Laundry soap

I have just finished making laundry soap, something that I've wanted to do for a long time. It's really amazing how something looks to be very time consuming or complicated before you try to "just do it".
This is laundry soap making for me. It's been over a year since I started to read about green cleaning and alternatives to detergent use in the home. I have been using vinegar and baking soda for weekly cleaning and given up on store bought clenaers, but laundry soap was still a long way away. It just seemed so involved and messy so I kept putting it off.

Until the other day I took a look a my soaps and thought some of the first ones that I still had, looked a bit boring. Just plain and white, actually just perfect soaps. Perfect for laundry! So I grated them down and mixed them with washing soda and borax. That's it!
Laundry soap!
The dry version.
The recipe I used was basically:

2 soap bars (about 200 gr. total)
1 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax.

Mix and put in a container.
Used 1-2 tablespoons per load.

Since that was easy I started to make the liquid one. That also involved grating soap bars. This time into a pot and on top of that I poured water. I heated this up to a medium heat. Just so it doesn't start to froth to much. When the soap is dissolved into the water I filled a bucket (10 liters or so) up to maybe 3/4 with hot water and poured the soap solution into that. Then I stirred a cup of washing soda and a cup of borax into the solution. Let it sit over night. The instructions that I read warned that this might get "gloopy and lumpy" but I didn't find that. To me it seemed rather smooth, but to make sure I took my stick blender to it.

The next day I poured this into empty detergent bottles. I had ripped off the labels and used a Sharpie to write the recipe on the bottles. Handy for the next time.
So the recipe for the liquid laundry soap is this:

1-2 Soap bar(s) - about 200-250 gr. This isn't an exact science
1 cup Washing soda
1 cup Borax

Grate the soap into a pot. Pour water over and heat gently. Stir to disolve soap flakes, but be careful it doesn't froth too much.
Pour 7 liters hot water into a bucket and add the soapy water. Add the washing soda and borax and stir. Cover (with a plastic bag or a towel) and let sit overnight. This may get "gloopy and lumply", but you can stir it with a stick blender to get a smoother consistency.
Use 1/4 - 1/2 cup in a load.

Now I've been testing these out by doing load after load of laundry. I have to say that the laundry looks fine. I see no difference from the commercial laundry detergents. The smell on the clothes is great: It's really no smell at all and quite like when you hang laundry outside to dry.
It just smells of nothing but CLEAN.
I love it!

The photo: I got that scoop at the Good S.... flea market.  I bought a few boxes like that at IKEA and wrote on them with

a Sharpie.  The little bottle has been rattling around my parents house forever, the large one I bought new.