I’ve finally gotten around to making my own mix of powder laundry detergent and I am quite happy with the results. I was purposefully saving a pretty “tough” load of laundry to test it with (ie. grass stains, blood stains, chicken pooped-on clothes, dog drool, etc.) and I was very glad to see that it cleaned just as well as my TidePods did, if not better.
The original post from which I got the recipe/idea is HERE!
I’m not entirely certain about the reasoning behind which I decided I wanted to make my own detergent, except for the potential for frugality and a more “natural” detergent. This detergent that I made is apparently “A” rated on the EWG (Environmental Working Group), though I’m honestly not entirely sure what that’s all about. I do know that I have fallen in LOVE with castile soap, it makes my hands super smooth!
The ingredients are as follows – all were purchased at WalMart:
– OxiClean Free (3lb) : $7.56
– Super Washing Soda (3lb7oz) : $3.97
– Baking Soda (4lb) : $2.24
– Kirk’s Coco Castile Soap (3 bar pack) : $2.84 [x2 – one recipe uses 4 bars]*
– Epsom Salt (8lb) : $5.43 [I used about 1/3 of the bag/~2.5lb]
– Total Material Cost : $24.88
*All of the above materials EXCEPT castile soap were in the laundry aisle. Castile soap was with bar soaps and body wash in the pharmacy area.
If you use 1T per load of laundry (this makes around 11lb +/- of detergent), the total cost per load rounds out to about $0.06 per load, pretty cheap!
I also bought a 20qt storage container for $4.17, one load fills it about half way.
The biggest pain in the butt in regards to this recipe is having to grate the castile soap down via cheese grater so that you can mix everything. The storage container did make mixing a fast and easy process as compared to something like a 5 gallon bucket.
My main reason for wanting to make bulk detergent that is fairly “natural” and doesn’t have added chemicals (or toxins such as borax) was because Justus is allergic to a lot of things, and I didn’t want to risk him breaking out or itching because of harsh cleaners. I had found a lot of bulk detergent recipes that looked good, but for this reason I went the natural route. It’s definitely a bit more expensive than the other bulk detergent recipes, but I can’t complain about the clean! 🙂