Here is the recipe, found on Pinterest, originally pinned from Frugally Green.
- Some kind of bucket to mix all your ingredients in. I used a 3 gallon bucket.
- A large boiling pot.
- 1/3 bar of Pink (or original) Zote Laundry Soap (you can also use Fels Naptha, Octagon, or Ivory--amounts may vary) – 2 pk for $6.78.
- 1/2 cup Borax Laundry Booster – 76 oz box for $10.70.
- 1/2 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – 55 oz box for $9.19.
Step 2: Put your grated soap in a pot with 6 cups of water and heat on low until the soap melts. Don't let the soap boil. Once all the soap is completely melted add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens (almost as thick as honey) Remove from heat.
Step 3: Pour 4 cups of hot tap water into your bucket. Add the soap mixture and stir it up. At this point you could add a few drops of essential oil like lavender or tea tree oil if you wanted your soap to have a fragrance. Add nothing and your clothes will simply smell clean. I personally really like the smell of the pink Zote, so I didn’t add a thing.
Step 4: Now add about 12-14 cups of hot tap water to the bucket. The original recipe calls for “one gallon plus 6 cups” but when I did that it came out way too runny. Give it another few minutes of stirring and then let it sit overnight.
Step 5: In the morning your soap might look runny, or like gel, or separated with big clumps of slime on top and water on the bottom. This is all normal depending on the weather, the type of soap you used, etc. At this point you can be done and simply keep your laundry soap in the bucket and just scoop out 1/2 cup per load (like me). Or you can give it another good stir and funnel it into your old, well-rinsed laundry soap container (like I intended to do and still kind of do). Or you can spend the money you saved on the first batch and buy a cute container and cup to store it in. You will need a wide-mouthed funnel of some sort to do this and probably a helper.
Here is mine, still in the bucket, two weeks later.
Just get your mixer out... Trust me.
Now all I have to do when I need to run a load of clothes (which is two times a day right now) is give the container a good shake before pouring it in the little reservoir in the washer.