DIY Laundry Detergent

My house goes through laundry detergent way too quickly. We normally go through 1 large bottle of detergent every two weeks, but sometimes it seems like we're buying it every week. At $15 each, we're spending $30-$45 a month in laundry detergent. I looked up a few different 'recipes' for making your own detergent online. Washing soda was the most difficult to find. Walmart normally carries it, but the two closest to me were sold out. I finally found some at Kroger. I also bought Lemishine (not pictured) for dishwashing detergent, and it cost $28 for all of the ingredients for the laundry and dish detergent. One of the Pinterest recipes I read said this lasted almost 6 months for them. If it lasts 2 months, I'll still be saving money.

DIY LAUNDRY DETERGENT

1 box Borax

1 box Washing Soda

1 2lb box of baking soda

1 box OxiClean

14oz worth of grated Zote 

I bought the Zote pre-grated at Walmart, but you can also grate 2 bars of Zote or Fels-Naptha. The Zote comes pre-grated in 17 oz, so I measured 14 oz to equal 2 bars. You can also add a scent booster to the mix. Purex, Downy, and Gain all make scent boosters that are about $7 each. I didn't like the smell of any of them, so I just used Gain Apple Mango Tango fabric softener to add scent.

I strongly recommend wearing a mask and gloves. The Borax and Washing Soda create a lot of dust in the air that you don't want to breathe in. Mix all of the ingredients and put in a sealed container. Use 2-4 tablespoons per load.

My husband was working on the car two days ago and covered an old shirt in oil stains so I decided to use that as a test subject. 

I wasn't expecting it all to come out as even bleach has not gotten oil stains out in the past. The stains had two days to set and I think the detergent did rather well getting quite a bit of them out. 

I did a few more loads of laundry after that test and they smell great and are quite clean!