Home Made Laundry Detergent

I was reading a copy of Your Home Magazine.  It is aimed more at the budget end of the market so while it does have links to wallpaper at over £70 per roll or more and is obviously going to show off some fancy home decor, it is more relevant to me.  It's not absolutely relevant to me as I am no nearer decorating, but I can dream.

May 2015 issue has a recipe for Home Made Washing Powder (p61).  I had indifferent results when making Laundry Gloop.  It got my clothes lovely and clean but there was The Smell.  I couldn't lose the foul 'tramp' smell.  However if I tumble dried the clothes or dried inside it was fine.  Washing with normal soap powder has acquired The Smell when I line dry sometimes, so I am considering taking a risk again.

One of the 'Shopping List' items is a paper plate because you have to grate the soap onto the paper plate before tipping it into the glass jar.  The glass jar looks lovely and was the first thing that caught my eye, but they didn't say where they got it.  It looks rather like the jar I got from Matalan which shattered explosively when dropped.  Other items on the 'Shopping List' include 'Truly Scrumptious Doilies'.  I didn't know you needed (actually very pretty) doilies to make washing powder, and they look like this.

Image from Amazon, and they look absolutely lovely, although at £4 for a pack it would cost considerably more than the laundry powder

They do look very pretty, but are not what I would normally consider necessary for a laundry room.  However they are apparently vital to create the label, which also needs washi tape.  I am not sure what washi tape is, but I believe it is pretty.

However when you take away the pretty label, the shabby chic scoop and the paper plate, you get what I think is a workable recipe.  According the magazine, you grate one bar of soap.  Then you add twice the weight of the grated soap of borax or borax substitute, twice the weight of the grated soap of soda crystals and stir up.  It doesn't say how much to use in the wash, but I would go for about half a cup or less.  I won't be using a wooden scoop but a left over plastic measure, it will be a stick on label rather than a crafted one and I will probably be using a plastic container. However I think I will go for it once my current soap powder runs out.

Costs as I type - one 125g bar of Tesco Everyday Value soap is 15p.  The soda crystals in Tesco are £1 for 1 kilo, so 25p for each lot of the recipe.  They don't have the borax substitute there, but I would feel confident adding the Wizz Oxi Stain removing powder which is £2.50 for a kilo, or 63p per lot of recipe.  Homecare Essentials supplied the Dri Pak borax substitute which was used in the magazine, £1.90 for 500g (85p per lot of recipe but you have to account for postage) and I found the site here.  They also do Biotex which absolutely rocks!

I will share if it happens.