My Foray into the World of Homemade Laundry Soap

I finally took the plunge and tried making my own laundry soap.  I'd been hearing for years how incredibly easy it was to do but the one time I tried making all-natural soap it was a huge flop.  All I had to do was add water to a pre-made mix, heat it and stir it and I just couldn't get it to work.  Since then I've been convinced it was an impossible task.

Recently, however, I'd run across a blog friend who wrote a post about all of the natural cleaners she used in her home and I was intrigued enough to try again since she made it sound so easy.

I gathered my necessary ingredients:

A box of Borax
A box of Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
And a bar of Tea Tree soap from The Goat Milk Soap Shop :)

I found my plastic container and added my 2 parts of Borax and 2 parts of Washing Soda.  

Next I had to figure out what to do with that bar of soap since it was supposed to be grated.  I had two options that I thought of right off the bat:

 

my hand grater and my mini food processor.

I opted for the food processor first and all that happened was that the soap pieces got jammed on the blade and it started to smell like an overheating appliance.

Next I turned to the hand grater.  After this amount

 

I decided it was for the birds.  That's when I thought of my other grater and got out the big guns.  It worked like a charm.

 

Unfortunately, the recipe said the bar of soap should be finely ground, which this is obviously not.  I really hope that there are no ramifications for not having it finely ground!

 I added my 1 part of bar soap to the container and then decided it wasn't enough so I went another round of 2 parts Borax, 2 parts Washing soda and 1 part bar soap until it looked like this:

All I had to do then was to put the lid on and shake it up until I got it to look like this.  I'm still wondering about the large pieces of soap in there.
 

 We've done almost a week's worth of laundry so far and it seems to be working great.  The clothes appear to be clean (or at least no worse for the wear), they smell clean (there's even still a hint of the tea tree smell to the clothing!), my he washing machine hasn't clogged or oversudsed yet, and the clothes don't feel like there is any soap left behind.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and call this a success.  If there is any problem with the soap being this big that anyone knows about, please let me know, otherwise I will stay my new course.  

Next round, I'd love to try a different fragrance of soap, like lavender oatmeal or honeysuckle or Fresh Brewed Coffee!!  Just think of all the fun you could have with this.  If you've always wanted to try this but haven't, I'd say give it a go.  It really was easy.

God Bless!