Homemade laundry detergent!

We've had some really awesome weather this week. It's so nice after the hot and sticky week we had last week. Ugh. We've had some rain and lots of overcast days. I love it. Everyone in the house is in pants today. In July!

This week, since we haven't had to run the air, or even the fans, I decided now would be a good time to try making detergent. If it got too hot, I planned to just open the sliding door. I used a recipe I first found in the book, The Duggars: 20 and Counting!: Raising One of America's Largest Families--How they Do It. At the time, I didn't have a way to copy the recipe, but I was able to find in on their website later - liquid laundry detergent.

I've actually put off making my own detergent for so years and I'm not really sure why. It wasn't all that difficult, although I did manage to grate my thumb (see photo below), and using the stove top to make it didn't noticeably heat up the house. I haven't tried the detergent out yet because we still have a little bit of our store bought detergent left in the bottle.

I need to figure out where to put the five gallon bucket of detergent. It's currently in my kitchen and Little A delights in sliding it all over the floor. Strong little toddler! I don't plan to water down the detergent as fully as the recipe calls for. I rinsed out a handy inverted ketchup bottle with a spill resistant lid, filled it about 3/4 of the way with detergent and the rest of the way with water, and gave it a good shake to mix everything together. It smells pretty, too. I'm hoping the ketchup bottle will make it easier for Big A to wash her clothes without spilling detergent all over the place.

 All my ingredients.

 My poor thumb.

 Melting the soap.

 Mixing the water and powdered ingredients.

 Very full bucket!

 24 hours later.

Squeeze bottle!