Homemade Chemical-Free (and cheap!) Laundry Detergent

We made our own laundry detergent for the first time a few weeks ago and it came out great! Our clothes are coming out super clean and we love that it's homemade (and vegan)! Not to mention that we have a ton of it and it cost us easily under $5.00!


So why make your own laundry detergent? Why spend a few hours making something you could simply go to the store and buy? Well, theres lots of reasons. 


Firstly, let's talk about chemicals.




If you take a look at a bottle of typical store-bought laundry detergent, you'll find that the ingredients are a rather vague collection of chemical substances. It may not say it on the back of the bottle, but most commercial laundry detergents, the common brands you find at grocery stores, are loaded with potentially toxic chemicals that could harm you, your family and the environment. We all want our clothes to be clean and fresh, but it seems the very detergents that we use to wash our clothes may actually be leaving them worse off than they were before we washed them. 


Additionally, residues of these chemicals are left on your clothes and possibly absorbed by your skin or evaporated into the air where they could be breathed in.

Now if that's not enough of a reason, let's talk about cost. 


The typical large bottle of detergent probably costs around $10.00. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it takes a good chunk of money for sure. Add that to how often you have to replenish the supply and you're talking at least $100 per year for most households, and that's a modest estimate for some families.


All the products we purchased for our chemical-free detergent cost under $15.00, but it only took a fraction of each ingredient to make a whole 5 gallon bucket! So in the end the first batch (a whole 5 gallons!) probably cost about $2.00 or less. And... that 5 gallon bucket is going to be diluted and put into smaller bottles- so you're actually making about 10 gallons! 


Ten gallons of laundry soap for two dollars you say? Chemical-free, vegan, better for my famalies' health, and it really works? Well let's get started! (That's what we thought!)


What you will need:

1 bar of soap (You're gonna wanna stay away from any soap which contains glycerin unless it specifically states "made from vegetable glycerin".)  And take a a look at the ingredients to make sure it isn't made from other animal fats or products. 

1 cup of washing soda.

1 cup of Borax. Now here's the scoop on borax: it's a natural and vegan product, however, the main brand available out there is called 20-Mule Team. This brand has been around for over 100 years and has never directly conducted any animal testing, but they are now owned by the Dial corporation which does test on animals. It's sort of like ordering a vegan meal from a restaurant that serves meat. It's not ideal, but it's sometimes the best we can do.

The borax information was brought to our attention recently and we are doing some further research to try to find a brand of borax or something similar to use in our next batch of  homemade detergent. We will keep you updated on our findings. 


Essential oil of your choice. Now, make sure you're using essential oil and not the kind of oil you can burn at home for frangrance. You don't want this to be perfumed, just natural. We went with a cinnamon scent and it really mixed quite nicely with our soap scents.











A five gallon bucket with a lid. You can use whatever you wish but The Two Vegan Ladies aren't going to lie, we're all about saving the moola and the environment here, so we took an empty kitty litter container and washed it out really well. It worked perfectly! Plus the plastic it took to make that bucket would have taken a century to decompose, so the more use you can get out of things like that the better!




What to do:


So first, take your soap and either grate it or chop it finely into a large pot. The smaller the pieces the more easily they will dissolve during the next step.


Once grated set on the stove and add 4 cups of water. Bring soap and water to boil while stirring to dissolve soap. 


When your soap is fully dissolved remove from heat and add 1 cup of washing soda and 1 cup of borax. Stir together.


Now, fill your five gallon bucket halfway with water and mix in the contents of the pot. Give it a good stir and let it sit for an hour.


When the hour is up fill your bucket then rest of the way with water, give it a few stirs, cover, and leave it to sit overnight. 


The next day open it up and stir, stir, stir! It's going to be a little thick! Don't worry ours was super chunky too. 


Now you're ready to break it down into smaller bottles. This part is easy. Funnel laundry soap from your big bucket into a smaller bottle and fill it half way. Then add 20 or more drops of essential oil for every gallon of liquid your bottle can hold. You may want to add more or less drops. It depends on how scented you want your laundry. We did about 20 drops per gallon and the cinnamon scent is certainly there but not overpowering. It smells very fresh!


After adding your essential oil fill the bottle the rest of the way with water, tighten the lid, and shake! Now, get used to this. You're probably going to want to give your laundry soap a little shake every time you use it in case it decides to get chunky again. So far ours hasn't been too bad. Any solidified pieces that do make it into the washer work themselves through very nicely during the wash cycle. 


You're going to want to use about 1/4-1/3 of a cup of your soap for every load of wash you do- so this stuff is probably going to last a good while! You can just keep your 5 gallon bucket full of your soap until you need more to dilute and fill your smaller bottle. 




*Note, something you may notice: the detergent you have just made will not make as many bubbles as the store bought stuff when running in your washer. Don't you worry. This is just fine. The reason the store-bought detergent gets as foamy as it does is because of a chemical-based foaming agent. Your stuff is natural- and everything is still getting super clean!

This should be all you need to know to make your own homemade chemical-free laundry detergent! Please feel free to comment and ask us any questions you may have!




With peace, love, and compassion-
The Two Vegan Ladies