Home made laundry detergent--powdered

Yesterday I took a leap and while we were at the store purchasing conditioner for our home made laundry softener I found and purchased a couple items for homemade laundry soap, didn't realize I needed the Borax so John ran and got some from Walmart on his way home from work at 10 pm.

Anyhow, I should have written down the prices of each item, I do believe we spent less than $10, the Zote soap was like 98 cents on sale at our local Super 1 Foods, we also got the washing soda there (Arm and hammer super washing Soda or something like that) it came in a box.

I was going to post a link to the website where I found the recipe I used, but as I was trying to copy and paste the page vanished before I could copy it, and I can't find it now (cause believe me when I say there are billions of recipes on billions of pages) this one was super simple though and so I figured I would give it a try

found the link-- http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/soaprecipes/ss/powderedlaundrysoapsteps.htm

it calls for:

1 4-5 oz bar of soap

1 cup washing soda (which is different then baking Soday)

1 cup borax

now the lady who posted this said she used her food processor to grate the small bars of soap you get from hotels--LOVE IT!!!! But since I had already bought a 14.1 oz bar of Pink Zote soap from super one foods I used my little ikea grater and went to town while watching a movie on fancast with my son, even though I did a fine grate I found that I still needed to put it in the food processor to chop it up even smaller, I added 1/2 a cup of washing soda to each 1/3 of soap I put in (cause I only have a medium size food processor and when I stuck just the soap in it got to sticky and the washing soda helped to keep it seperated. I continued this till it looked like the soap was 'powderish' and then waited for my husband to get home with the Borax and then mixed it all together.

so I used

1 14.1 oz Bar of Zote

3 cups washing Soda (give or take 1/4 a cup, I kind of lost count)

3 cups Borax

I mixed it all together then put it in a sealed container and shook it up, there isn't that much there but since you only have to use 1 Tablespoon per full load it should last a while, we will see. I haven't used it yet but plan on washing my husband's pants with it in the next few minutes. We of course aren't completely out of the ready made store brand but wanted to make it and try it before we were out in case it didn't work out so we will have to see

I also made home made dishwasher soap with the remaining washing Soda and some Borax (turns out the box of Borax my husband got me goes a long way)

I used 2 and about 3/4th cup of each since the recipe at tipnut.com suggested that use 1 cup Borax and 1 cup washing soda but wanted to use up the washing soda so just used equal parts...I plan on giving this a try today as well and will let ya'll know how it works--oh, you use 2 tables spoons of this with each load, so it should go a long way also.

I still have some borax but figured I would just store it for future endeavors.

have you ever tried your own home made cleaning products? what recipes did you use and did you like it?

I also make my own laundry softener but since this post is a bit long I will share that recipe with you another day