Homemade Laundry Detergent ???

I am always looking for projects to do with my children. When we find ideas, we evaluate the project's "purpose".. If it serves no useful purpose, or in fact is harmful, we move on.
One of our latest projects was homemade laundry detergent. It seems sort of crazy, right? Why would there be so many advances in landry detergent if the old stuff was just fine?
Now that we have done this, we have committed to continue.
Here's why. The homemade laundry detergent is phosphate free... What exactly does that mean? Well phosphates in our cleansers (dish washing detergent, soap, laundry detergent, etc) go down the drain with the water, then into our local water supply.. Some inevitably ends up in a river or lake. Here is where you should pay attention.. It does not cause three eyed fish or anything stupid... It KILLS and here is how.
When phosphorous enters the lake, for example, it causes a rapid overgrowth of algae, called eutrophication. This doesn't seem like a big deal right? WRONG. The algae overgrowth blocks the light from getting to the plants underneath. (Yes, there are plants under the water.).. Those plants begin to die off and decompose. Microorganisms who decompose those plants use more and more oxygen, depleting the oxygen in the lake until it is used up.. Ummmm.. Now that lake is incapable of supporting plant or fish life.
So, back to the phosphate free laundry detergent. We found this project to have multiple benefits. We have wasted laundry detergents because the brand name that previously did not cause irritation, changed their formula or scent and now at least one member of the family is intolerably itchy. We can make our laundry detergent to be environmentally friendly as well as truly scent free. So, we save the plants, fish and our own skin. What could be wrong with that?
We came across a stumbling block that required a bit of research. We have an HE washing machine (to use less water). HE washing machines are pretty picky about detergents. They will run forever if you pour something in them that makes suds.(Bubbles) So, after a little research, we found credible sources that indicated this is a suds free concoction.
So we began... We grated a bar of Fels Naptha soap into a pan filled with boiling water and stirred. ( I used a pan designated for science only projects, no food will ever be used in the pan.) We stirred for a while until all of the soap shavings were melted.
Standing by was a washed out Tidy Cat Litter bucket. (Handy as it not only has a lid, but the lid is hinged.) In that, we poured a couple of gallons of hot tap water, 1 cup of Borax and 1 cup of Washing Soda. (Washing soda is NOT baking soda. Go to Ace Hardware for all ingredients.)
We stirred the Borax, Soda and water and added our melted water/soap concoction from the pan. More stirring. We added more hot tap water until we had a full bucket. We stirred until it was mixed thoroughly and then closed the lid.
The instructions said to wait overnight.
Open in the morning, stir and VIOLA! It's a bit gooey, but it looks like the video online. We had made laundry detergent!!
I had already decided that simply scooping it out of this bucket and putting it into the washing machine wash going to be too messy for my group, so we had saved our empty Wisk laundry bottles for a while and rinsed them out. We poured the mix into 3 full size Wisk bottles and still had over half left. WOW!
Now to try it. We used about half of the amount of this new detergent as we would have before just in case something terrible happened in the washing machine. It worked perfectly!! Everything was clean and smelled clean!
I have not figured up exactly how much of a savings this is. I know it cost me less than $10 for all of the ingredients and I barely touched the Borax or Soda so there is plenty left to do many more batches. I know that even if I had used everything, I would have created months worth of laundry detergent for less than $10 and that makes me very happy.
One of the biggest advantages is not only do I know what is in our detergent now, but those three ingredients were a lot easier to carry home than six full size bottles of laundry detergent. I will store a few extra bars of the Fels in the bottom drawer of the dryer so that I can make more whenever I would like.
I will post about fabric softener next as this inspired me to look for alternatives. It has always bothered me that there is a warning on the back of the fabric softener about how in increases the flammability of fabrics. Never mind the harm it does to your dryer... But that is for another time. It has been five minutes, so it is time to leave this computer and do another project!