Easy DIY Laundry Detergent That Costs $.40 Per Gallon

Easy DIY Laundry Detergent That Costs $.40 Per Gallon

Thomas Nelson
December 20, 2020
Sustainable Living
0 Comments

I have a visceral dislike for buying commercially made products packaged in single-use plastic containers and sold at a nice markup for the manufacturer. It just goes against everything I’m about. Couple that with the fact that I tend to live pretty frugally and you’ll probably get why I don’t really like buying store bought laundry soap. About 10 years ago I came across this recipe for a DIY laundry detergent and I’ve been making it ever since.

What I love about this DIY laundry detergent is that it’s cheap, I can make it in massive quantities, it only contains three ingredients, it produces substantially less waste than store-bought laundry detergent, and it’s absurdly inexpensive. These days I get sticker shock at the cost of laundry detergent. $15 for a bottle of soap? Who am I, the Queen of France? Spoiler alert: I’m not.

We’re really not one of those websites that writes 5,000 words about why this was my Meemaw’s favorite recipe and how it’ll cure your club foot. If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’re ready to make some laundry detergent. So let’s get down to it.

Let’s make some DIY laundry detergent

This recipe makes 5 gallons. You can scale it up or down as necessary. I like making the full 5 gallons because it means I won’t have to make more any time soon. This usually lasts my household of three about 5-7 months.

You will need:

One large gallon bucket
Half of a 5 oz bar of fels naptha bar soap
1 cup of washing soda (not baking soda!)
1 cup of borax

Note: You can add essential oils to make this soap have a more pleasing fragrance to you, but I like my clothes coming out of the dryer smelling neutral – just like clean clothes.

Instructions:

Take your 5 oz bar of fels naptha bar soap and grate half of it using a cheese grater. If you have a powerful food processor or blender, you can use that. The soap needs to be ground into smaller pieces. I just use a cheese grater.
Begin heating a half a gallon of water on the stovetop. Do not bring it to a boil.
Fill your bucket with four and a half gallons of hot tap water.
Mix borax and washing soda into the hot tap water. Stir until washing soda and borax are dissolved.
Add your grated bar soap to the water on the stovetop. Don’t bring the water to a boil! Just hot enough to melt down the soap. Once melted, pour the soapy water in with the remaining ingredients in the bucket. Stir thoroughly.

Once you’ve gone through all of these steps, things start getting interesting. Your DIY laundry detergent will eventually start to thicken and, if completely undisturbed, will be a pretty firm gel within 12 or so hours. If this happens, it’s not the end of the world. A whisk or handheld electric mixer will break the gel up into more of a liquid consistency.

This recipe makes 5 gallons of laundry detergent, but I recently found myself a little fed up with the re-mixing process of the soap so I decided to experiment a bit with adding more water. In my most recent batch, I found that adding an extra half gallon of water gave the soap a runnier consistency – less lumpy and gel-y. It appears to clean even heavily soiled clothes with the same effectiveness as the less diluted recipe. Give it a try if you want a runnier detergent.

How to use your DIY laundry detergent:

I wash my clothes using an older model of washing machine. I add about 1/4 of a cup of soap to every load, but I’ve heard from some who have higher efficiency washing machines that they don’t need as much. Your mileage may vary, it could take a bit of experimenting to find the right amount to use per load.