Easy DIY Recipe: 2 Years’ Worth of Laundry Detergent for Just $20

Frugality comes in many forms and homemade laundry detergent is a great one. If you love saving money and making your own household cleaners, we have got the perfect project for you.

This is a DIY laundry detergent that will cost you around $20 to make. What’s really amazing is that it will last you for up to 2 years! Imagine having enough laundry detergent to last for 2 years and for just $20!

Now, keep in mind that if you have a rather large family or if you do several loads of laundry per week, this may not last that long. You should however, be able to make enough for $20 to last at least a year and that’s if you do several loads every day.

The recipe? We’re glad you asked. You will need:

• 1 Box of Borax – This is the 4lb. 12 oz. box Get it from Amazon.com
• 1 Box of Baking Soda – The 4lb. box. Get it from Amazon.com
• 1 Box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – The 3 lb. 7 oz. box Get it from Amazon.com
• 1 Tub of OxyClean – the 1.3 lb. tub Get it from Amazon.com
• 2 Bars of Fels-Naptha Soap – The 5.5 oz. bars. Get it from Amazon.com

Now, you will need to grate the soap bars (Fels-Naptha) but that’s easily done with an everyday cheese grater or a food processor. This is the only part of the process that takes any time and you do want to be sure that you get it grated rather finely. You don’t want those lumps in your laundry detergent and the finer it is, the better it dissolves.

You can mix it all together however you want. A large bucket (think 5-gallon here) does the trick nicely, just be sure that your bucket is good and clean so that you aren’t adding dirt to your laundry later.

You’re going to get about 17 pounds of laundry detergent and you only need to use about a tablespoon for each load. For really dirty loads, you can use a bit more if needed. This stuff works great and it keeps forever so no matter how long it takes you to get through it, it will be fine.

Store it in a 5-gallon bucket or put smaller batches in mason jars or any other container that you can tightly lid. You don’t want moisture getting in there.

Now, if you want to change the smell, you can do that in a couple of ways. Either add a bar (you can take away a bar of the Fels-Naptha if you want) of lavender or other good-smelling soap or leave all of the ingredients intact and just add several drops of your favorite essential oils. They will add a really nice scent that will cling to your laundry and it won’t add much more to your overall cost.

You can also add scented Epsom salts that will not only give your laundry a great smell, but the Epsom salts act as a softener as well or just pay $5 for Downy or Gain crystals and add that when you are mixing up your detergent.

Even if you choose to add something for scent, you are still going to get a rather large load of laundry detergent for around $25 and that will be the only money you have to spend on laundry detergent for months and months. Imagine not having to worry about running out of laundry soap. Now imagine what you could do with all of that extra money! Idea and Recipe by Reddit user Pannonica!