Laundry soap...

Update ...

We recently went on vacation and I was washing laundry getting ready when I ran out of my laundry soap. Since we we packing up I did not want to take time to "buzz up" another batch - SO ... I bought some from a store. The kind we used to use.

Both hubby and I were shocked by how "bad" the clothes stunk and the way they felt after washing. SO MUCH perfume in the detergent! :sick

Funny how we never noticed that before we switched to homemade soap. :idunno


Decision :

Never use that junk again! I am giving my bottle away to BIL or a kid or someone.
 
I was talking to a friend who came by yesterday. She received a sample of the homemade Fels Laundry soap from another place. She said she did not like it and it did not clean as well as her store bought. I have been using home made for about 6 months now. I told her my laundry was fine and at 1 to 2 cents per load I would deal with any issues. I think the Fels smells great, just enough scent but not to much.

I think it's a matter of priorities. I would rather use my savings for more important things.
 
Been using mine for several months. No odor issues. Clothes look fine. If whites start to get dingy, I just add bleach. Sometimes I have problems with oil stains, but if you hit that with some cheap hair spray or rubbing alcohol, that fixes that. The oil stains and dingies happened with store bought too, so I see no reason to back.
 
We have been using it for about a month and are loving it. I gave a lot of it away and made another batch last night. My first batch I used a whole bar of Ivory soap and it gelled up very nice. This time I wanted to try a half bar and it didn't gel as good. Next time I will go back to a full bar. Everything else I did was the same as the first batch except for the ivory soap so I assume that was the difference in the consistency of the gel.
 
I made the dry version with Fels soap (brings back childhood- I grew up in Philly just across the creek from a Fels Naptha plant. Turned the creek all kinds of interesting colors sometimes) and have been using it for a couple of weeks now. I kept it "secret" from my pooh-poohing SO. I got compliments on how good the laundry smells now! And got asked outright what kind of detergent I was using. (SO does a lot of her own laundry for her uniforms and I had hid my bucket of powder so I wouldn't have to listen to "what the heck is this?") We both now use my laundry detergent and the bottle of store bought liquid is sitting on the shelf. I'll have to use that up on dog laundry or something.
 
That is kind of how I switched our family over.

I didn't say anything - switched to homemade (I prefer the powdered formula as well), then waited for reactions. I used my own homemade lye soap for the formula so there is very little scent. What they noticed was the softness of the clothes and how the jeans no longer feel so stiff.
 
Farmfresh- Do you mind me asking what kind of soap you make for laundry? As long as I'm making soap, and have all the stuff, I would love to do the laundry soap as well. I mean, I'm using the fels naptha/washing soda/borax stuff right now, but totally homemade would be awesome!
 
There are many recipes for laundry soap bars out there, but any basic lye soap recipe can work for making laundry detergent. Just remember to keep the level of super fatting low. The low super fat level makes the soap harsher on the skin but more cleansing which is what you need in a laundry soap. I still super fat slightly which ensures that I have no free lye left in the soap, it still has plenty of fat to bond with. I also like to use the simplest cheapest ingredients possible for my laundry bars. No need for shea butter here!

My favorite laundry bar recipe is called:

Homesteader's Soap - (a 2% superfatted bar)

To make 9 lbs 11 oz of soap

Lard - 86.00 oz
Tallow (Beef) - 20.00 oz
Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) - 14.70 oz
Water (Min) - 34.29 oz

Just make it following basic soap making instructions.

After the soap cures a day or so I like to try to grate up the entire batch and then just store the grated soap in a 2 gallon Ziplock bag. If you wait much longer the soap gets really hard and grating takes a lot more effort.
 
I am new to this website. My friend introduce me to making my own laundry soap and it seems to be working for now. The results were more of a gelatin with a watery mix. However, I have seen different recipes for the liquid soap online and I was wondering if anyone here has tried different amounts of the ingredients to tweek the recipe and did it work? Also, we don't have any stores that carry washing soda, so I supplemented ph UP. Is there a difference between UP and the washing soda results? The UP is 100% sodium carbonate and I thought I read somewhere else that the UP would work as well. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.:)
 
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