I have the ingredients all ready to mix for my detergent: borax, washing and baking soda and fels naptha soap. I do not add water and prefer the dry detergent. My question is what is the proper amount to use per average load. I have complete forgotten. Thanks to all.
Nelwyn from Bunkie, LA
I hope that you will love your homemade laundry detergent as I do. In answer to your question: I use 1 Tablespoon for lightly dirty clothes and 2 Tablespoons for dirty clothes. (02/21/2008)
By Nancy
Measure 1/2 - 3/4 cup of the mix and wash your clothing in warm or cold water.
Hope this helps.
~Dawn
http://frugalforlife.com/laundry-soap-amount/
(02/21/2008)
By Dawn
I use Fels Naptha soap for the soap, and I chop it up, then I put it in an old food processor and try to make it pretty fine. If you make the dry mix you only use 1 or 2 Tablespoons of the mix for a washer load, 2 T for extra dirty clothes. What I do is put enough mix for one load in a plastic jar that has a tight lid.
Add water and let the soap soak. I do this right after I empty one when washing, if you let the soap mix soak for a while. It will be softened up and won't leave soap specks on your clothes. That is what happened to me before I began to soak the dry soap. I also use white vinegar to rinse. I put the white vinegar in a downey ball. I have several plastic jars with soap soaking in them, ready for the next load of wash. (02/21/2008)
By suzin
I was reading everyone's post, and I decided I wanted to try and make my own homemade laundry detergent. Well, after scouring(pardon the pun!) surrounding towns for over a week, I had no luck at finding fels naptha. I did, however, find a colgate laundry bar. What I did was to use a vegetable peeler and peel off small slices of the bar until I had used it all, and added it to approximately one gallon of very hot water. It was just before boiling. The soap dissolved very easily within a minute. I added 1/3 cup of borax and 1/3 cup of washing soda to the same mixture until it was fully dissolved.
I had an old 5 gallon bucket around the house and poured the concoction in it. I added approx. 3 more gallons of water(cold) to the mix and let it sit over night to cool down. It had formed a sort of "jelled" goop that I took a plastic spoon and mixed it back up and it became liquid again.
I am a single father of 4 teen boys, so I average alot of dirty clothes (average is about 3-4 loads a day!). I may have 5 dollars in all of the stuff I purchased to make this detergent. Today I am trying something new. I am adding a bar of Ivory to the mix to see what it makes the clothes smell like. With all the clothes I have to wash, this is a lot cheaper than buying all the store bought stuff. Also It works really well as a pre-treater for removing red clay from baseball uniforms! Colgate dish detergent (powder type with bleach) for automatic dish washers does an excellent job on brightening whites too (07/24/2008)
By Larry
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
A friend gave me a recipe for homemade laundry soap. It is made with 6 cups of borax, 4 cups of baking soda, 4 cups of washing soda, and 4 cups of graded bar soap.
My problem is it doesn't tell how much to use in each load of laundry? Does anyone know this recipe and how much to use? I would be very thankful for the answer!
By JoAnn from Powell, MO
I also use homeade laundry detergent but I always use the liquid version. However, I have read in a few places that those who use powdered only use 1-2 Tbs. per load and they say their clothes come out clean.
Experiment a bit and see what works for you. Hope this helps!
