I recently wrote about homemade laundry soap after my daughter stained her clothes with our laundry detergent. Today on my way home from work I stopped and purchased the ingredients, there are only three, soap, Fels Naptha seems to be the most common one to use, washing soda and borax.
As important as it is to be green, it’s also always important to me to save money. I did lots of math to see if this is really going to be worth it. The detergent I use and love now is $11.97 for 52 loads, or .23 a load, when you say it like that it doesn’t seem too bad.
Then I broke down the liquid and the powdered version of homemade detergent and the numbers come out to .01 per load for liquid and .02 for powder. This does not include the cost of fragrance. Many people don’t add fragrance because they or someone in their family is sensitive to it. I have some essential oils I bought when I thought I would try my hand at soap making so I don’t have a breakdown on the cost for that. Homemade laundry soap is great for high efficiency washers because it is low sudsing.
Like everything else, homemade laundry soap isn’t for everyone. Even saving .22 a load is not a tremendous amount, if you did 1,000 loads of clothes a year (not likely) you would save $220, so you can’t be motivated by savings alone. Although, now that I make most of my cleaning products I don’t miss stopping in that aisle at the grocery store. Every once in a while the advertisement from a new cleaning product will entice me, like right now that one step toilet bowl cleaner looks fun, but most of the time I stay away from those things, they all contain chemicals I don’t want or need in my home.
I’m excited to try this. I love being kinder to the environment when I’m cleaning and it’s nice to know exactly what is in my detergent. Hailey has asthma so I try to avoid excessive chemicals if at all possible. I’m starting to feel a bit like a pioneer, homemade laundry soap and line drying my clothes, all I need is one of those long dresses and a bonnet and I’ll be ready to go.