adventures in homemade laundry soap!

A friend of mine recently talked about making all of her own laundry detergent and cleaning products. What? I mean, sure, I've seen pins on Pinterest about it, but I didn't know anyone personally who actually did it...until now. I was intrigued. Was it easy? Did it work as well as the store bought stuff? And most of all, was it actually cheaper?

I decided to find out. My friend gave me her recipe, which I based it off of, but I wanted to make the powder version. We just prefer powder over liquid...no other reason, really. I did a little more searching and located a recipe that appeared simple enough, and most importantly, was HE compatible. My husband was already skeptical about the whole idea, and the last thing I needed was something that would ruin our newish washing machine!

The recipe I found was simple, only requiring three ingredients. Also, when all is said and done, it ends up costing around 3 cents per load. Um, sold? Three people in my house more like husband and a little of daughter and there is SO much laundry. I am scared to see how much it increases when we add a 4th and maybe a 5th..!!

Here is what you'll need:

- 2 cups borax
- 1 bar of soap (any kind - just NOT a beauty bar like Dove or Olay)
- 2 cups washing soda

Get a cute container to store it in. I went with a classy gallon sized ziploc bag, myself. The first part is easy. Measure out 2 cups of each of the borax and the washing soda.

The next part is a little trickier. The recipe I found said you could cut the soap up into smaller chunks, and put them in a food processor or blender, as is. Um, no. My food processor isn't the best one our there or anything, but it definitely has good chopping power. It most definitely wasn't cutting through those soap cubes! So, it turned into a three part process. After chopping, I grated each cube into shreds..THEN, I finished off by putting the shreds into the food processor and bada bing, bada boom!

Next, mix everything together and store it in your airtight container. Use about 1 tbsp per load. You can also add some purex crystals since the load comes out clean, but doesn't really smell like anything.

I am told it will last for months, but I will have to get back to you on that ;)