Make Your Own Liquid 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 (like 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.
• 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.
• 5: 3/4 to in 3/4 cup blue Dawn dishwashing liquid. Slowly …. 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.
• 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.

Details

Adapted from webmailb.netzero.net

Preparation

Step 1

If you use more than 1/4 cup per load, you can expect a couple of things to happen: Your clothes will come out of the dryer scratchy and stiff AND after a while you will notice your white items turning a lovely shade of pale grey. That’s the sign of too much detergent left in the clothes. If you just cannot bear to use only 1/4 cup of detergent, make sure you double rinse.

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.

After an hour or so, the Dawn separates and floats to the top of the container. So I just give it a good shake or roll before each use. Just thought I’d mention that, as I’m nearly sure someone would send me a message of concern over this fact.