The Dirt on Laundry Soap

Around a year ago, I saw a post from my sister-in-law about homemade laundry detergent, raving about how wonderful it is and how much money she was saving. Saving lots of money? That's something I should be doing! I clicked on the link, and was so surprised by how easy was to make. This discovery has launched my decision to be Sham-free (the trend is also referred to as "No Poo" but that name makes Mr. Bacon uncomfortable) along with my adventures with homemade cleaning products.

A few months ago, I was walking around the small grocery store in town looking for more fels naptha soap   to make more detergent, and could only find this octagon soap instead. This should be an adequate substitute. Laundry soap is laundry soap right? WRONG! Octagon soap is an all-purpose soap that advertises use for laundry purposes, but is not close to being a satisfactory substitute for fels naptha. It smells weird, made the laundry detergent chunky (later research indicated the chunkiness was a result of me using too much in the recipe, but it still didn't get my clothes clean enough), and made my whites dingy.

After using up all of the octagon detergent, I went to Wal-Mart intending to get more fels naptha, but ended up finding  Zote laundry soap (the pink variety).

Pardon the blurry pictures my camera was having issues

The bar was considerably bigger than the fels naptha bar and less than half the cost, so I decided that it was worth a shot. According to the internet, 

• No one is really sure what exactly goes into a fels naptha bar. Zote is made from coconut oil and tarrow (which is a product that comes from cows somehow), and is scented with citronella (which I think smells good). Neither one of these soaps are acceptable for vegans or the extreme environmentalist types
• Not Quite Homemade determined that Zote is an acceptable substitute for fels naptha soap in laundry detergent. She recommends using 1/3 bar in a batch the same size as what I usually make. This means that in theory you can interchange 1/3 bar zote to 1/3 bar fels naptha. The amount of other ingredients that Not Quite Homemade and the Family Homestead are the same, but the Family Homestead uses more water. 

I went ahead and made a half batch of the recipe using the Not Quite Homemade method because I don't have a 2 gallon bucket and the half batch fits nicely into my old laundry jug.

When I went to use my detergent, I was surprised by how solidly the detergent had gelled. I have to shake up the detergent before use to break up the chunks, but the zote soap gets my clothes clean and smelling nice. Not Quite Homemade suggests that if the detergent comes out to solid, to use less soap, but I think I am just going to add more water next time I make it. As you can see in the picture below, the letters on the zote bar work well to determine about how much soap is 1/6 (if you are doing a half batch) bar. Use a kitchen knife to cut between the letters, before the z and after the e and that will divide the soap into sixths. 

Zote soap is very soft which makes it easy to cut and grate, just make sure to clean your knife and grater well before using again for food. Overall, I like it better to fels naptha and will probably continue to use it for my detergent.