D  O    I  T    Y  O  U  R  S  E  L  F: L a u n d r y  D e t e r g e n t

Save Money, Use Less Petroleum for 15 Minutes of Work

By BILL GERLACH/ecoRI contributor

Want to save $50 in 15 minutes? Read on.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to become more resourceful on the home front when it comes to the DIY (Do It Yourself) category. I’m not usually all that handy – as my friends and family can attest – but 2010 is the year to change all that.

Why? For me, it’s part environmental, part financial and part this crazy notion of wanting to be a suburban homesteader. At the end of the day, though, if a person can learn a new skill, lessen their impact on the planet, live a bit more simply and save a few dollars, then it’s worth the while.

So my first “how-to” was DIY laundry detergent.

The ingredients. (Bill Gerlach photos)We were reaching the end of our economy-size bottle of store-bought detergent and I figured, what the heck, let’s see what we can do. There are a ton of resources out there for making the stuff and clearly I’m not breaking new ground here, but nonetheless, let me give you the tutorial. (I made a liquid-based detergent because of our high-efficiency washer, but you can find a powder recipe here.)

Most, if not all, of the recipes out there are based on three, easily accessible ingredients:
• Basic bar soap — preferably a low-suds, low-fragrance variety;
• Washing soda — also known as soda ash or sodium carbonate;
• Borax — sodium borate; to brighten and de-odorize.

Add to that the following materials:
• 5-gallon bucket, preferably with lid;
• Liquid measuring cup;
• Dry measuring cup;
• Large saucepot;
• Box grater;
• Large stirring spoon;
• An empty and clean 1-gallon jug.

Now for the tutorial:
1. Measure 4 cups of water, place it in the saucepot and bring to a boil.
Grate the soap.2. Grate one bar of basic soap into small shavings. I used Ivory because it is low-suds, doesn’t smell all that much and is cheap. Remember, the cleaning action is not from the volume of suds. In fact, if you have a high-efficiency washer, the less suds the better.
3. Slowly add the soap shavings to the boiling water, stirring until everything is dissolved and combined. Lower heat and keep it on simmer.
4. Add 3 gallons of warm-to-hot tap water to the 5-gallon bucket.
5. Add 1 cup of the washing soda.
6. Add half-cup of Borax.
7. Add the dissolved water/bar soap mixture; stir all the contents well with the spoon.
Stir it up.8. Put the lid on the bucket and allow the mixture to sit for 24 hours.
9. After 24 hours, check the mixture. Depending on the temperature of where you stored the bucket, you should have anything from a liquid with small gelatinous chunks to a full gelatinous mixture akin to a semi-hard Jello. We had the latter because everything is in the basement. Just take your spoon and give it a good mixing. The mixture will break apart and become more liquid-y.
10. When you’re ready to do a load, measure 1 cup of the mixture and add it to your wash as normal.

Homemade laundry detergent.We’ve run a few loads so far and we can tell no difference. If we had something with a stain, I’d probably still try to pre-treat it. But the clothes come out feeling, smelling and looking fresh. I’m sure you could add some natural oil essence to the mix if you wanted to enhance the olfactory experience a bit.

Now for the dollars and cents:

For the DIY laundry detergent:
• Total cost for all the ingredients, including tax, was $10.04 — $2.99 for the washing soda, $3.99 for the Borax, $2.58 for six soap bars. Using the above measurements, we will get six complete batches with some Borax to spare.
• Each batch provides 52 liquid cups of detergent. Multiply by six batches and that gives you enough detergent for 312 1-cup loads.
• Cost per load: 3 cents.

For the traditional laundry detergent:
• Let’s use Tide 2X Ultra Concentrated Liquid Laundry Detergent Original Scent — 150-ounce bottle, 96 loads per bottle — something we’ve bought in the past.
• At Stop & Shop’s Peapod site, this retails for $19.99. You would need 3.18 bottles of this to give you 312 loads of detergent — the amount we get with our DIY version. For the sake of simple math, let’s round down to three bottles.
• Total cost: $59.97, not including tax.
• Cost per load: 19 cents.

Now, I bet you could get the ingredients cheaper — I bought them at Stop & Shop — thus lowering your per-load cost. But even with these numbers, we’re saving 16 cents per load across the six batches — 312 total loads — for a total savings of $49.92. Not too shabby for 15 minutes worth of work.

Financial benefits aside, we’re using ingredients that are free of petroleum byproducts, further lessening our oil dependence and eliminating toxins from our home. When you stop and take stock of all the things in your home that use a petroleum byproduct, even this very small step feels good.

Tiverton resident Bill Gerlach believes in re-defining and creating sustainable and prosperous communities. Check out his Sustainable Sakonnet blog.