Homemade Laundry Soap for HE Machines

I was at an activity the other night and someone brought homemade laundry soap.

I have been wanting to this for a while. I was so excited that it was a recipe that can be used 

on HE (high efficiency) machines. When I came home that night 

I realized we were almost out of laundry soap. Perfect timing, right?

I got the Mr. on board with it and bought the stuff. We did this as a family activity. 

You will need the following to make this.

1 (4lb) Box of Borax

1 (3lb 7oz) Box of Super Washing Soda

2 (5.5 oz) bars of Fels-Naptha

5lb baking soda

Essential oils for smell if you choose (we did not use this.) 

Something to put the laundry soap in

The bars of soap looked like cheddar cheese. 

We had to tell Ava it was not and that she couldn't eat it. 

1.) Grate the Fels-Naptha soap, use a cheese grater. Ava helped with this part. 

Once it is grated you can put it into a blender or food processor. You do this to make it as small and fine as possible. We used the blender first and it just clumped together and then we added baking soda to see if it would help. It did a little. My blender kept getting really hot and the soap started melting together at the bottom. So we moved it to the food processor and only put a half a cup in at a time. This worked so much better. You can see in the picture above that the plate has the clumped soap from the blender and then what it looks like in the food processor. Maybe my blender is just a crappy one, I am not sure. I would definitely use the food processor first.  

2.)Mix all the powders  into a bucket or tub a ware. We used a Tupperware 

that fit nicely on top of our washing machine.  

3.) Mix the Fels-Naptha with all the other powered stuff. Mix well.

4.) Use 1 to 3 tablespoons of laundry soap per a load. I have tried 1, 2 and 3 tablespoons and I just prefer 1 tablespoon. 

Here are some benefits of making your own laundry soap.

• If you do use essential oils, mix the powders and then split it in half. Put twenty drops or so of your favorite essential oil and mix it. Then add the other half of powered and mix it well. 
• It is suggested that you mix however many tablespoons (you choose to use) of laundry soap with a little water before  if you are using an HE machine. I put the laundry soap directly into the main wash spot of our front loader and have not had any problems.  
• The smell of the laundry soap in the tub a ware is strong. This had me worried at first. By the time you wash and dry the clothes it does not have a strong scent. It is a light clean smell, which I like.