How to make your own washing powder

Making your own washing powder is easy. The process involves three steps. 1)Go to the shops and buy a bar of environmentally friendly soap, washing soda, borax if you use it, vinegar 2)Get a big bowl, a rasping board (cheese grater will do), a whisk. 3)Prepare mentally for spending ten minutes in your kitchen doing nothing but grating a bar of soap.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• 300 Grams of Soap
• Borax (if you use that in your laundry)
• Washing Soda
• Vinegar (for softening clothes and rinsing lather of the soap)
• Salt (can be used in stead of vinegar)

1. Take the bar of soap you have purchased to your kitchen table. The best soap is of course ecologically friendly soap. To know what is a good ecologically friendly soap, check that it's made of vegetable based fat, that it is not tested on animals and that it is 100% bio degradable. My favorite type of soap is Castile Soap. My second favorite soap is Sunlight Soap, but I have yet to find the evidence that this is not tested on animals. Sunlight soap is the stuff your grandmother used to wash her clothes. It was introduced in the US at around 80 years ago and it got a bad name because the product was marketed in bright yellow packaging. This resembled an instant drink and tonnes and tonnes of yanks found themselves making, then sniffing, then DRINKING the soap!
   OK. Get your grate out. It is of course best to pulverize the bar of soap as best as you can. But the process can be tedious, so a rough guide is that the whole bar of soap should not take you longer than around ten minutes of hard work grating. If you have a kitchen blender and want to use it, you can do that too, but don't blame me for soaping up your food if you don't manage to clean this thing afterwards.
2. When you grate the bar of soap, make sure the raspings are not sticking together into a big compact ball. That's not good. The point is to get this bar to liquify.
   When you've done the whole lot, get out a big bowl. Fill it half way with hot water. Throw in your soap gratings and whisk until the lumps are somewhat penetrable. Then throw in half a cup of washing soda, one cup of vinegar and a few spoonfuls of salt. Borax too if you use it - but not more than half a cup. Then just let the stuff sit for about one week. (If you're in a hurry, you can opt to simmer the substance on your cooker and continue to whisk for another half hour).
   During the next days, whisk the substance a bit more every day. Point is to get it to liquify, remember.
   After seven days, give the whole lot a good stirrup and prepare the jugs you are going to store the diluted stuff in. 300 grams of soap makes around 2 gallons (7 litres) of washing detergent. You can use empty milk jugs for storage.
   Water the substance down and make sure you stir. You will notice it is still very lumpy but soggy enough to push through a siff. Siff the stuff, whisk very well and store. You're done! All costs less than a buck.
3. Usage? I use one cup for washing my clothes with a Zanussi machine. There are other recipes which indicate less concentration and more usage. For me, these measures work best.

Tips & Warnings

• Additional tips: If you want to reduce washing detergent use, consider too to soak your clothes overnight in a bowl of water with a few spoonfuls of detergent. This way you can reduce washing detergent and washing temperature. If you don't use borax and want white washing: put half a lemon in the load of whites and you'll have a good effect.
• Never drink Sunlight Soap!
• Do not drink Borax!