DIY Laundry Soap

 I have had the recipe for this homemade laundry soap posted for quite a while but since Ann was making a batch I thought I'd cover it in detail.  It is not free as most of the ingredients are bought but it is much cheaper than laundry detergent from the store. Ann is satisfied with the job it does, even in cold water, and it does not have a bunch of extra fragrances and fillers added. The soap needs to be soap, not detergent. Ann has used her homemade soap with good results. The other two dry items, borax and washing soda, both are detergents. They are both rather benign cleaning agents. Borax is hydrous sodium borate, and washing soda is sodium carbonate.  Ann sometimes also adds baking soda which is sodium bicabonate.  Just in case anyone actually cares, soap is a cleaning compound produced by saponifying a oil with a alkali. When caustic soda is added to the oil, glycerin separates out leaving sodium oleate, which is what we call soap.  The remaining ingredient is water. If you have very hard water I would recommend distilled water or some other water with a low mineral content.The recipe I have posted here is slightly different than our original one as it has evolved over time. Ann now makes a more concentrated version. Here it is;  To 6 cups of water add one bar of grated soap. [ 5 1/2 ounces in the case of the Fels-Naptha brand]. Heat the water /soap mix until the soap is melted, then add one cup each of borax and washing soda. Remove from heat and add four cups of boiling water. Once every thing is dissolved, pour into a bucket [ big enough to hold two gallons] and add one gallon and six cups  water . Let stand 24 hours to gel. Use two tablespoons per regular load.
 You can add baking soda if you would like, I don't know if it works better with it or not. This will do about  about 120 loads of laundry. The last time we checked the prices out this cost about 4 1/2 cents per load, that was about a third of what pre-made detergents would have cost us. 
 We work hard, gardening, working with cattle and other livestock, etc. so our clothes are DIRTY when they hit the laundry basket. This  size batch last us about six months.