Laundry detergent.

Hello! Happy Monday! We took a bit of a break from reality this weekend because our good friend from Philadelphia was visiting. The weekend including long brunches, site seeing and of course, thrift shopping. 

The problem with fun weekends is that Monday is a much harsher reality than usual. Especially when you have 2 weeks worth of laundry to do and are out of detergent. 

I had been wanting to try making my own for a while for a few reasons - it's cheaper, there aren't any chemicals (so it's easier on your clothes and washing machine) and it's so much better for the environment. My friend Rebecca recommended this recipe. 

You will need:

1 cup of Baking Soda 

1 cup of Super Washing Soda

1 cup of Borax 

1.5 bars of Dr. Bronners pure-castile soap (found at Whole Foods or Trader Joes)

A cheese grater

First you will need to use your cheese grater to grate the soap bar. The soap comes in several different flavors - I chose eucalyptus because it was fresh but not too fragrant. This is definitely the most time consuming step, and it's dangerous. I ended up cutting up my thumb because I was grating too hard and not paying attention. I almost re-named this blog 'DIY or Die Tryin,' but don't worry I made it out alive. But be careful during this step!

Once the soap is grated, add in the rest of the ingredients and mix it up!

Use 2 tablespoons for heavy loads and 1 for light loads, this recipe makes enough for 32-40 loads. I tested it out tonight on several loads of laundry and so far I'm very pleased. 

The upfront costs are a bit pricier than buying detergent, but it ends up being much cheaper in the end, about 20 cents per load. For people on a budget like us, this is very exciting. Which is odd, because who knew we'd ever be excited about laundry detergent, but we are (by we I mean me, although Chris was happy with is freshly washed pile of clothes)!  I guess this is growing up.

Have you ever tried making your own cleaning supplies?