How to make homemade laundry detergent has become a popular topic it seems, the most common reason simply being that people find the cost of commercial detergents prohibitive.
In this instructional video Trent Hamm guides us through one of the more popular methods of making homemade laundry detergent. According to trent this method will save you about 8 dollars, compared to the cheapest commercial alternatives available, and will take about ten minutes of work. You will be making about 3,5 gallons of detergent at a time.
This is the method involving the use of Borax and washing soda. You can find additional methods on the page on homemade laundry detergent.
How to make your own laundry detergent video tutorial
In order to do this method you will need the following tools and ingredients:
- A 5 gallon bucket
- Water
- 1 bar of soap, in the video example we use pure & natural
- 1 cup of Washing soda
- 1/2 cup of Borax
- A grater
- A pan
- Something to stir with
The most time consuming part of this method, or at least the one involving the most elbow grease, is grating the soap. According to Trent it doesn’t really matter whether your grater produces flakes or tiny curls. If you prefer you could also chop the soap into tiny chunks using a knife.
The grated soap is then put in four cups of boiling water. The water will bubble and soap a lot in the beginning but settle down as you add more soap. Be sure to stir in only a little bit of soap at a time or you will end up with large clumps of soap in the water.
Then you pour about 3 gallons of warm water (from the faucet) into the bucket. Trent’s tip is to measure this up once and draw a mark in your bucket – that way you can simply fill the bucket directly from the faucet next time around.
Theoretically you can then add the other ingredients in any order you wish, but in the video it is suggested that you begin with the soapy water. Because there may still be some chunks of soap in it that you want to dissolve in the bucket first. Dissolve larger and stubborn chunks by smearing them against the side of the bucket with your spatula.
Stir in the washing soda and stir briskly, don’t let the washing soda settle at the bottom of the bucket. After a minute or so stir in the Borax in a similar fashion.
Put a lid on the bucket and let it sit for 24 hours.
The soap is now ready to use. The final consistency of your homemade laundry detergent will depend a lot on the kind of soap you use, it can be very watery or have a more “Jello” like texture, or something in between as shown in the video. If there are some curds on top you can scoop them out first, but Trent says he usually leaves them in. Use a full cup of detergent in the washing machine.
As demonstrated in the very end of the video, this homemade laundry detergent works about as well as commercially available alternatives.
Good luck making your own batch and feel free to share your own experiences with this kind of DIY detergent in the comments below.