Cruelty-Free Homemade Laundry Soap

Making your own laundry soap is a great option for people who prefer eco-friendly detergent but don't want to pay the high price for the commercial varieties sold in grocery stores. When making your own laundry soap, it is important to realise that most recipes include animal ingredients or products that have been tested on animals. By choosing only vegan ingredients for your laundry soap recipe, you can create an effective and inexpensive cleaning solution that honours your commitment to the animals.

Laundry soap is surprisingly easy to make---particularly when you utilise a food processor to shred the bar of soap and mix the ingredients. Before you begin, you need to make sure that you have all of the necessary ingredients: a bar of soap, sodium bicarbonate (washing soda) and borax. When choosing your laundry soap ingredients, make sure you are purchasing from companies that do not test on animals. 20 Mule Team Borax is a cruelty-free product that is found in the laundry aisle of most grocery stores. Although many homemade washing powder recipes call for Fels Naptha soap, any bar of soap will do. Fels Naptha soap is not a cruelty-free product because it contains pig fat. While the above ingredients can be purchased easily, finding a place that sells cruelty-free washing soda may prove to be more difficult. Arm & Hammer washing soda is sold in most grocery stores, but it is not cruelty-free. One option is Sun Oxygen Cleaner, which is sold online and in natural food stores.

Creating the laundry soap is as simple as mixing the above ingredients together. The bar of soap needs to be grated first---either by hand or in a food processor. Once grated, mix the entire bar of soap with one cup of borax and one cup of washing soda. This homemade laundry soap can be stored in a three-quart container and will yield approximately 36 loads of laundry.