Necessity is the mother of invention! The members of Helping Harvest, our food assistance program for low-income families in Faith Plaza, constantly ask us for laundry detergent. It’s expensive and every family needs it regardless of whether they do laundry at home or at a laundromat.
Laundry detergent is rarely donated to Hope Full Life Center and it’s expensive for us to buy too so we had been looking for an alternative. One of our enterprising staff members suggested we make our own. She had been making laundry detergent for some time and liked the result so we decided to give it a try.
With a 5 gallon bucket, lots of warm water and a few affordable soaps available at most grocery stores we've whipped up detergent that cost us less than $2.00 a batch (which makes roughly 3.5 gallons of detergent). We package it in clean recycled milk jugs and label them.
Our home-made concoction is now on the shelves at Helping Harvest and some members really like it. Home-made detergent is low-cost, simple to make and Earth friendly. There are lots of recipes online if you want to experiment with making your own.