Laundry Detergent - Making vs Buying

This fall, I started making my own powdered laundry detergent using this recipe from shelterrific.

Prior to that, I had been using a dye free, scent free store brand liquid laundry detergent from Target.

Both of us are sensitive to certain laundry detergents, so an easy to make homemade detergent seemed like a cheaper alternative. Powdered detergent is also a lot easier to store. Last year, I stocked up on liquid detergent when it went on sale from $8 a bottle to $6. It is was really hard to find room for 6 bottles of detergent in our apartment.

The shelterrific recipe is really simply: washing soda, borax, and shredded laundry bar soap.

I ordered the washing soda and borax from alice.com and was able to find Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap at HyVee.

Using those ingredients and the recipe of 2 oz of laundry bar soap (shredded, using a free shredder I got at the grocery store), 1/2 cup borax, and 1/2 washing soda, I made 6 batches of powdered laundry detergent, which came out to approximately 2 quarts. There was just a little extra shredded laundry soap, so I threw it in for good measure as I couldn't find laundry soap in 2 or 4 oz bars. I stored it in 2, 1-quart plastic sherbet containers because they seal well and I had them on hand.

I then started making a tick mark on the lid of one of the containers every time I did a load of laundry. Tonight I did my 64th load with the homemade powdered detergent.

So, I did a little math to compare costs between the detergent I had been using and the homemade detergent I'm using now.

It costs me $8 to buy store brand laundry detergent at Target. The bottle contains enough liquid detergent to do 64 loads.

It cost me ~ $4 to make powdered laundry detergent. So far I have done 64 loads and have enough left to do at least 10-20 more loads.

That alone shows that it costs approximately half the price to make my own powdered detergent. So how much is that per load? 12.5 cents per load for store bought detergent compared to 6.25 cents per load (or less once I find out the exact number of loads I can get out of 6 batches) for homemade powdered detergent.

So, if you have 5 minutes to spare every few months I would highly recommend making your own detergent.