Make your own Laundry Soap

I LOVE making my own homemade cleaners - it makes me happy in about a million ways: my home is less toxic, I save bundles of money, I have fun experimenting in the kitchen, I feel smart and I teach my kids good values and save the earth.  Oh, and it's a little more fun to keep the house clean.  What could be better?

Here's one of my faves.  I adapted some recipes I found on the web, with my own suggestions for which kinds of soap I like best, how I make it, and how we use it in our house.  Enjoy!

• 1 Bar of natural bath soap (recommended: Kiss My Face Lemon Sage or 365 Lemon Verbena)
• Borax*
• Washing Powder*

* Use equal amounts of borax and washing powder.  How much varies depending on the size of your bar of soap.  You can extrapolate to other sizes:

• 7 oz bar of soap    =   1 1/2 cups each of the two powders.  
• 4.5 oz bar of soap =   1 cup of each.  
• 8 oz bar of soap    =   1 3/4 cups of each.

You can find borax and washing powder at some grocery stores or hardware stores.  In my area, I had to look at a few stores to find both of them.  A box of each will make several batches of laundry soap. 

FIRST: Grate the soap - You want the soap really finely ground.  This is the best way I've found so far.  It's pretty easy.  Otherwise, you'd want to grate it by hand.
I do the following, in my food processor:

1. Put in grating blade
2. Cut bar of soap in half
3. Grate each half (the whole bar is too big for my food processor intake)
4. Move the grated soap to a large bowl.  Put in grinding blade
5. Put the grated soap back in the food processor.  
6. Add 1/2 cup each of borax and washing powder
7. Pulse grind the mixture until soap is as small as you can get in

Now add to the rest of the borax and washing powder:

1. Dump the soap mixture from the food processor into a large bowl.
2. Add the rest of the borax and washing powder and mix well.
3. It's ready to use!  Put it in a convenient container with directions for using.

I keep my laundry soap powder in a large clear tupperware on top of the washer, with a 1 tablespoon measure in it.  You could also use a coffee can if you have a spare one.  I wrote directions suggesting 2-3 Tablespoons per load.  In reality, you can use 1 tablespoon for a very light load, and 3 for a really dirty one, with maybe a little splash of commercial detergent if the clothes are super dirty.  

MAKE SURE to give it a little stir before using, so the bits of ground soap and the white powdery parts are well mixed.  The yellow of the lemon soap helps make it visible when you do this.  We also like the lemon scents better than most other soap we tried, but you can experiment and see what you like.