Thrifty Thursday: Homemade No-Grate Laundry Soap

(Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here's a post I typed up a few days ago to share with you all--I thought I would share it even though I didn't THINK anyone would be making laundry detergent on Thanksgiving! BUT when my laundry room door opened during our travel day yesterday and my full gallon of detergent fell out into my trailer--Thanksgiving suddenly became a day to also make detergent. Hope you can use this recipe! I have enjoyed it! :) 

   You may have seen from my Facebook status a few weeks ago that I was looking in to making my own laundry detergent. Like I said in my last TT post, I am cautiously treading into the waters of DIY cleaning products. I have such faith in Scrubbing Bubbles and Tide, but my wallet is slowly convincing me that maybe I can make something that works just as well, if not better, than the store bought stuff.
   I started doing the research. I read lots of lots of recipes on blogs, and the hundreds of comments that followed. I decided to try this recipe for "No-Grate Homemade Laundry Soap" from One Good Thing by Jillee (really like her blog!)
   So far, so good! My favorite things about it are obviously that I don't have to mess with bars of soap, whether that's grating or food processing. Yes, it may be a little bit more expensive to use Dawn, but its worth it to me. I have very limited space to store supplies, and since I already use Dawn for alllllllll my dishwashing and some cleaning supplies, I'm set to go!
Now I do my recipe a little bit differently than Jilllee. Like I said, I don't have a lot of room to store gallons of laundry detergent, but I do a lot of laundry with two babies and a tiny washing machine. I decided to make a much more concentrated version of her laundry detergent. I only use 1/4 cup (she uses a cup). A few tips:

• It IS very watery. That's ok! I usually add it to my top loading washer after it has filled up with water some so I know it's not just falling down into the holes. :)
• I have also only used this on a top loading machine. So, for all your front loaders, I would read the comments before trying it. The Dawn does make it sudsey (at least for me) so I don't want you to have bubbles pouring out of your washer. :) Many of her readers with front loaders use it.
• I only use the original, concentrated blue Dawn. As far as I know, this kind of Dawn is their "miracle product" and truly the most powerful of the line. You can try it with a different scent, but I would stick with the original blue.
• One of the biggest things I was looking for was my girls' skin reaction to it! I have been using All Free and Clear since Evi was a baby cause I would see tiny red bumps all over their faces and bodies if I used anything with scents. They even get the bumps sometimes from people holding them with scented stuff on their clothes! So far so good...have not noticed any reactions in the past two weeks. If I do start to see bumps, I am going to make a separate batch using Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castile Baby Soap in the place of Dawn.

Ok so here is my concentrated version of her recipe!
HOMEMADE NO-GRATE LAUNDRY SOAP
Adapted from "One Good Thing by Jillee"

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon (16 cups :) boiling water (I boiled mine in an electric kettle, but you can just do it in a 2 gallon pot on the stove
• 3/4 cup Borax
• 3/4 cup Washing Soda
• 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons Original, Concentrated Blue Dawn Dishwashing Liquid

Instructions:

• Add Borax, Washing Soda, and Dawn to the boiled water in a pot or large bucket that can handle very hot water.
• Stir to dissolve the powders.
• Depending on the container you will use to store the liquid, you may need to let it cool off. You can throw a towel over the top and stick it outside (it's cold here! :) or in the fridge. I bought a thin, 2.25 gallon plastic container from Walmart, and you will need to let it cool before putting it in something like that (learned the hard way.)
• And you're done! I would use the lid of an old detergent bottle to measure it out. Sometimes with a fresh batch, I need to shake the jug some to mix the ingredients again (the liquid should have a very slight blue tint to it)

At home in my cozy laundry "room" :)

Try it out! I've recently used this detergent to wash blankets, sheets, and stuffed animals that had been thrown up on--they came out great! I think that detergent like this may not work for you depending on the type of water and washer you have--but it's worth a try! I'm enjoying it so far and LOVING how much money I'm saving!