Easy Homemade Laundry Soap (liquid)
This recipe makes 5 gallons, and you'll need a 5 gallon bucket for mixing. You can find the ingredients in most Walmarts and some grocery stores (laundry isle) for just a few dollars. My cousin recommends mixing in a container of your regular liquid laundry soap because it helps prevent "washer stink." I concur, it also cleans your laundry a bit better and keeps the homemade stuff a little more on the liquid side.
1 bar Fels Naptha Soap
1 cup Borax
1 cup Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)
Grate the Fels Naptha bar. I use a food processor. Kind of looks like grated cheese, doesn't it?
Put grated soap in a 4-quart pan and add enough water to cover. Melt the soap over medium-low heat until it is desolved.
Add the borax and washing soda, stir until dissolved. Pour mixture into a 5-gallon bucket and fill with hot water. Stir. If you're adding in a bottle of commercial liquid soap, add it now, and stir again.
Your laundry soap is now ready to use. 1/4 to 1/2 cup per load. You can keep it in the bucket (put a lid on it) or you can pour it into empty bottles. Because the soap gels, you need to stir or shake it before each use.
We poured ours into empty bottles.
All of these bottles of laundry soap cost me about $2 total(well, $4 if I count the cost of the commercial laundry detergent I added in). This really saves me a ton of money! And it lasts forever, too.
Fels Naptha costs about $1 a bar (I paid $0.88/bar at Walmart and $1.09/bar at my grocery store). Washing Soda and Borax, depending on the size and where you buy them, cost $3-$4 each.
So now you want to know how to make old fashioned granulated laundry soap, right? Well here's the recipe my Grandma used.
The day before you plan to mix the soap, wash the grease. Use twice as much water as grease and boil 15 minutes. Remove from heat and fill kettle with cold water. Let stand until firm (clean lard rises to the top and impurities will settle on the bottom). Make hole in set grease on opposite sides, then run a knife between the kettle and the grease all around the perimeter. Lift grease out; put into another pot and repeat process. When cooled the second time, drain off water. Melt the grease and strain. Now you're ready to start the soap process.
In a gallon glass jar, dissolve 1 can lye into 2 quarts plus 3 cups waterr. Add 1 cup clorox and 1 cup borax. Cool until outside of jar is just warm. Mix 2 tsp. citronella into 2 quarts melted grease. Cool till warm to touch, then pour into lye mixture which you have placed in a large enamel pan (lye eats aluminum). Be careful around the hands and eyes! Using a wooden spoon, stir constantly for 15 minutes, then stir every 15 minutes until mixture is well granulated (the more you stir, the more granulated it becomes).
As long as I'm sharing household recipes, here are some I can't live without:
Window Cleaner
1 pint rubbing alcohol
1 Tb. ammonia (non-sudsing kind)
1 Tb. liquid dish soap
1 gallon water
Mix together in a bucket, then pour into several spray bottles. Use just like windex. *When I was a teenager, I washed windows for a widow on my street, who always used this recipe. And she had me wipe the windows with wadded up newspaper. The combination of the cleaner and newsprint really makes those windows shine! I still use newspaper when I'm washing windows.
Plant Food
This recipe will turn anyone's thumb green! It comes from my Aunt Veleen who says "Don't use more than once a month for watering plants or leafy ones will crowd you out and blooming ones will bloom themselves to death!" Aunt Veleen's home could be mistaken for a tropical paradise.
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. epsom salts
1 tsp. salt peter (get this at Lowes or Home Depot)
1/2 tsp. ammonia
1 gallon tepid water
Mix and water plants. Store unused plant food in a jar with a lid, out of reach of children.
Have fun trying these thrifty recipes!
