Homemade Laundry Detergent

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make my own laundry detergent.  I read a bunch of stuff on the internet about how to do it, and then I ended up making it not quite as directed.  It was easy to mix up and WAY cheaper than regular detergent.  With this detergent, you only have to use 2 tablespoons per load so this batch will last quite awhile. 

The ingredients are pictured above: washing soda (not baking soda), 3 bars Ivory soap, Borax, and Sun Oxygen cleaner (generic oxyclean).  I found everything in the laundry aisle at Wal-mart except the ivory soap, which was with the other soap in the Health and Beauty area.  I grated all 3 bars of the Ivory with my box grater and then dumped everything into my metal laundry detergent tub and mixed very well.  All these ingredients together cost less than $10.

I've waited to post about this so I could report on the results as far as cleanliness and it seems to work just as well as the name brand detergents I was previously using.  I still need to use a pretreater on some stains (Cadence has a propensity for getting tomato sauce and chocolate things on her shirts), but I was doing that before.  The loss is the nice smell of our old detergent - this one doesn't smell at all - but I use scented fabric softener sheets, so it's all good.