getting super clean

"I was wondering whether you had a few minutes to talk about a little laundry detergent."  ahhhh, I love "the 40 year old virgin".  Great, great movie.  But I digress...

I ran out of laundry detergent today so I figured that while I was making another batch I'd share my super secret recipe.  We have an old-school washer/dryer set - meaning no fancy HE (high efficiency) models in this abode.  Seems like for the higher efficiency ones you need less sudsiness.  Is that a word?  But I don't see why the recipe wouldn't work for those models too as, yes it makes some suds, but nothing compared to what my box of Tide used to do.

Here goes.  You're going to need a box of Borax (I found that easily in the laundry section at Walmart) and a box of Washing Soda.  This is different from Baking Soda in that the crystal is larger.  I guess that makes it better at washing.

Then you'll want a little something to make it smell like fresh laundry, or you can go without.  For that purpose I had some of these Purex crystals laying around which I used.  You could use something like that, or I know some friends of mine who sell Scentsy offer some sort of ingredient you can add to laundry to make it smell like your favorite scents.  The Scentsy ones are called "Washer Whiffs".  I'm thinking next time I may opt for adding some essential oils (just a few drops at a time to the mixture and mix well to distribute), but this batch will last me quite a while so I have some time to think more about that later.

The final ingredient is one I had to do some digging for.  All the recipes for laundry detergent wanted you to grate a bar of soap into your concoction.  It's not that I mind the hard work of grating soap, but the instructions then go on to tell you that you have to start the wash with hotter water to melt the soap!  No way!!  I mean I started making this stuff to save money, and if I'm now having to use hot water that sort of defeats the purpose of making it because money saved in detergent was just wasted by heating up that water.  So instead I found a powder surfactant.

A surfactant is "a surface-active substance (as a detergent)" as defined by Webster.  In simpler terms, the surfactant is what breaks the bond of the dirt to your article of clothing.  Same applies when you wash your skin and you want to break the bond of the dirt to your skin - it's the surfactant that does this.  The grated bar of soap contains a surfactant, so that's why most recipes called for it, and it's easy to find at the local store.  For my purposes I chose a mild surfactant called Cocoyl Taurate.  I found it online at a cosmetic manufacturing supplier called Making Cosmetics, but then I also found it on Amazon.com which is super easy especially for those of you who have a prime membership, or were planning to order your other ingredients from them as well.

So the recipe I used was...

• 3 cups Borax
• 3 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda
• 1/2 cup Purex crystals
• 1/2 cup Cocoyl Taurate

 

First I mixed together the borax and the washing soda.  Mine had been sitting since the last time I made a batch, so they were slightly clumpy, but the clumps break apart really easily when I stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon.  Then I added the scented crystals.  Once the first 3 were mixed well I added the cocoyl taurate.  Don't drop this one from high up, add it so it barely moved from the measuring cup onto the other ingredients.  You want to keep it from becoming airborne as much as possible because that stuff will make you cough and hack a bit.  It's just a super light ingredient.  Also stir it in slowly, almost more like you're folding it into the other ingredients... again this is to keep from stirring up a lot of dust.

 

and BAM!  You've got laundry detergent.  It won't look like a ton of detergent, and you may find yourself doing some calculations in your head to figure out if it really saves you any money.  I believe if I added up the 2 boxes, the scented crystals and the surfactant, it might run me about as much as my usual box of Tide.  But what you'll find is that you only need 1/4 as much to do a full load and everything comes out incredibly clean and fresh.

As a side note, these canisters (below) are super cute.  Kind of like the one I use, but even better as they have a spoon attached to the side so you could easily measure out your detergent with it.  The important thing is to find one that's airtight to preserve the freshness of your detergent and to keep humidity from making it clump up.