I have the ingredients all ready to mix for my detergent: borax, washing and baking soda and fels naptha soap. I do not add water and prefer the dry detergent. My question is what is the proper amount to use per average load. I have complete forgotten. Thanks to all.
I was reading everyones post, and I decided I wanted to try and make my own homemande laundry detergent. Well, after scouring(pardon the pun!) surrounding towns for over a week, I had no luck at finding fels naptha. I did, however, find a colgate laundry bar. What I did was to use a vegetable peeler and peel off small slices of the bar until I had used it all, and added it to approximately one gallon of very hot water. It was just before boiling. The soap dissovled very easily within a minute. I added 1/3 cup of borax and 1/3 cup of washing soda to the same mixture untill it was fully dissolved. I had an old 5 gallon bucket aroung the house and poured mthe concoction in it. I added approx. 3 more gallons of water(cold) to the mix and let it sit over nite to cool down. It had formed a sort of "jelled" goop that I took a plastic spoon and mixed it back up and it became liquid again. I used 1/4 cup of this stuff on a large load of clothes and they came out perfectly clean--without any type of perfumed odor at all. I am a single father of 4 teen boys, so I average ALOT of dirty clothes(average is about 3-4 loads a day!!) I may have 5 dollars in all of the stuff I purchased to make this detergent. Today I am trying something new. I am adding a bar of Ivory to the mix to see what it makes the clothes smell like. With all the clothes I have to wash, this is alot cheaper than buying all the store bought stuff. Also It works really well as a pre-treater for removing red clay from baseball uniforms!! Colgate dish detergent(powder type with bleach) for automatic dish washers does an excellent job on brightening whites too
I use Fels Naptha soap for the soap, and I chop it up, then I put it in an old food processor and try to make it pretty fine. If you make the dry mix you only use 1 or 2 Tablespoons of the mix for a washer load, 2 T for extra dirty clothes. What I do is put enough mix for one load in a plastic jar that has a tight lid. Add water and let the soap soak. I do this right after I empty one when washing, if you let the soap mix soak for a while. It will be softened up and won't leave soap specks on your clothes. That is what happened to me before I began to soak the dry soap. I also use white vinegar to rinse. I put the white vinegar in a downey ball. I have several plastic jars with soap soaking in them, ready for the next load of wash.
I hope that you will love your homemade laundry detergent as I do. In answer to your question I use 1 Tablespoon for lightly dirty clothes and 2 Tablespoons for dirty clothes.
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