How to Make Homemade Laundry Detergent

My husband and I live on a small farm, where we're raising two kids, 15 chickens, an oversized dog, three cats and a massive garden. This means I'm up to my eyeballs in laundry every week, and I have lots of challenging stains to deal with. Shopping for laundry detergent used to consist of shuffling down the cleaning product aisle at the grocery store and grabbing the cheapest, biggest bottle of detergent I could find. Then one day, in a fit of creative frugality, I made a batch of my own laundry detergent and never looked back.

Benefits of Homemade Laundry Detergent
Let's face it: commercial laundry detergent doesn't have a whole lot going for it. According to this Wikipedia article, a single load's worth of commercial laundry detergent can cost the environment potentially 5.4 square feet of lost natural habitat and in return, gives us approximately 1.5 pounds in CO2 emissions to make and package it. Plus, it may contain harsh chemicals that irritate sensitive skin and phosphates that can cause algae blooms when they get into our waterways, sucking oxygen and killing fish and natural plant life in the process.

I'd like to say that these are my family's only reasons for making our own laundry detergent, having become more conscious of our impact on the planet in the past couple of years, but in fact, the fact that the DIY approach costs just pennies per load and was super easy to make had a lot to do with it, too. For a homemade detergent vs. commercial cost comparison, check out this article at The Simple Dollar.

Recipe for Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
Ingredients:
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax
1 bar soap
water

First, grate up a bar of soap. I like Fels Naptha because it costs only a little over a dollar and is an old-school stain treatment bar that's been in use for over 100 years. You can also use other dye-free soaps like Ivory or Dove.

Bring four cups of water to simmer, then slowly add the soap flakes, stirring until dissolved.

Pour three gallons of warm water into a 5-gallon bucket, preferably with a lid. Stir in your hot, soapy water mixture, washing soda (located in the laundry aisle, and not to be confused with baking soda) and borax. Let stand for 24 hours, et voila: homemade liquid laundry detergent!

Before using, give it a quick stir and use one cup per load. I like to decant my soap into empty commercial laundry soap jugs for ease of use.

Sources:
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/09/making-your-own-laundry-detergent-a-detailed-visual-guide/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent