DIY Homemade Washing Powder with Essential Oils

Is Saturday laundry day at your place? With 5 of us the washing on Saturdays feels never ending!

Did you know laundry products (powders, fabric softener, soaks and stain removers) are one of the biggest sources of synthetic fragrance in our homes?

These chemical scents stick on our clothes and are absorbed into our skin as we're wearing our clothes and inhaled at night from our sheets and pillow cases. There's no way this can be good for our health and in fact there's increasing evidence it could be doing real harm. Well no thank you, not at our place!

We switched to lower tox washing powder more than 15 years ago, but then about 4 years ago made the switch to homemade washing powder and haven't looked back!

I've tried LOTS of different recipes and this is by far the best - with the fewest ingredients for the best results.

You can use whatever soap you like but keep in mind that most soaps and soap flakes all have fragrance in them, which is what we are trying to avoid!

I bought 12 bars of Dr Bronner's castille soap bars back in Septemer 2015 and just today used the last one in this batch of washing powder. So obviously it depends how much washing your family does but we seem to get 1-2 months out of each batch.

These are the ingredients I use for my homemade washing powder:

- washing soda
- bicarbonate soda
- salt
- citric acid
- Dr Bronners soap
- essential oils

You can find citric acid in the baking aisle of your supermarket but it's very expensive over time. I buy my citric acid in a 10kg bucket on ebay which works out at about $3 per month. I use it in both my washing powder and dishwashing powder, and it's the BEST toilet cleaner you'll ever use!

Just 1 minutes work and you have delicious smelling and effective washing powder.

DIY Homemade Washing Powder
Adapted from TRTLMT

1 cup washing soda
1 cup bicarb soda
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup citric acid
1 bar Dr Bronner's castille bar soap
10 drops Lavender essential oil
10 drops Lime essential oil
10 drops Eucalyptus essential oil

Roughly chop your soap and then process until fine (TMX 20 secs / SP 5-9)

If you don't have a food processor or thermomix you can grate the soap by hand on the finest side of your grater (I've done that quite a few times!)

Add all remaining ingredients and mix for 20 seconds or until well combined.

Pour into an airtight container.

Front loader - 1 tablespoon per wash
Top loader - 2 tablespoons per wash

If you are making your washing powder in the Thermomix it's very easy to clean afterwards.

Scrape out as much of the washing powder as you can. Add 500ml water and heat for 5 minutes on 50 degrees / SP 3. You should have a full bowl of suds (keep an eye on it though because the more soap left in the bowl the more suds you'll have and you don't want it to overflow!). Just tip out into the sink (I use it to clean the sink at the same time) then rinse and you have a spotless bowl.

(looks like marshmallow but those are soap suds!)
 
Easy right?

Do you think this is something you'd like to try? x