The Laundry Room Exhibit at Helen's Habitat I am always trying to be more frugal and eco-friendly. Sometime in fall or winter of 2009 I finally got into making my own laundry detergent. Then I started actually thinking that my Mother is right about things like vinegar - and I started changing my cleaning products too. At any rate this is all about the laundry stuff and I hope that you are encouraged to do this yourself. It's cheaper and even though the bottles of detergents,etc that you are buying are recyclable I believe it's better to just not buy it in the first place. This is it! The bucket of laundry detergent. I decorated it with labels from things I got from Etsy and the recipe. This is the actual detergent. This was the second batch I made and I was really happy with it. I think boiling the soap shavings longer made for a great consistency - I really don't even stir it before I use it. Ok here's my sources first of all. Again, I learned this from The Duggar's. I did more research online to find out what people were using or wherer they got their ingredients. The Simple Dollar ~ Making Your Own Laundry Detergent was really helpful and it has video in the tutorial. It also helps you break down the cost and has a lot of tips from people in their comments towards the end. I think you should experiment because really even if you need to adjust it in the next batch you will still have soap to wash your clothes with. You can always make it better, but you really can't mess it up. THIS IS WHAT I DO... Boil 4 cups of water and 1 bar's worth of soap shavings. I've started with Ivory but I'm going to give the Fels-Naptha a try next. It takes less than a minute to take a bar of soap to a box grater and get the shavings. Then I put 3 gallons of warm water in my big orange bucket. I got mine at The Home Depot. After we finished a gallon of milk I cleaned it out and I save the jug with my laundry stuff just to measure out the water. I add 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of washing soda to the warm water to dissolve it. I started with 1/2cup of borax but now I add more because it really helps clean your clothes - it gets out odor and stains really well. Then I add the soap shavings that have been boiling on the stove and mix it all up. Let it sit for 24 hours and then you're ready to go! Instead of buying fabric softener I have a gallon of vinegar that I add a little bit of this stuff from Tamara's Herbes. I still have some dryer sheets left but I've also got some dryer balls and I love them. I got mine at Bed Bath & Beyond but I've seen them all over the place. I wasn't able yet to spring for the PVC free ones but maybe sometime in the future. I guess pvc is a bad kind of plastic but I don't know anything about it. I'm hoping somebody will help fill me in! I'd also like to know where the odd sock goes if anybody can help me with that please :) This graphic is just like my RL laundry room - always flooded on the floor because the sink overflows! I'm going to add a stain chart that I've been working on and if anybody has any other input for me please let me know!