Budget Friendly Homemade Laundry Detergent – Large Batch

Looking to make some smart swaps in your home? This Budget Friendly Homemade Laundry Detergent is a great place to start!

You can easily take your laundry from $11-$20 per bottle to less than $1 per load. Yeah. That’s seriously how little it costs when you’re making your own laundry detergent.

Not only will you save money, but you’ll also get the privilege of skipping that trip down the laundry aisle at the grocery store.

With the hubby home full time and helping with the businesses, we’re on a budget. Like real grown ups and everything! So in an effort to be as budget consious as possible, we’ve revamped a few things!

First thing we changed? Our laundry detergent! Mix up a big batch of this Budget Friendly Homemade Laundry Detergent… your bank account will thank you!

These supplies are easy to come by, and for your convenience I added amazon links below 🙂 I do as much shopping as possible via amazon these days… it keeps me from overspending and helps us stick to our budget 🙂

What You Need to Make this Homemade Laundry Detergent Recipe

• 55 oz. Box Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
• 4 lb. Arm and Hammer Baking Soda
• 76 oz. Box 20 Mule Team Borax Detergent Booster
• 17.6 oz. Box Zote Laundry Soap Flakes (some people say to use a bar of soap and grate it, but I’m not into all that work)
• 2 Small containers of Purex Crystals, optional
• 29 oz. Box Ultra Purex 2 Stain Fighter + Bright Booster Color Safe Bleach, optional
• 18 qt. Tote for mixing and storage

How to Make DIY Laundry Detergent

Pour the Arm and Hammer Baking Soda and the Arm and Hammer Washing Soda into your 18 qt. tote, and stir well with any mixing utensil you have on hand. Make sure you combine all of the ingredients well in the beginning, because this will make it easier to mix each additional item down the line.

Add in a box of Borax to the tote, and mix until combined.

Pour the box of Zote Laundry Soap Flakes into the mixture, and combine well.

Add a box of Ultra Purex 2 Color Safe Bleach to your tote and mix until blended well. You can skip this step if you do not wish to add any type of stain fighter or color safe bleach. The basic laundry soap is done at this point, and these last two items are optional.

If you wish to give your clothes more of a scent after being washed, then add two small bottles of Purex Crystals to your soap mixture and combine well. Again, the Purex Crystals and the color safe bleach are optional items which you can choose to omit if you like.

You could also use Oxy Clean in it’s dry form, but that’s so hard to find, I don’t bother.

Use two tablespoons of laundry soap mixture per washer load (way less than what you use of liquid laundry detergent, but with the same cleaning power). There is no need to add any additional products when doing your laundry.

This batch of detergent works amazingly well in high efficiency washing machines, in loads of warm water or cold water, is great on sensitive skin and will wash approximately 320 loads. Breaking that down, the whole batch of homemade laundry soaps will cost you roughly $23 depending on where you purchase your items. That comes to a total of about $.08 per load of laundry, a huge savings over regular detergent!

Store your Budget Friendly Homemade Laundry Detergent in an airtight 18 qt. tote. You can place smaller amounts in glass jars or other containers for display on your shelf, and keep the big batch in a cabinet or closet if you wish.

With just the 2 of us, this batch of Budget Friendly Homemade Laundry Detergent should last almost a year! But I’ll probably end up splitting it in half and giving some to my mother-in-law to use too!

Are you budget conscious when it comes to home necessities like laundry detergent? Have you ever made your own?

Check out these reuseable Homemade Dryer Sheets!