Home laundry detergent £1.50 for 10 gallons

[tortzblue]

Hi - I've got all the ingredients and was about to start but I think I've got the wrong kind of soap. I bought a six pack of Dove on sale at T£$c0 last week. Trouble is it has moisturisers and stuff in it. Does anyone think that will matter? The USA ones always say use Laundry soap. What's UK equivalent I wonder?

[wolfpelt]

Hi
The soap make doesnt really make much difference.
Sunlight soap is the nearest equivalent or you can use carbolic.

The cleaning properties comes from the soda crystals.
The borax acts as a mild bleaching agent
The soap adds the gloppy thickness and a tiny bit of lather .
I made a batch yesterday and used 2 bars of palmolive
Nice fresh fragrance and mildly gloppy.
Dove would be the same I think.
I find 3 gallons from the recipe on the last posts works well for me
Good luck

[mrswadders]

hi,
i had a go at making laundry powder at the weekend, I didn't have any borax but it washed really well anyway. I also made fabric softener - very impressive have just ordered all the bits i need in bulk from summernaturals. So bye bye S**F, B**d, P****l etccccc.......definately cheaper and just as good (if not better)Also have enough vinegar and bicarb to make loads of other cleaning products!

[HedgeHugger]

I made my second bucket of cow-snot last week.

I asked Mr Hedgehugger if he had noticed much difference since I'd started to make our own. Nope, was the answer. Clothes come out just as clean. Much cheaper. I just use regular hand soap in mine. Was T*sco supercheap lemon flavour this time !

The mix I'm using is a bar of soap, quarter bag of soda crystals and about 8-10 litres of water.

[HedgeHugger]

Me again :)

Since making the first batch of laundry gloop I must have saved loads :)
I haven't bought laundry liquid since.

The last lot I made was VERY thick (not enough water), and it had problems dissolving, lesson learned there, add more water.

The current batch I made had more water added. I also BOUGHT (EEK!) a cheap bottle of fabric conditioner (sainsburs own style 69p) and slopped that in too.


So rather than the £3-£4 every couple of months or so, I've bought 2 bags of soda crystals, several bars of soap and a bottle of fabric conditioner in 18 months. Probably adds up to just 1 bottle of commercial stuff :)

[manda]

I have a stock pile of powders at the moment (10kg buckets) as it was on offer but I might just have to give this a go...and now I have the buckets to store it in