Domestic Wednesday: Homemade Laundry Detergent

In my pursuit of making small changes towards a more sustainable life as well as learning about cloth diapering, I started hearing a lot about homemade laundry detergent. Conventional laundry detergents can be filled with all sorts of harsh chemicals and can leave a long trace of chemicals in our water.

We had been using scent and dye free detergent which was a step towards a more sustainable and less chemically-filled lifestyle, but after hearing everyone rave about making their own detergent, I gave it a shot!

I used my friend's recipe that you can find here. Many recipes use Borax, but her's does not. She explains about some of the sketchy effects Borax has had in some studies and links to some good resources. Her recipe is as follows. Use 1-3 tbs per load (about 2 per load of diapers):

• 1 cup washing soda
• 1/2 cup oxygen cleaner
• 1/2 baking soda
• 1 bar castille soap

I used Fels-Naptha soap instead and made a triple amount. I don't currently have a food processor so I had to grate the soap by hand. I did use my blender's ice crush feature for some of it, but it got gunked up in the bottom. :-/

Other than having to grate the soap, it was really easy! We still have some conventional detergent that we're using up, but I'm excited to get to try our new homemade soap!

My homemade laundry detergent! It smells great!