Here's what you need:
- 1 bar of laundry soap ($1.19/290g)
- 3 cups Baking soda ($3.97/2kg)
- 3 cups Borax ($5.58/2kg)
First of all, you need to transform your regular baking soda into washing soda. Easy peasy! Just take the amount of baking soda you need, spread it on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven at 400° for 30-35 minutes stirring occasionally. When the time is up, you'll see the texture of your baking soda will be more "soft" and more "powdery". A good hint, you will probably sneeze from just going through it with a spoon!!!
Then grate your soap in a big bowl. I use the tiny grating side of my regular cheese grater. You want it to be as small as possible to help it dissolve in the water. Then add your washing soda, Borax, stir and voila! You now have homemade laundry detergent! I put my detergent in an air tight container like a Mason jar.
Also, I use regular white vinegar as a laundry softener. Sometimes, I add about 8-10 drops of essential oil to it just to give a hint of smell to my clothes as the detergent and the vinegar won't leave any kind of perfume on your clothes. During summer time I use citronella essential oil to help repelling the mosquitos and the rest of the year I use lavender only because I love the smell of lavender!
On the down side, because of the grated soap, this detergent works better in warm or hot water (at least for us during winter time) as our water comes from an underground source and is SO cold.
The break down. Keep in mind that I'm not good with math so the amount may not be exact but it came down to something like $3.30 for 1.3kg of detergent. Considering the fact that you only use 1 or 2 tablespoons of detergent per loads, I think it's pretty cheap.
So here you go, try it and see for yourself, it's cheap, efficient, it works well and soft enough for babies clothes.
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