There is a liquid soap recipe and a powdered soap recipe. I opted for the powdered recipe because I am lazy and the liquid soap seemed like a pain in the butt to make. The recipe that I decided to use boasts 364 loads of laundry. After buying the ingredients for the soap, my final cost was around $6.00 for 364 loads of laundry compared to around $60.00 for the same amount of loads at Sam's Club for Gain detergent.
I decided that this wasn't going to amount to much savings if it didn't work as well as premade detergent, hence my experiment.
This is my story. Bong Bong.
I took two white shirts out of the closet and squirted some ketchup on them.
| From drax0r pics |
| From drax0r pics |
I then smeared in the ketchup.
| From drax0r pics |
| From drax0r pics |
I pretreated both shirts with Spray and Wash according to bottle directions. I washed the first shirt below with Gain Laundry Detergent and hot water on the whites cycle and used liquid Downy fabric softener. I washed the bottom shirt with the homemade laundry soap and hot water on the whites cycle and used liquid Downy fabric softner.
| From drax0r pics |
| From drax0r pics |
Both detergents worked equally well, in my opinion. With the stain pre-treatment, they both got out the stain. Both are clean. The homemade detergent seemed to make it's shirt softer than it's name brand counterpart. The only difference is that Gain costs $17.88 per 110 loads and the homemade detergent costs around $6.00 per 364 loads. Broken down, the homemade detergent is about .02 cents per load.
For anyone that is remotely interested in giving this a try, I have included the "recipe."
1 box Borax - size: 4lbs 12oz (76oz) (I found at Walmart, Brookshire's and Kroger's)
1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (NOT BAKING SODA) - size: 3lbs 7oz (55oz)(I only found this at Kroger's)
and 1 bar of Zote soap grated (I found this at Brookshire's) - I used an old food processor for this step to take the work out of it. You can certainly use other bar soaps such as Ivory, Dial, or whatever you have on hand. Just make sure you actually use soap and not a beauty bar such as Dove or Oil of Olay.
Mix together and use 1-2 tbsp per load. If laundry is really dirty, add 1/4 cup of baking soda to the wash.
Just an FYI, go cheap on the soap. Your clothes will not smell like the soap you put it. If you want your clothes to have a sent, pick your favorite liquid fabric softener.
Anywho, that's all I've got. Now, to scour the sale ads and match up coupons. Sheesh I am cheap.
