Another factor that's very serious to me is my health. If you look on the back of any laundry detergent, you'll see a list of twenty or so odd ingredients made of chemicals even the best scientists can't pronounce! Then, the ingredient label "fragrance" can literally be anything: Fragrance isn't regulated by the FDA, so companies can put any carcinogenic, untested ingredient into the detergent they want. This wouldn't be a big deal except that I wear clothes every day. They're on my skin, the largest organ in the human body. The skin has an incredible property that causes it to pull any nanoparticles into your bloodstream. These particles include fragrances and even air pollution. If you're someone who wears clothes a lot (which I certainly hope you are), then this can be a serious issue. I'm all about my health, and I don't want unregulated chemicals in my bloodstream. No thank you!
When making my own detergent, I know exactly what I'm exposing myself to. For example, Borax is sodium borate, a naturally occurring salt. There are some concerns for people questioning its safety, but a great article I've read about it is here from Crunchy Betty. I for one consider it safe, and especially when compared to the chemicals in laundry detergent, I personally believe it's fine to be using. Then, washing soda is just sodium carbonate, also known as sodium ash. Its high alkalinity binds to the hard water used while doing laundry and allows the other ingredients to better remove stains.
So, after perusing Pinterest for a while, I found a lovely recipe online to make my own detergent!
The whole process only took me 20 minutes, and the yield is 3 cups of solid detergent. You should use 1-2 tablespoons of the mixture for every load of laundry, so you have between 24-48 loads of laundry per mixture of this. Also, the recipe can certainly be halved or doubled depending on how much you need.
Ingredients:
1 cup Borax Laundry Booster
1 cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda1 bar Fels Naptha laundry soap
Essential Oils (Optional for fragrance)
The best part about this recipe is that each ingredient lasts FOREVER and is cheap! As you can see in the photo, these are huge boxes of Borax and Washing Soda.
Borax: $3.38
Arm & Hammer Washing Soda: $3.24
Total: $8.41
The actual cost per batch of detergent is only $2.62 for 3 cups of it, making the cost per load only $0.05!! Tide laundry detergent, for example, is $0.18 per load!
Now, I understand the 13 cents difference is insignificant for a lot of people. If you're someone who loves your detergent and doesn't have the time to make your own, you're not going to run into any judgment from me! But, trust me when I tell you that this really doesn't take that long.
Something to watch out for, Washing Soda is NOT the same thing as baking soda. It has a higher alkalinity than baking soda and is an entirely different chemical.
Without further ado, let's make detergent!
Step 1: Measure out all of your ingredients. I halved the recipe to better fit the container I'm using to store it.
Step 2: Mix em together!
Step 3: You have to grate your Fels Naptha bar of soap using a cheese grater and mix it with your Washing Soda and Borax. It kinda looks like actual cheese to me, but I'm pretty sure it tastes significantly less delicious.
At this point, the mixture smelled heavenly, and I was oddly excited to start laundry because of it.
Step 4: Blend everything! Using either a blender or a food processor, grind all of the ingredients together into a fine powder. It'll take about a minute or so.
If you want to add fragrance, now is the time to do it before grinding. The scent is so refreshing without it, but I added a mixture of lavender and lemon essential oils to it for an extra kick! A little bit goes a long way, so I only added about 5 drops of each!
Something to watch out for: My blender froze up while doing this. The powder became jam-locked into the blades at the bottom, so I had to stop blending after about 30 seconds. It took a little while to get the powder out from the blades, but I think if you used a food processor, this wouldn't be a significant issue.
In the future, I'll stop blending every few seconds and loosen the powder before starting up again.
Step 5: Put your lovely new laundry detergent into a container of your choosing!
I got this super cute container from the dollar store! It was the perfect frugal end to a budgeted project!
So there ya have it! Easy peasy, lemon squeazy, which is neat because the detergent smells like lemon. Enjoy your new detergent! :)
-Kristen
No comments:
Post a Comment