I was reading an article in the news lately about the escalating prices of groceries and one person was quoted as saying that even laundry soap and paper goods were going up in price. (Personally, I’ve never considered laundry soap or paper goods to be grocery items but that’s a discussion for another article.) I thought: well that’s one thing people don’t need to spend a lot on if they don’t want to. You can make your own laundry soap at home. I have been doing this for about a year now and am pleased with the results. It’s fairly simple, very inexpensive, and can be made with ingredients easily available right here in Moscow. Best of all you get to control how perfume-y it is, a boon for those with allergies. It’s also low sudsing, which is particularly useful for those who have front loading machines. The following recipe is the one I use. It makes two gallons of liquid soap and you use 1/2 cup per load of wash.

Liquid Laundry Soap

1/3 bar of Fels Naptha soap, grated

1/2 cup of washing soda

1/2 cup of borax

Hot water and a two-gallon or larger bucket

If using a larger bucket, mark the 2-gallon level with a permanent marker. In a 3-quart or larger saucepan, mix the soap flakes with three pints of water, heat on low until dissolved. Stir in the washing soda and borax. Stir well and continue heating on low until the mixture thickens to about the consistency of corn syrup. Remove from heat. Add 1 quart of hot water to the bucket. Add soap mixture to bucket and mix well. Fill bucket to the 2-gallon mark with hot water and stir thoroughly. Cover the bucket with a piece of cardboard and a rag blanket or towel to keep in the heat. Let sit for 24 hours. The resulting mixture may be uniformly thick and or more like egg drop soup. Either way it will work fine. You can store it in the bucket or in empty gallon or half gallon jugs. If it’s more like egg drop soup, just shake or stir it up before using. Since you use 1/2 cup per load, you now have enough soap to do 64 loads. This recipe and others including one for powdered laundry soap are available at: http://www.thefrugalshopper.com/articles/detergent.shtml

I did the math when I bought my ingredients and the price per load came out to about a penny. Compare that to the highly advertised brands! If you don’t like to smell of Fels Naptha, other bar soaps can be used. Be sure to compensate, size wise to get about the same amount of soap. Fels Naptha is a 5 1/2 ounce bar, so you need a little less than 2 ounces of grated soap. If you use an unscented soap, essential oils can be added to make a desired fragrance. Or use an unscented soap and no fragrance at all. Did you know you can use white vinegar in place of fabric softener? Just pour it into the dispenser of your washing machine to the same level as you would for fabric softener. It will help get soap residue out of your clothes and leave them smelling clean rather than perfumed.