DIY Laundry Soap & High Efficiency Washing Machines

Our washing machine broke the day our tree fell down.  As you can imagine, a family of 7 cannot go very long without something in which to clean our clothes.



Can I just take a moment and say that this must be true?  I literally just bought the boys 12 pairs of Star Wars socks on clearance at Target less than 3 months ago.  They have all disappeared except for two non-matching socks that the boys alternate between sharing.  I cannot find them in my house anywhere.  Did they eat them?

Anyway, we went washing machine shopping for the first time in our lives.  Both of our houses came with a  machine.  Did you know they don't even make them with agitators sticking up in the middle anymore?  We were shocked and looking all perplexed and the sales people laughed.  They literally laughed.

Long story short, we ended up buying a Maytag Bravos top loader.  We almost bought a front loader and then realized that with the wall literally right behind us in the worst ever designed laundry space in the history of mankind, we couldn't have bent over to get the laundry out without our butts hitting the wall.

Pretty much all the sales people say that you can't use homemade laundry soap because the high efficiency washers use so much less water and there are too many bubbles.  Well, we've been using our recipe for the last 5 years or so and it never bubbled at all, so we took a risk.

And it totally paid off.  Our soap never really bubbled anyway and then because I now have a smart phone after fighting it until I couldn't anymore, I googled and found that tons of people use homemade soap in their washers.

Here's my recipe, it works awesome.

DIY Laundry Soap

1 bar Fels Naptha soap, grated
1 cup Borax
1 cup Arm and Hammer Washing Soda

grate soap, put in heavy duty pot and carefully add water until soap covered.  Melt over medium heat while stirring.  Put 1 cup borax and washing soda in 5 gallon pail, add melted soap.  Stir.  (I literally use a stick from outside for this.)  Add hot water to top of pail, let set overnight.  Use 1 cup per load, more if you have exceptionally dirty clothes.  Save lots of money on soap.

You will have a liquid consistency that doesn't bubble in the washing machine but still cleans your clothes.