Savin' Money!

A friend of mine recently blogged about making her own laundry detergent. She's been pleased with the results, so I thought I'd give it a shot. So I went today and bought all the stuff. Sara helped me this afternoon and in about 20 min we had a 5 gallon bucket full of laundry detergent, for around $13!!!!

I can't wait to be able to use it tomorrow. I'm excited to start the process!

The ingredients

My big helper!

Here's the recipe...

4 cups hot water

1 bar of soap (Ivory, Zote, Naptha, Fels, Sunlight)

1 cup Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with 4 cups of hot water. Cook and stir constantly on medium heat until soap is melted. Fill 5 gallon bucket halfway with hot tap water. Add washing soda, borax and soap mixture and stir until dissolved. Fill remainder of bucket with hot tap water and let sit overnight to thicken. Pour detergent in a clean leftover laundry detergent container halfway and fill rest of the way with water.

**shake before each use as water and detergent will separate**

for top loading machines, use 5/8 cup of det. per load - for front loading machines, use 1/4 cup

That's 180 loads for a top loading machine and 640 for a front loading or HE machine!!!! Woo Hoo!