Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent

I decided to branch out and try to make my own laundry detergent! A lot of friends had been talking about this phenomenon on the internet and I admit that I was intrigued. I knew that this would be right up my mom's alley, so I planned to do this while she was here. It took a bit of doing to track down the ingredients that were needed, but once we had the ingredients in hand, the recipe turned out to be quite simple and easy.

The ingredients are:

4 Cups - hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup - Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
*½ Cup Borax

- Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.

-Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved.

Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.

-Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)

-Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)
*Arm & Hammer "Super Washing Soda" Baking Soda will not work, nor will Arm & Hammer Detergent - It must be sodium carbonate!!

The jury is still out on how well we like this detergent. The truth is that I'm trying to finish up the jug of store-bought detergent that I have already, so that I can fill it up with my own detergent! My mom washed one load of her clothes with this detergent and it seemed to work fine. At any rate, it was a fun project and very inexpensive. You can find the recipe online here: http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html