Has anyone here ever tried making their own laundry detergent? I saw it on TLC recently, went to the Web, and found pages of entries on it. They all come down to the same "recipe": Fels-Naptha washing soap, Borax, and washing soda (not baking soda).

Here is a blog tutorial about it: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/04/09/making-your-own-laundry-detergent-a-detailed-visual-guide/ He uses regular bath soap, but most other entries prefer the Fels-Naptha. It's good to know that bath soap will work in a pinch though.

I had no problem finding the ingredients (I live in a good-sized city), made up my first batch last night, and have the first load in the wash now. By all accounts, it seems to work reasonably well. Besides that, it's incredibly cheap. I only made up 2 gallons, because I don't have a large family, and didn't think I could lug around a 5 gallon bucket full of liquid. I scooped some out into one of my kazillion clean, empty, juice bottles to keep by the washer.

I'm thinking in terms of long-term storage. Some bars of soap and a couple of boxes of the borax and soda won't take up much room, and makes many, many gallons of detergent - a much better option than trying to store bulky bottles or boxes of laundry soap. The no-suds formula is a bonus too, especially if you are using the bathtub or 5-gallon bucket and a plunger to wash clothes in an emergency situation.

You could buy your soap in bars like Sunlight, Fels or Ivory soap. They look like oversized bars of hand soap but are for washing clothes.
(Think of the old washing board and wash tub.)
Laundry soap in boxes is just soap that has already been powdered for you. What is in the box is mostly air.
The bars are much more compact.

Bar soap can be grated to go into a washing machine if you like, but a cheese grater does finer job than a shredder does, much more powdery.
It also helps if your soap is drier, most body soaps have stuff in them to keep them from drying out too much.
Most laundry bars don't.

The washing soda or Borax work in two ways.
They soften the water by outcompeting the calcium ions in hard water for grease and oils.
Borax, Soda, Lye and Calcium all make soap by combining with the body oils in your clothing, but the difference is that calcium soap is not water soluble and is that grey crud you know as the bathtub ring.
This means the Soda and Borax are also grabbing loose grease out of your clothes, in effect dissolving the ring around the collar.

If you have super soft water like rainwater you won't really need them because there is no calcium in it.
Check by seeing how much soap it takes to make suds.
If you need a lot of soap to get sudsy water then you have a lot of calcium (hard water) and your cloths with have that gray look from the calcium soap unless you use water softeners like Borax..

Most laundry detergents are not really soap. They are detergents with sudsing agents. They do work, but you can't really make them yourself.
Some of your shower soaps are not really soap either but are detergents instead.

A word about phosphates. You can buy stuff like Trisodium Phosphate at the hardware store. It is a superb washing chemical. They used to add it to all the laundry detergents until it was banned for that use in the 1970s.
The problem is the phosphorus in it is a fertilizer and pouring it down the drain into lakes and rivers caused algae blooms that killed the lakes and rivers by stealing all the oxygen out of them.

Also if you are using Borax or Soda don't use Chlorine bleach or vinegar in the same wash.

EDIT:
OH yes, just to add something.
I have had to wash clothes by hand often. If you ever have to do it you will appreciate a washing machine.
One of the things I learned was to put your clothes into a large tub and stomp them like you were stomping grapes for wine.
Soap is a lot easier on the feet than detergent is, and Polka music is better than Waltz music.
After getting them well stomped go over the most dirty spots like the cuffs and collar by hand. You can scrub them on a washboard or just scrub the cloth together where it is dirty.
Then back into the tub with new water and stomp them some more to rinse them.

A 5 gallon pail is to small to get your feet in, and a bathtub is to big the effectively stomp your laundry in.
Besides, bathtubs get slippery when soapy and you might slip, fall and hurt yourself real bad.
One of those Rubbermaid type totes is about the right size.

(Next edition maybe I will explain how to dry laundry)

I had a college roommate (one of many for some reason?)
He kept complaining the dorm laundry didn't clean as well as his mom could back home.
I finally watched him do laundry. When I gave my input, he replied 'soap?'
I think he's a tenured teacher in San Jose.
Always good to see our members thinking beyond the Maytag, er box.

Tried multiple recipes like this, and no satisfaction. Using a regular machine the homemade soap fails to rinse completely leaving a nasty residue on the clothing. YMMV.

This is unbelievable! I just attempted this recipe less than an hour ago! I saw the recipe on the Duggar Family Website. We'll see how it goes. I used Ivory soap as the bar soap because of my sensitivity to heavily perfumed soaps.

Not sure why it would not rinse out any differently than commercial soaps since washing soda (sodium carbonate) and borax (sodium borate) are in most laundry detergents. Ivory is supposed to be rinsed out easier than most soaps also.

The cost of creating 5 gallons of liquid soap came out to $1.02 not including the water. At that cost it was at least worth a shot. My wifes satisfaction is all that counts in this case so I will report back here opinion in a few days.

Making Soap
Extract grease from animal fat by cutting the fat into small pieces and cooking them in a pot.
Add enough water to the pot to keep the fat from sticking as it cooks.
Cook the fat slowly, stirring frequently.
After the fat is rendered, pour the grease into a container to harden.
Place ashes in a container with a spout near the bottom.
Pour water over the ashes and collect the liquid that drips out of the spout in a separate container. This liquid is the potash or lye. Another way to get the lye is to pour the slurry (the mixture of ashes and water) through a straining cloth.
In a cooking pot, mix two parts grease to one part potash.
Place this mixture over a fire and boil it until it thickens.
After the mixture--the soap--cools, you can use it in the semiliquid state directly from the pot. You can also pour it into a pan, allow it to harden, and cut it into bars for later use.

Any idea on the shelf life of this detergent? I'd love to stash 5-10 gal away for a rainy day. I've forwarded the thread to my wife and she'll be trying out a batch this week.

My wife washed three loads of clothes today and she said she could not tell the difference from using liquid Tide other than the fragrance. The clothes retained a slight Ivory soap scent. No soap residue that we could see on any of the clothes. She did not dilute the batch any further. She also used about a cup of the liquid in a extra large top loader washer. Taking into consideration I made 5 gallons; that would last 80 loads.

Not a bad idea to keep the ingredients on hand.

That is really cool. Let us know how things work out.

I washed several loads over the weekend, and they came out fine. I couldn't tell any difference than with regular detergent. If whites start going gray over the long haul, I have no problem with bleach.

Last night I got a good bit of mud splattered on my work khaki's. I took them off right away, put some of the glop full strength on the mud splatters, and went off to make dinner and do a couple of other things. When I went back by the washer a couple of hours later, I could still see the mud, and some of the pre-treat had dried to powder. I threw them in a cold wash, and.....they came out great! Actually better than my usual on mud stains. I think this one's a keeper!