I found a few recipes online for making dish/laundry soap with a grated castile bar, borax, and washing soda. So I bought one on eBay listed as a 10 gallon laundry soap kit, with the castile in a bag, and borax+washing soda in another. I followed the included directions for 1 gallon:
1/8th of each bag (I estimated about 1 oz castile, 1 oz borax+washing soda),heat 4 cups water & stir in castile til it melts,put borax&soda in 4 cups hot water (I did it from the tap instead of heating on stove), stir til disolved,add castile water, stir, let sit overnight, when it gels add other 1/2 gallon of water.
Within a few hours it was a solid gel. I let it sit overnight anyway. Adding the rest of the water proved difficult since it was solid, so I heated it back up on the stove and stirred it until melted with the rest of the water. It solidified pretty much the same as it did before, but I poured some into a container to use before it solidifed again. It comes out of the container like chunky snot if I squeeze it hard enough, it barely suds for a few seconds and then seems to be all rinsed out of the spunge.
Did I add too much water? Not enough? Did I ruin the washing soda by reheating it?
Also, even if this little suds is normal, I'm concerned about how sanitary that is since my understanding is that it is the suds that removes bacteria, and the washing soda simply helps with stains/grease. Don't feel very comfortable using this on raw-meat-ified dishes.
Does anyone know of any better dish soap? DIY or otherwise that is more effective, and similiarly cheap?
The cheapest commercial dish soap I have found is 5 gallons for $60, which is still like 3-5x more expensive than this eBay kit cost me for 10 gallons. I'd really like for this to work :/
July 13, 2020 at 08:00PM
