Make Your Own – Natural Petroleum Free Laundry Detergent.
I hope by now everyone knows that regular old laundry detergents you buy in the supermarket are made from petroleum. Yep, the same stuff that powers your car. Why would you want to wash your clothes in that stuff? Although there are good alternatives available at stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, you can make your own for much cheaper from basic ingredients.
First, the ingredients:
1/2 Cup Washing Soda
1 Cup Grated Fels Naptha Soap
1/2 Cup Borax
Yep, that’s it…the three ingredients to make highly effective laundry detergent. First you want to grate/shred the bar of Naptha soap. You can use a cheese grater for this. If the pieces are not coming out small enough, you can be brave and use the food processor in the kitchen. And before you say “no way, all that soap!”….what do you think you wash the food processor with? 
Then combine the other 2 ingredients with the soap and you are done. You can then put it in a glass jar with a lid, preferably a recycled one like a spaghetti sauce bottle. For lighter loads, you can use 1 to 1.5 tablespoons and for heavy loads use 2 to 2.5 tablespoons.
The total cost comes out to equal about .15 cents per laundry load…not bad! Plus, you are using one less petroleum product in your house, which is good for everyone.
technorati: natural, laundry, detergent
[...] Make Your Own Natural Petroleum Free Laundry… [...]
[...] for us (and future renters of our properties), there is a way to make your own laundry detergent. It might melt your clothes, bleed your colors, give you a rash, and slowly sterilize you but [...]
But I think Fels Naptha IS a petroleum product:
http://www.dld123.com/q&a/qandatemp.php?id=Q61
A grated bar of Dr. Bronner’s castille soap, while more expensive, might be a better bet.
[...] laundry soap. If you are not adventurous enough to make your own, the least you can do is to buy biodegradable soap! It cleans just as well as the big name stuff [...]
[...] laundry soap. If you are not adventurous enough to make your own, the least you can do is to buy biodegradable soap! It cleans just as well as the big name stuff [...]
Fels Naptha used to contain Stoddard Solvent, which has a small amount of petroleum product in it.
The 1998 MSDS sheet showed a change in the formula – it now does not contain Stoddard Solvent.