If you make your own laundry detergent like our family does, you may find that washing soda is becoming more difficult to find at your local grocery store.
If you find yourself in a place where you can’t find washing soda don’t worry, you can actually make it from baking soda quite easily and it takes about an hour.
Luckily we must still use baking soda enough that even if you can’t find washing soda, you should be able to find baking soda, and a lot of your club stores even sell it in bulk.
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate,) can be easily turned into washing soda (sodium carbonate,) by baking it. Yup, that’s it.
When you heat baking soda, water vapor and carbon dioxide are released leaving nothing but pure washing soda.
Heat your oven to 400° F (200° C) and put a thin layer of baking soda in the bottom of a cookie sheet, or pie tin, or other oven save container. Bake for about an hour being sure to stir the powder every 15 minutes or so.
While you are baking you will notice little geysers bubbling up through the powder where the water vapor and CO2 are escaping. If after an hour you are still seeing these geysers form, continue baking and stirring every 15 minutes until you don’t seem them form any more.
Let the newly created washing soda cool, and you will see that it has a slightly different texture than when you started. It will be grainier whereas the baking soda when you started will resemble flour.
Now you can go ahead and use it like you would normally use washing soda!
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