Homemade Laundry Detergent

I made laundry detergent today.  By myself.  At home.  I feel so green!

I used the directions from this website, and it was just as easy as she said it would be.  I can handle a recipe with only four ingredients: a bar of soap, washing soda (which was something new, but wasn't too hard to find), borax (I usually have this on hand anyway), and water.  I bought the washing soda a while ago.  It may have even been more than a year ago.

I decided that today would be a great time to try something new.  I finished bottling peaches yesterday, and my kitchen was newly clean.  Besides, I needed to do laundry and I was out of detergent.  Like, I really needed to do laundry.  We've been having some potty accidents lately.  A little one wet the bed last night.  And we were out of toddler underwear.  O.U.T.  Out enough that I had two kids running commando today.  I really needed to do laundry.

So I grated the soap and simmered everything until smooth.  I even put in some citrus-y essential oil to make it smell nice.  Poured it into bottles and it makes a nice gel.  Then I loaded the less-than-lovely bedding into the washing machine... and found an old bottle of laundry soap hiding in the cabinet.

So I haven't tried it out yet, but at least the little ones have clean things to wear again.  I'll let you know how it works as soon as the old bottle of detergent is done.