Pages

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Homemade laundry detergent is like the gateway recipe to DIY cleaning recipes. The powdered version is so easy it gives you the confidence to start making other products around the house. I will say, I have avoided making the liquid version. Cooking laundry detergent? Um, no, not when the powdered version is quick, easy, and effective. We made the basic recipe and have been very happy with it, never missing fake spring breezes or the other bad stuff they put in commercial cleaners.

One of my favorite blogs had a recipe with a little bit of a twist that I decided to try.  You can find her post and blog here, http://shalommama.com/homemade-laundry-detergent. (There is probably a better way to share her post, but I am not that tech savvy.) Another thing I like about her recipe is that it makes a LOT of detergent. We will not be making detergent for quite some time!

The first step was to grate 3 bars of Fels Naptha soap. I admit to being lazy efficient and did this in a food processor. As an aside, I have owned this food processor for almost a year and I think I have only ever used it for making laundry detergent. Yes, I have mad cooking skills!


It looks like cheese, but really is soap. One problem I had with this method was heat. Apparently the food processor gets pretty warm and was melting the soap while it was being chopped. Not a big deal, just had to scrape it out a bit. They ended up being little balls. We (did I mention how sweet my husband was spending his morning as my assistant?) added the soap balls to the powders and used the blender to get the consistency I wanted in the powder.

This was probably only the second time I have used the blender and will just skip how much time it took us to figure out how to actually operate the blender. We are smert people! If you are lucky during this step you will realize that your dog thinks the blender is an enemy invader. Between the barking and blender noise I will be deaf for at least a week!

Hard to tell, but this is Jack barking the blender into submission.



We blended until we reached a good consistency. One problem with doing this much detergent at one time is just finding enough space to mix it. We pulled out a stockpot and hubby got everything mixed.



I have a love of Mason jars and the 1 gallon jars were too cute to pass, even if I needed 2 of them!



Anyone else "cooking" in the kitchen? Have dogs barking at appliances (this was calm for him, he thinks the toaster oven is the worst thing ever!)?







2 comments:

  1. Awesome recipe! Can't wait to try it. Thank goodness you had the dog there to help out. I love the mason jar lids, is there a source for finding them you could share?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Janet! Yes, Jackson had to make sure the blender wasn't up to something! I got the jars at Target for around $14 each. I love them! You were my first commenter, thank you!

      Delete