The recent discussion about making your own laundry soap/detergent was
interesting to me so I gave it a try. I decided to do a dry powder
instead of a liquid because of storage space, ease of use, etc.

I looked around the Intergoogle and found plenty of recipes and this is
what I came up with:

2 bars Fels-naptha soap
2 cups 20 Mule Team Borax
2 cups of Washing Soda (Arm & Hammer)

Grate the bars of soap into a fine powder. We used an old SaladMaster
hand processor. That should give you about 4 cups.

Mix the shredded soap, washing soda and Borax together. We ran batches
through a food processor to grind the soap further and blend
everything really well.

We washed one load so far and neither of us can tell the difference
between this and the liquid detergent we have been using... but maybe
there is a cumulative effect that we can't see yet. Since we will
continue to use bleach in the whites and color-safe bleach in the
colored clothes, there might not be much difference.

Cost..... Bar soap is $1 each. The box of Borax was $4 and the box of
washing soda was $3. I figure the cost per load will probably be around
4 cents (approximately 2 to 3 tablespoons per load) The cost per load
for the liquid detergent we were using was about 17 to 20 cents a load.

With only two of us in the house, we really don't do a lot of laundry so
in the grand scheme of things, the monetary savings aren't all that
important. I am somewhat of a do-it-yourselfer and I just got curious
about this and decided to give it a try. Call it a hobby... but if I
had a bunch of kids, this would be a viable alternative.

George L