Laundry Detergent

OK for the past 10 years we have used only two different laundry detergents and they both have been decent at keeping  our clothes clean, no great decent. So recently when I saw a bunch of posts about making my own I was skeptical. That was until friends who I know have active kids and large families like mine said they were having success. So now I have joined the ranks and hopefully this will save us some money and still keep us clean:

I found many recipes, most of them used a very diluted recipe calling for 1 cup or 1/2 cup or a 1/4 cup per load. I wanted a recipe for 1/8 cup since that is the scoop I have and I don't want a 5 gallon drum in my laundry room. 

I used:
1 bar ivory
2 cups Washing Soda (arm and hammer, heard they have it at Wal-mart but I ordered on Amazon, convenience)
2 cups Mule Team Borax (had in cabinet already)

I grated the ivory then melted it in 1 quart of boiling water. Then I added it to a gallon of room temp water (I used an old pretzel barrel for this).
I then added my 4 cups of powered stuff and mixed. I used a whisk and made sure everything was dissolved. I am storing it in the pretzel barrel and leaving a wooden spoon in the container to mix each time before use, it gets clumpy. This is more concentrated than the other recipes but hopefully it will work. I put some baby explosion clothes in this first load to give it a serious test drive.

I will let you know what the results are.

BTW: just ran out of dish washing detergent and found a recipe that says equal parts baking soda and borax and 2 tablespoon per load. That will be the next experiment. If it works I'll be saving a lot since the amount of dishes and clothing we wash is just staggering.