Yeah it's been a while. I'm pregnant so I took a little break. Any who...
I've made our own laundry soap for about 5 years now. My daughter has very sensitive dry skin, and when she was born instead of buying one version for her (scent free/dye free) and another for us (Tide/Gain etc.) I decided to look into making it myself.
The first recipe I tried was a powder formula. 1 part grated soap, 1 part borax, 1 part washing soda. It wasn't too bad, but I was always paranoid about it dissolving in the washing machine, and/or leaving a soap stain residue on my clothes. After it happened a few times and favorite articles of clothing were ruined, it was time to move on.
#2 I would make the recipe the exact same every time, and yet it seemed from batch to batch the results would be different. Sometimes it would harden too much into a gel where it was really solid. Sometimes the soap mixture would form this odd soapy ball and the water would be separated from it. So I'd have to spoon mix it for a few minutes every time I wanted to use it.
#3 You make the mixture 2 gallons at a time in one bucket, so I had this huge ugly black bucket of laundry soap sitting on my dryer at all times. Not quite the laundry room you want people to walk through.
#4 Occasionally it would still leave soap stains. I found myself buying a really small bottle of the green formulas from the store for my nice clothes, and then using the gel formula for other things like towels and what not. Thus defeating the purpose to begin with to make it myself and save money.
A few weeks ago a friend pinned this recipe: Mom's Super Laundry Sauce.
I was willing to try it. It wasn't a gel, it's like whipped butter. Plus it stores for up to a year. You can make it in batches as small as 4 quarts, and you just store it in 2 mason jars. It's easy to double, and you only use 1 tablespoon at a time. I decided to give it a go. I had all the ingredients on hand. And it sets up in 4 hours, not 24. Here's my review:
Her tutorial is really good. I felt like I knew what to do each step of the way. I love when there are pictures for each step. When I made it I doubled it. Cause why not really? The 4 jars could easily be stored in the cabinets in the laundry room. You can use it in any type of washing machine. Although I just have the old school top load kind. When I turned them upside down to separate, the soap part and the water started doing their thing almost immediately. I don't own a blender so I borrowed a friends. Her style of blender doesn't have the capability of unscrewing the bottom to attach to the jar. Like shown:
Plus my soap got rally hard in the jar. Not sure what all that was about. So I had to really scrape the inside of the mason jar to get it to come out. Once in the blender it only takes about a minute to whip up. And the best way I can describe the texture is like a soft stick of butter. It was a super big mess trying to get it from the blender back into the jar, but that's fine. I've done 6 loads of laundry since making it, and not one single sign of soap residue. It even took out red candy residue that mysteriously showed up on my daughters sheets. hmmm.
It's $1.78 per batch, and makes 128 loads of laundry. I think this one is finally a keeper. I might have to go out a buy a $20 blender just so I can make this. It's worth the cost to me. Especially if you consider the savings compared to buying detergent in the store. Love this and loved how quickly-comparatively- it was ready. Glad I tried it.But seriously what's up with the name? It'd odd.
Comments
Try this one Jaime.
This link to recipe works!!
It's super easy with very little mess. I chopped up the Fels Naptha with a chef's knife, put it in a quart Ziploc freezer bag and then added 2 cups hot tap water and it was well-melted and ready to mix within a few hours - no need to wait longer than that. I kneaded any remaining little lumps out with my fingers.
If you use wide-mouth canning jars, you can use a stick blender and blend the 'sauce' right in the jars. That said, you end up with a bit thicker consistency because you cannot add as much water to account for the stick blender's displacement in the jar. I think next time around I'll use my glass batter bowl and blend it all in there with the stick blender, then transfer the 'sauce' to the jars.
Love this soap, as well, and after reading so many laundry soap recipes and methods after I made this one, I was glad for its simplicity and the ease of storage that this recipe allows.
With this method there are no buckets, no dust, no slime . . . just a quart Ziploc freezer bag, an 8 cup batter bowl, a stick blender, 2 jars and 2 lids and a tablespoon. Life is complicated enough with seven children . . . simple and compact is a good thing =o)!
I then tried using my new blender to whip on high. After just a few minutes, I ended up with a liquid solution and again, more than would fill the 1 quart mason jar.
After reading through these reviews with so many women happy about this solution, I realized I forgot the step to turn the jar over to cool for 4 hours. Okay, I'll try this today. I have enough mason jars!
Last night, I cut the Fels Naptha bar in half, grated each half and placed in a ziplock bag with two cups of warm tap water to sit overnight to soften. This morning I boiled 2 cups of water and dissolved the washing soda. I'm an old woman and do not wish to use Borax due to respiratory issues so didn't add the Borax. I added the Fels Naptha solution from the ziplock into 1 qt jar and poured 1/2 of washing soda solution over it. Same for the next jar. Then while hot, I whipped one jar with hand-mixer that yielded 3 qt jars filled with a whipped cream texture. Looks pretty! The other jar I blended on high in my blender and ended up with more of a liquid solution and when I poured all into the 1 qt jar, I still had some left. Anyway, they're all labeled and stored now. I tried 1 tablespoon from one of the whipped jars and watched it in the washer. It's not very concentrated in the water and I can hardly feel any soap. I certainly didn't smell freshness or the scent of Fels Naptha, which I've been using for years on stains.
I really want this to work so I'm going to try letting the hot solution sit upside down in the mason jars for 4 hours to cool. Maybe this is the trick that keeps it concentrated. However, it didn't fluff up inside my blender. I blended on whip for 2-3 minutes. Am I doing something wrong? Or, is that one step a big importance? Thank you.