Natural Homemaking: Homemade Laundry Soap

We are doing a short, weekly series on natural homemaking.  You can check out the other posts here, here and here.

So.  You knew this one was coming, right?

We are not exactly the first bloggers to talk about making your own laundry soap.  However, we also felt like no series on natural homemaking was complete without a recipe for it.
So, here you go!  Homemade laundry soap!

Ingredients

1 cup Borax
1 cup Washing Soda
1 bar soap ( Dr. Bronner’s and Fels Naptha are popular options)
The essential oil of your choosing

Directions

1. Grate your bar of soap.
2. Combine your borax and washing soda
3. Add the grated soap and mix well.
4. Add 20 or so drops of essential oil.  (I like citrus or lavender oil.)
5. Mix and stir for several minutes.
6. Use 1-2 tbsp for each load of laundry.
**Note about HE machines**
Here’s the thing about HE machines – they use less water, which is why they are considered high efficiency.  They use less water so the soap that you use in the HE machines needs to be low sudsing.  There is nothing magical about store-bought “HE” laundry detergent.  It is just low sudsing.  Homemade soap is inherently low sudsing so we feel completely safe using it in my HE machine.  However, this is something that each individual user will have to decide on their own.