Making laundry soap is not only cost-effective, it can also be a lot of fun!
Most of the recipes you will find on the web for making laundry soap will tell you to use bar soap as the primary ingredient. Now you can go out and buy commercial soap bars or a soap base from a soap supplies store to use in your homemade laundry soap, but if you are a true ‘soaper’ you will want to use your own!
Making Your Soap Base
I would recommend that you use a basic white soap to make your laundry soap, one that you have made yourself with no superfatting or fragrances.
If you don’t already have a recipe, you can use any of the recipes on my Opaque Soap Recipes page as your base. Just make up the recipe as is, to make a soap base you don’t need to add any other ingredients during the cold process.
These recipes create a relatively large batch of soap, more than you will probably need for just your laundry soap but I find it is quite handy to have some spare soap base laying around for those times when I want to make ‘special’ soaps in small quantities.
Using a plain or basic soap base with the Melt and Pour Soap Making method of soap making you can quickly and easily make up small batches of soap by incorporating the additional ingredients of your choice.
Laundry Soap Ingredients
This is the list of ingredients you will need to gather together for making laundry soap:
- 50 grams of basic white soap
- 1/2 cup of borax
- 1/2 cup of washing soda (sodium carbonate or soda ash)
- 7.6 litres of water (approx. 32 cups)
You can use your homemade basic white soap for making your laundry soap after waiting 24 hours but I prefer to let the soap cure normally before use. The borax and washing soda increase the cleansing properties of your finished laundry soap and should be relatively easy to find in the cleaning aisle of your local supermarket.
You can use any type of water in the recipe, but I personally prefer to use rainwater or distilled water over mains water.
Laundry Soap Equipment
If you are making laundry soap, you are going to need:
- A grater or food processor to grate your soap base
- A stock pot and
- A large bucket
Instructions for Making Laundry Soap
Grate the soap and put it into your soap-making stock pot. As with all of your other soap-making efforts, it is advisable to avoid using your normal kitchen tools and utensils!
Add six cups of the water to the soap chips and heat it over low heat, stirring occasionally until the soap melts.
Add the washing soda and the borax and stir your soap mixture until it is completely dissolved. Remove from heat and set the pot aside for a moment.
Next, you heat 4 cups of your water and pour it into the bucket. Add your soap mixture to the hot water and stir until it is mixed well.
As a final step, add the rest of your (cold) water to the bucket and stir the mixture. If you want to scent your laundry soap you can add 20 to 30 mls of your favourite fragrant oil to your soap mix, stirring well to distribute the fragrance evenly through the batch. Once it is well mixed, leave the soap to sit in the bucket for about 24 hours and it should gel.
Using Your Soap
Your laundry soap will be a liquid rather than a solid gel and unless you added color or used a colored soap it will be a watery white color. It will also have fairly low ‘sudsing’ (smaller suds and less than with commercial laundry powders and soaps) so your soap can also be used in a front-loading machine.
I usually decant the soap into bottles – I use the bottles that my old laundry liquid came in – I very rarely throw anything out!
To use your laundry soap, just add about 1/2 cup to each load.
