So fresh and so clean clean!

This is how we make our laundry detergent.  

This is by no means "my" recipe, it's something that I googled one day and it works well for us. 

supplies:

3 bars of Zote Soap (shredded)

2 boxes of Borax

2 boxes of WASHING soda (not baking soda)

1 tub of off brand oxi clean (you can use either brand)

For whatever reason Jared really enjoys shredding cheese for me so I asked him to shred the soap with our cheese grater and he agreed.  Away he went, shredding 3 bars of zote soap.

After the coconut soap is shredded I let it sit out all night to dry and become crispy feeling.

Yes, once someone thought that the drying soap was coconut and they took a little nibble .. 

surprise, it was soap.  :)

The soap dried out over night and was crispy so then I ran it through our ninja, a blender or food processor would work just as well, to make it even smaller and more fine feeling.

After the soap had been ran through the ninja it was very crumbly (just how I wanted it to be)

I officially have mom hands now too, they're getting so wrinkly but I appreciate every single wrinkle.

The wrinkles on my hands are nothing compared to the wrinkles on my face but behind every wrinkle is a memory made upon the hearts of my children.

I didn't have a large enough plastic container (a 5 gal bucket would do the trick) so I poured everything in to a large black trash bag and rolled it around to mix everything up really well.

All packaged up and I have 3 large containers of soap, the red and white container weighs 18lbs and has 40 cups of soap in it!  The other two containers are full to the top also and weigh 10lbs total.

Finished product!  If I wanted to I guess I could run it all through the ninja once more to chop up the soap even a bit better but it dissolves at this consistency so I just leave it how it is.  :) 
I did run it through the mixer once more all together and it made the soap even finer and now it looks just like store bought powdered detergent.
 I've never had any problems using this soap, it works well for us.

The Zote soap does have a funny smell (like mosquito repellant) but oddly enough the clothes never come out of the wash smelling like Zote, they just smell clean.  If you don't like Zote you can use other brands of washing soda, just google for one!

Price Break Down:

$20 spent on supplies

I made 66 cups with the supplies that I purchased.

There are 16 TBSP in 1 cup.

66 cups = 1056 TBSP

1056 TBSP = 1056 loads of clean laundry

(yes it only takes 1 TBSP per load)

$20/1056 = .01893939

(supply cost divided by number of loads made equals cost per load)

.01893939 = it cost me less than 2 cents per load of laundry

1056 loads = enough soap to do 2.5 loads of laundry every day for an entire year

One years worth of laundry detergent for $20!