Now if only I had an ash hopper from which to extract lye...

I have several friends who make their own laundry detergent. I'm generally lazy when it comes to this sort of thing, but laundry detergent is expensive. When my friend Hannah showed me this recipe, I decided it looked very simple and I needed to try it. 

All important ingredients can be found at a hardware store like Ace Hardware. (Don't bother with Home Depot or Lowe's; they don't do this sort of thing.) I also purchased my orange essential oil - I debated between this and lavender - at Sunflower Market. WARNING: Fels-Naptha has a strong, though not unpleasant, soapy scent. I would choose Castille soap next time for a milder scent - or homemade lye soap, which is amazing, effective stuff.

First I grated 1/3 bar of soap into a large pot.

I added 6 cups of water and heated it until the soap dissolved.

Next in: 1/2 cup borax and 1/2 cup washing soda.

Then I stirred it until it all dissolved.

When the soapy concentrate was ready, I added 4 cups of hot water in my brand new laundry soap bucket. I got this bucket from my local King Soopers' bakery. It used to hold about 4 gallons of chocolate icing. My favorite part: it was free.

I poured the soap concentrate into the hot water in the bucket. Then I added another 22 cups of water.

I added about .25oz of orange essential oil and stirred it some more. I'm guessing I could have used less essential oil. We'll find out soon enough!

 This is what it looked like. Start to finish: approximately 20 minutes. Fast and easy!

About 6 hours later it was already starting to gel and get the "egg drop soup" consistency described in the recipe from TheFamilyHomestead.

I'm interested to see how well this cleans compared to other laundry detergents. My friends who make their own soap swear by it. Overall the process was not difficult or time consuming, and it is much more economical than anything I could buy ready-made in the store. Essential oil raised the cost, but still, I got 2 gallons/64 loads for approximately $1.50. I'll take it. And if this works, I'm going to save so much money! Sometimes DIY is great.