Best Ever Homemade Powdered Laundry Detergent Recipe

Today the Mashed Potatoes and Crafts site is featured over at Sugar Bee Crafts as part of the rockin' Red, White, and Blue series! Be sure to visit Mandy's amazing site and check out the roundup of fabulous posts on everything your heart desires.

So how does laundry detergent tie into the Red, White, and Blue theme? It's summertime--the season of BBQ stains in the form of red ketchup and blue popsicles and I want to show you how to keep your summer whites looking great!

For over a year now, I've been using my own homemade powdered laundry detergent. I began studying the best recipes/methods so that I could save money and what I found in the process is that I could cut down on a lot of the added chemicals in store-bought laundry detergent. I'm working on improving that further but I'm pleased with my recipe.

I created a video tutorial that is just over five minutes long that you can watch for step by step instructions.


 I'm also including the recipe and instructions here.

MashedPotatoes and Crafts Homemade Powdered Laundry Soap Recipe

Makes 300-500 Loads

1 (4lb 12 oz)  Box Borax

1 (3lb 7 0z) Box Super Washing Soda

1 ( 3lb) Container OXY clean (you can adjust this amount to your preference. I use a little less.)

2 bars soap grated—one Fels Naptha, one hotel soap (free!) or other favorite soap

1 (2lb) Boxes Baking Soda

1 Bottle Downy Unstopable Scent Booster

Use a large bucket to mix all ingredients together. Just dump the boxes into the bucket. I recommend doing the mixing outside to avoid inhaling soap powder.
Use a fine cheese grater to grate your soap. *Great tip for easy grating. Put your bar of soap in the microwave for 6-7 seconds. This will soften it just enough to make it much easier to grate the soap.
Use a large wooden spoon to stir all of the ingredients together, making sure that your soap flakes are blended well.

That's it! You're ready to wash. Test out a few batches to gauge whether you'd like to use 1, 1 1/2, or 2 Tablespoons of laundry detergent. Don't be concerned if the water doesn't sud up like store-bought detergent. Your clothes are still getting clean!

Recommended use:

2 Tbsp each load for Super Capacity top-load washer

1 Tbsp each load for Super Capacity front-load high efficiency washer

1 Tbsp each load for Regular load size top-load washer
2 Teaspoons each load for Regular load size in front-load washer

I also created a short reminder video, just two minutes long when you're ready to mix up your first batch!

If you'd like some great tips on cleaning your washer to increase its cleaning capacity, check out my series on 

25 Places You Didn't Know Were Dirty and How to Clean Them

Visit this link http://www.mashedpotatoesandcrafts.com/2012/11/25-places-you-didnt-know-were-dirty-and.html

 

  What do you think? Are you ready to make your own homemade laundry detergent? Let me know in the comments what works for you or if you have any other great tips you'd like to add, please share!
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