Make Your Own Laundry Detergent (5 cents per load)

By carvalhohm

Ingredients

• make one gallon of liquid laundry detergent assemble the following:
• 1 1 container 1 one-gallon container with tight-fitting lid. I used an empty Arrowhead water container.
• Twenty-Mule Team Borax. Find this, or any brand of borax, in the laundry aisle of your supermarket or a department store like Walmart or Target.
• Notice I am using blue Dawn Advanced Power, but I could have just as easily and effectively used …
• 1: 3/4 3/4 3/4 cup borax and 3/4 cup Super Washing Soda (or soda ash as I am using in this tutorial) and pour both into the empty one-gallon container.
• 2: 2 3 to 2 or 3 cups of the hottest water you have available out of your tap. You’ll see a few bubbles form, but nothing to be concerned about.
• 3: to Apply the lid and shake the container vigorously until the powdered ingredients appear to be dissolving. Give yourself a little workout here and shake it well so it looks incorporated and milky like this.
• 4: to to the container with hot water to within about an inch of the top, more or less depending on the shape of your container. You want to leave enough room for the Dawn which is coming up.
• Keep going …
• 5: 3/4 Pour in 3/4 cup blue Dawn dishwashing liquid.
• to …. you don’t want to create a lot of suds or bubbles.
• 6: 6: Once you’ve poured in all of the Dawn, fill that measuring cup with more hot water so you can top off the container and rinse out the last of the Dawn.
• 1/2-inch you still have room, add more water until you are about 1/2-inch from the top.
• 7: 7: Apply the lid. This should be quite easy because you will not be contending with suds or bubbles. Notice how the dawn is not fully mixed up. That’s fine. Just get that lid on tightly.
• 8: to Instead of shaking it up, just lay the container on its side and roll it around a bit to get everything mixed.
• Please notice that without any kind of cleaning up at all, the counter is dry with no mess, no suds—quite clean and tidy, don’t you think? Yay! We’ve overcome the suds-to-infinity problem so many of you encountered.
• to to 1/4-cup to admire your beautiful homemade product and then let’s get to the laundry room where you will need your gallon of laundry detergent (the one you just made, silly!) and a 1/4-cup measure.
• 1/4 out 1/4 cup detergent.
• to 1/4 in the way you have always added detergent to your washer. If you have a little detergent dispenser, that’s where this tidy 1/4 cup of beautiful liquid goes.
• This detergent is absolutely low sudsing, which is what HE (both top and front loading) washers require. However, if you do not have an HE machine, this detergent is still fabulous and wonderful for your traditional washer.
• Okay, I think that about does it.
• Wait. There IS one more thing.
• If you are confused about the Super Washing Soda vs. soda ash, do not fret. I can no longer find this lovely product known as Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda where I live. If I could, this is what it would look like:
• to you can find it, great! But don’t feel like you need to send me a box of it when you do  I love my soda ash because guess what? It’s cheaper than Super Washing Soda.
• This recipe and procedure for making homemade laundry detergent (for less than a nickel per load, by the way) is so good I can’t imagine future improvements, but who knows?

Preparation

Step 1

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