Natural and non-toxic soaps are good for the environment, your home and your body — but you know what'd make them even better? Handmade. Handmade detergents reduces packaging, wasted water and energy and are overall much less expensive than buying the mass produced cleaners. Check out our tips after jump for how to make your own, and a few great sources to buy instead of DIY.
Above the jump, from left to right
1 Twig and Leaf Botanical: Organic and vegan home goods including linen sprays, soap nuts and buckwheat hulls.
2 Mrs.Jones Soapbox: A wide variety of eco-friendly house cleaners packaged in lovely containers, all of which are reusable or biodegradable.
3 Scrub Naturally: Tons of homemade cleaners and supplies, including carpet deodorizers, laundry bags, dishwasher detergent, laundry soap and bleach alternatives — all natural and free of synthetic fragrances.
4 Easy Homemade Dish Soap: From DIY website, Instructables, this is a quick recipe using only two ingredients and your favorite essential oil.
5 How To Make Eco-Friendly Laundry Detergent: Make your own detergent with only three ingredients and three steps.
More information about handmade soaps:
- White Laundry, Green Home: Handmade Laundry Supplies
- 5 Homemade DIY Natural Fabric Softeners
- Greening Your Laundry: Eco-Friendly Detergent and Tips
- Spring Cleaning: Green Laundry Products
- Etsy Finds: Eco Laundry Soap
(Images as linked above)
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I've been using my own homemade soap (oxiclean + borax + fels naptha) for about a year now, and it works great and is so much cheaper! I would get a special grater you use only for detergent though, I'm not sure if its safe to make it in a food processor you then use to prepare food.
It's safe for you to grate soap in the food processor (what else would you clean it with?), but it's not safe for the food processor. I make my own laundry detergent and over the years have burned out one food processor motor and broken the spindle on the other. Hand-grating doesn't actually take that long-- I save it as one of my "while-watching-TV" jobs.