Home Made Laundry detergent

I know this is a cooking blog, but...

I am on a Pintrest kick. I wanted to try to make my own laundry soap. It seemed fairly easy & inexpensive IF I could find the ingredients on sale.  Use 1-2 tablespoons for each load.

Homemade Dry Laundry Detergent

Ingredients:

Borax- (1) 4 lb $3.50 (found at Ace Hardware)
Baking soda- (4) 1 lb boxes or (1) 4 lb box $4.00 (I could have found this cheaper)
Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda- (4lbs) *see recipe below $4.00
2 bars of Zote Laundry Soap or 3 bars of Fels-Naptha $1.00 each
1 scoop of oxiclean $1.00 (I had some at the house already)
Cheese Grater
5 gallon bucket
1 large, thick plastic bag
2 gallon container to store the mixture in

Cost of ingredients=$20

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients together.  Use 1 tablespoon per load. I have been dissolving the 1 tablespoon in cold water before I put it in the washer.

Homemade Washing Soda

I couldn't find washing soda anywhere, so I made my own out of baking soda.

Ingredients

Baking Soda

Instructions

1. Fill a wide baking dish with baking soda.
2. Heat in the oven at 400 degrees until all the baking soda becomes washing soda. Occasionally mix it so that this process happens faster and more uniformly.  Bake for 1 hour.



This was a fun project. This would be a good science experiment for an elementary school student. Unless, you can get the ingredients for way less than a $1.00 per pound, I think it maybe just as cheap to find the economy sized laundry soap on sale with a coupon at Costco.

COST
I cut this recipe in half to make sure it would be a good substitute for the laundry detergent I currently use.

1lb=26.5 tablespoons
7lbs=186 tablespoons
$10 investment=.05 per load

update:

It is the end of September and we have barely put a dent in our supply. We will have laundry soap for months. It did a fantastic job washing my 3 week backpacking clothes.  I wish I had brought some on the trail with me to use at the coin op laundry.
update:
It is December.  I still have more than half of the laundry detergent left.  It does the trick.  I am thinking about making this for Christmas gifts in pint sized mason jars.