Wow! This week is going by fast for me. I had Monday off and it sure has helped to make the week move along quickly. This weekend I tackled a Pinterest inspired project. I came across a homemade laundry detergent and ironically enough had just run out of our store bought stuff. The link I found had lots of great reviews so I figured it was worth a shot.
This is all you need to make a ton of DIY detergent!
(1) 4 lb box of Arm and Hammer Baking Soda
(1) 3 lb box of Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda
(1) 4 lb box of Borax
(1) 3 lb box of Oxi Clean
(2) bars of Fels-Naptha
I found all of my supplies conveniently located next to each other in the laundry aisle at Wal-Mart.
The hardest part is breaking up the Fels-Naptha. I don’t have a hand grater, so I tried my small food processor… it didn’t work out very well. I found that the soap just compacted into the bottom and sort of jammed the flow of the rest of the soap. I found that my blender did the best at pulverizing the soap. I had to cut the bars into smaller pieces first, and use the “crush ice” and “liquid” features. It broke the soap up pretty well and left me with this:
Once that was done, I poured all of my ingredients together in a giant tub so that I would have room to mix everything together.
I stirred it up with a slatted spoon and it looked like this:
After getting it all prepared, I used it in about 4 loads of laundry. We were really impressed with it’s performance, it leaves our clothes feeling so fresh and so clean! (Even though we left out the suggested scented fabric softener – we wanted to keep things simple.) Along with simple, this stuff is totally affordable and will last a while since it only requires 1-2 Tablespoons per load! Yup… 1-2 TBS/load! 
Gotta love making essentials for less!
Have you created any Pinterest inspiration lately? I would love to hear about it!
