Homemade Laundry Soap

[wrenb]

I've just made my second batch of laundry soap. The last batch lasted 7 months and I made this one with the remaining ingredients -- how's that for economical? :)
Today's version was inspired by my new copy of The Naturally Clean Home (Karyn Siegel-Maier). Since I have a front-loading washing machine, hard water, and usually wash in cold water, I thought I'd better stick to the gel method commonly available on the internet. So I used the ingredients in the book and the method from the internet. Which ended up going as follows:

Ingredients

• 1 cup grated soap (I use Zote brand -- in the future I'll look for something less scented)
• 1 cup washing soda
• 1/2 cup borax
• 10-15 drops essential oil
• A whole lot of water!
• 3-5 gallon container

1. Heat 6 cups of water, then dissolve the grated soap into it.
2. Once dissolved, turn off the heat and add the washing soda and borax, stirring until those are dissolved.
3. Put 4 cups of hot water into your storage container
4. Add the soap mixture to the water and mix.
5. Add another 1 gallon plus 6 cups (that's 22 cups) of cool water to the mixture. Stir to combine.
6. At this point the soap is cool enough to add 10-15 drops of the essential oil of your choice. I used lavender.
7. Let sit 24 hours to gel. Or you could pour it into old laundry bottles and then let it sit to gel.

This stuff is a little sludgy, like thick egg drop soup. I use 1/4 cup of soap per load and put vinegar into the fabric softener cup of my washing machine. It works well for us! I have seen notes that say not to use this formulation for cloth diapers since the soap (rather than detergent) can negatively impact the absorbency of the diapers. So we will just be using this for household laundry once the baby comes.