Homemade Soap the Easy Way

Reading a favorite blog recently, a gal shared a recipe for homemade laundry soap.


http://sunnysimplelife.blogspot.com/2011/07/frugal-challenge-making-your-own.html


You can also buy a kit to make laundry soap from Lehman's.


http://www.lehmans.com/


The Lehman's kit requires cooking the ingredients in hot water to make a "gel," but this gal just mixed the ingredients dry, and she uses the soap that way. In her recipe, it calls for either Fels-Naptha soap or Zote soap. Fels-Naptha is more for stain-removal, and Zote is more for delicate things and to not irritate skin. The Fels-Naptha soap is dark yellow, the Zote soap is pink. You can get all these ingredients in the Lehman's catalog, either in a kit, or ordering seperately. I was able to get the three main ingredients at the local walmart for around half of what it would be ordering through the catalog. They had Fels-Naptha, but I don't think they had Zote. So anyway, I got stuff, and assembled it to make me some cheap soap. Heavy-duty washing soda, Borax, and the Fels-Naptha soap.




I knew there was a reason I bought an old, rusty grater at the thrift store, just because I liked the red handle! Here I have a plastic container, the grater, and the unwrapped bar of Fels-Naptha soap.




Grating the bar of soap into the container.




The recipe in this gal's blog called for half a bar of the soap, but I just doubled the recipe, and used a whole bar of soap. NO, THIS IS NOT GRATED YELLOW CHEESE! KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN.




The washing soda and borax added.




All stirred together.




Stored and ready to go for laundry day!