a grater and an air-tight container to put it in.

Recipe

1 cup Borax
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup powdered color-safe bleach
2 cups finely grated soap (2 bars equals pretty close to 2 cups)
1/2 cup Purex Crystals softener


Mix all the ingredients together until well blended... And that's about it! Easy work there!
It takes 2 Tablespoons of this powdery stuff per large load.

Now for the ultimate test...

Those are my dad's wood cutting jeans. They're covered in dirt, sap, chainsaw grease, and who knows what else. I pre-treated the heavy grease spots with a little dawn, since that's how I'd do it if I were using the regular detergent, and threw them in the wash. Normal cycle, warm/cold water and 2 scoops of the new homemade laundry soap.

And I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome....

As you can see, I could have "spot-treated" a little bit better on one pant leg, but all in all pretty darn clean.

So, I am now hooked on making my own soap! It is quite the cost saver too, though that was not my primary focus when I started this project. Here's the financial comparison if you're interested. My previous laundry soap was costing $0.21 per load and my new homemade, equally as effective laundry soap is costing a whole $0.07 per load! So works great, costs less... That's a good thing in my book. The Purex Crystals definitely add that fresh laundry scent that I was missing. I also am testing out the "color-safe bleach" because I've noticed on my whites the previous recipe wasn't quite getting them white enough.
Happy laundering :)

Next, I think I'll try the dishwasher detergent. :)