Home Made Orange Blossom Fragranced Laundry Powder

During our holiday a few weeks ago, I purchased some laundry liquid in a local supermarket that happened to be made with orange blossom scented Marseille soap, which I believe is itself made from olive oil.  I love the smell of orange blossom and to have my newly laundered clothes smelling of it was a real treat.

It got me thinking when I got home, that I could perhaps make some laundry powder myself to get the same effect.  I had been wanting to have a go at making some laundry powder for a while and had one of the ingredients already, namely a bottle of soda crystals or washing soda, that I'd had under the kitchen sink for nearly 10 years. I wanted to use it up and not throw it away and thought that this was probably the best way.  I'd also found a few recipes on line that recommended using this with finely grated castille soap to make laundry powder.

Once home from holiday I searched eBay for some Marseille soap and was happy to see that you could get it in various fragrances such as olive oil, lavender, orange blossom, rose petal and others. One particular listing interested me, as it was selling two bars of orange blossom and one of lavender, for approximately £12 including postage, which I thought was quite reasonable, so I went ahead and purchased it.

Saturday morning it arrived and I couldn't wait to make my laundry powder.  It took a while to finely grate a bar of the orange blossom soap and once I'd done it and mixed it with half the bottle of the soda crystals (500g) I decided to grate the second bar and use up the whole bottle as there was still plenty of room in the plastic container I'd bought for the purpose.

Here's the result with the ingredients mixed as well as I possibly could.  I immediately put a wash on and used a couple of tablespoons of the powder, as recommended in the recipe, to try it out.  I was pretty pleased with the results. Although my washing didn't actually come out smelling that strongly, it did come out very clean, with stains removed, so I was pretty happy.

It probably wasn't the cheapest way to make laundry powder, but is fairly natural and was fun to do as I caught up on YouTube videos.  The same recipe can be made with Dr Bronner's Castille soap or olive oil soap and essential oils, which I know can be bought much more inexpensively.

As I still have 2.5l of laundry liquid left from buying in bulk a few months ago, I don't need to use this laundry powder straight away, but may instead use it for an occasional load, such as sports wear or sheets, etc.

It has made good use of the neglected bottle of soda crystals and cleared out another product from under the sink which is all good, plus I've got plenty of washes stored away for future use.