I had originally intended to make the laundry soap that requires grating a bar of soap and cooking it all. I loved the "green" appeal removing all those weird chemicals, and the money saving side of things. The thing that stopped me (after I bought everything for it of course) was the fact that I did not have a place to store 5 gallons of laundry soap and grating and cooking really didn't sound that fun. I am 7 months pregnant, and have 4 other kids to chase after to occupy my time!
This recipe is SO fast that I whipped it up at 9pm at night in 4 minutes flat! This recipe is DIRT CHEAP and works well. All you need are a few simple supplies..
DIY No Grate, No Cook Concentrated Laundry Detergent
3 Tablespoons Borax
3 Tablespoons Washing Soda (not the same as baking soda)
2 Tablespoons Dawn or other non bleach effective dish soap
All you do is pour those into a jar or plastic container like your old laundry detergent bottle if you prefer. Then add 4 cups boiling or really hot tap water to the mix to dissolve it all. Once it is dissolved simply add enough water to make 1/2 gallon. Because this is concentrated I only have to use 1/4 cup of the mixture. You can always see how you like it and adjust how much you need based on your size of load and level of dirtiness. I used a palmolive dish soap but many swear by blue dawn (specifically the blue one) for it's amazing degreasing abilities. You can buy all these supplies in the laundry isle at walmart. I had to ask because they were tricky to find but they had all of them and they were very cheap.
Now if you want to be all practical you can simply make this mixture in an old fabric softer bottle or laundry detergent container, but I wanted mine cute. I have been slowly redoing the laundry/entry/crafty/office space so I wanted mine to look nice. Notice the beautiful ironing table /counter surface on the washer and dryer under the laundry detergent? I just redid that and you can see my
ironing table/counter tutorial HERE. Needless to say I was trying to get rid of the big ugly plastic red jug so here was my solution.
I used an old 1/2 gallon Vlasic pickle jar, some scrap fabric, the free printable labels I provide below and fabric starch to modge podge it all on. So just to clarify I did not use modge podge, I used fabric starch in it's place. It's much cheaper and I happened to have some from my
DIY Silly Putty Tutorial a while back.
Here is how I did it.
I created the free printable laundry labels for you using
Cathe Holden's very cool apothecary labels I blogged about earlier in my post on
Free Printable Labels where I gave you TONS of links to great printable labels. Those labels are available to download and customize. For this project I did all that for you already. You just need to right click on the image below and open it in another window and print.
I used a rotary cutter and cutting mat with ruler to get a nice straight edge on my fabric (you cold of course use scrap book paper here too) when I cut it to the width I wanted.
Next pour some liquid starch ( a few bucks at walmart in the laundry isle) into a container and lay the fabric down into it so that it is fully coated. Then use your fingers to strip off the excess as you pull it out.
Now place it on the jar just the way want it. It slides around nicely while you adjust it unlike other adhesives like straight up glue.
You do the same thing with the label making sure it is coated with the fabric starch and then simply place it over the fabric where you want it. Be warned if you use really cheap ink like I do in your printer it may fade a little. Mine didn't really do too bad but it can happen since we are dipping it in so much liquid.
To cover the lid with fabric trace a round shape the same size as the top of your lid and cut it out. Then dip it in fabric starch and place on top the lid.
For the edges you can cut a thin strip again using your rotary cutting tool, cutting mat and ruler. Dip in fabric starch and place around the lid. Would it be nicer to paint the lid first? Probably, but I didn't want to go get the spray paint out. So I went with what I was already using. Below is a picture I did with another of the labels I provided above. That is the nice thing.. You have lots of choices. You can adhere the label straight to the jar but I just wanted to add the fabric for decor reasons as that is how I roll!
I really love the results. So just to recap.. the soap takes all of 4 minutes to make and costs pennies. You don't have to bother with all the jar decorating, but how fun would that be? What do you think? You gonna give it a go? I didn't give a price breakdown earlier but it is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP to make this soap and it works just as good as other detergent. It is very low suddsing so you can use it in a HE front loader like I do. You can even try scenting it with essential oils, like lavender. I think when I am done posting this for you I will go grab my lavender essential oil and do just that!
