Borax Free Laundry Detergent

 Welcome to my final installment of homemade laundry detergent. Woo Hoo!!!!  I must say that I am overly excited to be done with this.  For the last several months my laundry room has been over crowded with many bins of half used laundry detergents, soap bars, and boxes of ingredients. 

When I saw this one on Pinterest I was very excited!  I don't have to use Borax or the stinky Fels-Naptha?!?! That is worthy of a celebration

Homemade Laundry Detergent Without Borax 
You Will Need:  
4 ounces glycerin soap grated 
1 cup washing soda 
1/2 cup citric acid 
1/2 cup baking soda 
1/4 cup course salt

Directions:  
Mix the ingredients together and store in a sealed plastic or glass container.  Use one to two tablespoons per load of laundry.

 The citric acid turned out to be difficult to find.  After several stores I eventually found some at Hobby Lobby in the canning area.

 The glycerin soap (which you can get at Hobby Lobby) chopped up very easily in my food processor.

The original poster said that the mixture can clump up and harden so she suggested putting in a moisture killer pack (I have no idea what they are called).  It helped, but the detergent still got a bit hard within 24 hours and I had to use a knife to break up pieces.

The Verdict: Let me put it to you this way; it washed my clothes about as good at my 3 year old cleans up her room.  It got about half way into the job then got distracted and wondered off. As I pulled some of the clothes off I could tell they were cleaner, but still seemed a bit dingy.  Then I got to a pair of my sons underwear that he had had accident in and it was very obvious that these clothes weren't clean. 

I put the same load back in, put in 4 Tbsp this time and let it run again.  There was no difference that time.  The clothes looked and smelled exactly the same as they did after the first wash. 

DANG IT!!!!! I was really excited about this one and was hoping it would work for me.  Oh well. Disclaimer: I have a front loading machine and a water softener so you might get different results

So there you have it, my laundry detergent experiment is done and I have learned A LOT, but that will have to wait for another post.