Step Two: Put three gallons of hot water into the five gallon bucket. Then mix in the hot soapy water from step one, stir it for a while, then add a cup of the washing soda. Keep stirring it for another minute or two, then add a half cup of borax if you are using borax. Stir for another couple of minutes, then let the stuff sit overnight to cool.

When you wake up in the morning, you’ll have a bucket of gelatinous slime that’s a paler shade of the soap that you used. One measuring cup full of this slime will be roughly what you need to do a load of laundry - the ingredients are basically the same as laundry detergent. Thus, out of three gallons, you’ll get about 48 loads of laundry. If you do this six times, you’ll have used six bars of soap ($0.99 each), one box of washing soda ($2.49 at our store), and about half a box of borax ($2.49 at our store, so $1.25) and make 288 loads of laundry. This comes up to a cost of right around three cents a gal, a savings of $70.

We exclusively use a product called Orvus to wash all our clothes. We learned about it from some old quilters.
http://www.nextag.com/orvus-paste/search-html The product is 100% sodium laurel sulfate, the main ingredient in most shampoos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_dodecyl_sulfate Many months worth is about 20 dollars.

Thanks, LoPhatt.

They even put a pain reliever in it for some shampoos and the new name is Sodium laureth sulfate. It's in the newer shampoos that doesn't burn your eyes so bad. It still burns your eyes, you just don't feel it.