As I had mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I found ourselves in need of reassessing our financial situation due to a job loss. Besides cutting down on unnecessary expenditures, we also looked at other ways we spend money and researched ways to save on the necessities.
One of the things I always wanted to try was making my own laundry soap. There are lots of things that may not cost that much in one go, but if you use it daily, it is easy to imagine the overall annual cost of that product.
I had watched many homesteader videos on YouTube over the years and this was definitely a DIY household hack I was anxious to try but never got off my lazy butt to do it. Necessity is a great motivator and we needed to save every which way we could.
I ended up going with a recipe that made a double strength batch in a 5 gallon bucket. So, at the end of it all, you end up with 10 gallons of laundry detergent!
The directions seemed simple enough and on my first try everything turned out exactly as described! We couldn’t have been more pleased with the results and paying less than 2% of the actually cost of laundry detergent is definitely worth the minimal effort it takes to do this.
You’ll need to purchase one bar of Zote laundry soap (14.1 oz) for around $1.50. Borax is optional and I chose to leave it out, even though I actually had some on hand. The advice given in the video I watched was to avoid using borax if you don’t want your clothes to fade, as it is a brightener and colors in clothing tend to not last after repeated washes with borax. Besides, you can always add Borax during the was cycle on its own if you wish to make your whites whiter. So one large Zote bar is really all the ingredients you’ll need.
The rest of the items needed I already had and I would guess many of you will as well. If not, it is a one time purchase that certainly won’t break the bank and will pay for itself the first time you use it. You’ll need a 5 gallon bucket, preferably with a lid and a large vessel to boil as much water (several gallons) as you can. I already had a large stock pot that I purchased at the Dollar Store for a few bucks years ago that I never used. Finally, you’ll need something to stir with, a funnel and some containers to store it in when it is all said and done. I had been saving containers for this very purpose for a while but, if you drink as much milk in your house as we do, you’ll find that saving 10 gallon jugs takes no time at all.
As far as storage containers go, do yourself a favor and don’t go much larger than a gallon. I had originally saved the large bulk laundry soap dispensers we had been using but I ended up throwing them away because they were not as useful for this project as I had hoped. The reason is that once you finish making your soap and you cut it with an equal amount of water, you’ll have to shake it up in the container before using it in your washing machine to reincorporate the mixture. A small inconvenience for the savings if you ask me but I definitely didn’t want to be shaking more than a gallon and my petite wife definitely couldn’t manage much more than that anyway. In fact, we went with several 3 liter containers we had to make the shaking job a little less of a workout.
Anyway, the process is extremely simple. Take your Zote bar and grate it into a bowl. This is the worst part of the entire process and I have recently read that you can melt the bar in a bowl in your microwave to save time and energy. I will definitely be trying that next time!
Once your soap bar is shredded, incorporate the shavings into 2 gallons of boiling water you have heating on the stove. Do only 2 gallons at a time. This makes mixing much easier! It takes a while for 2 gallons to come to a boil and I would definitely let the water come to temp before adding the soap to make the mixing/melting easier.
After the 2 gallons of water and the soap are incorporated, dump the mixture in a 5 gallon bucket and immediately start to heat up 2 or 3 more gallons of water on the stove. Stir the mixture in the bucket occasionally while your water boils. I used a broom handle to stir since I didn’t have a spoon large and long enough to stir a 5 gallon bucket. Pour the remaining 2 or 3 gallons of boiling water into the bucket and stir and stir some more. Stir until you feel all the ingredients are evenly mixed throughout the bucket.
At this point you may think that this just looks like a watery soap disaster but don’t lose hope. Something magical happens when you put the lid on and leave it overnight. I’ll admit, I didn’t leave the lid on until the morning and kept excitedly checking the bucket every few hours and stirring again to be certain I didn’t screw anything up. Eventually, I had to go to sleep and when I awoke the next day I discovered that the bucket was now full of thick pink slime much more reminiscent of laundry detergent bought over the counter.
So, per the instructions in the video, I mixed it all again in the bucket until the slime was even throughout and then I set myself to filling my containers. I laid out all my containers in the kitchen floor with the lids off and I started filling them all halfway with a 4.5 liter measuring cup I had on hand. I’m sure there are many ways to do this but I found just getting messy and putting my hand in there with the measuring cup was the fastest and easiest. Who cares if you get soap all over your hands? I filled all the containers halfway and then took each one to the sink to fill them the rest of the way with water. That was it!
Cleanup is easy because I intend to use these items for only this purpose so I basically just rinsed them out and put them away to be used for the next batch. I stacked the containers above my washer and washed my hands, satisfied with what I accomplished in what must be a couple hours of work at the most.
We have been using this soap for months now and are completely happy with the results. It is not supposed to create bubbles, so don’t fret if you think no suds means no soap. In fact, I got to thinking about the no suds aspect of the soap and read up on whether anyone used this same mixture in their dishwasher, since dishwashing detergent also is not supposed to create suds. Turns out you can! I tried it and it worked fine but it required a rinsing agent or some acidity to make it work best. I used lemon juice.
The soap is more or less scent less but you can certainly add essential oils to the mix if you’d like. We are perfectly happy with clean unscented laundry, as my wife gets migraines and some strong scents can give her headaches.
I encourage you to give this a try if you are at all inclined to do so or want to save some money. It is definitely worth the effort and there is some satisfaction when washing our clothes each time picking up the container and using soap that I made as opposed to just buying at the supermarket.