Thursday, April 25, 2013

Homemade laundry soap

I think in a lot of ways I grew up fast, but in the area of doing my projects, it has taken me a long time to grow up.
I feel like I am beginning this shift from doing projects just because it's something I really really want to do, to doing projects that are practical and coincide with caring for my family.  The projects that I've been doing recently have been less time consuming and more purpose driven.  I am getting better at choosing when to do my projects by planing ahead and deciding to have a start and finish time instead of working until the kids are driving me crazy or I want to fall asleep.  I am also being more cost conscious.  For a while I had felt so justified in my right to sew/craft that I really didn't care about the price of a project, if I wanted to make it I would.  But I don't want to do that anymore.
Now I still get to learn new techniques and create so I'm happy and staying true to myself.  But I'm doing it all in a new way.
So today, in an effort to try something new and find a way to save money, I gave homemade laundry soap a try.  Grating the soap was a good work out and I didn't do the math, but I know that each load has got to be only like a penny or so.  ($4 for a box of borax, $3 for a box of washing soda, $99 for a bar of soap)  its got to be cheep because you only use a small amount of the borax and the soda, Your most expensive ingredient per batch is the soap, and you get 64 loads per batch.
I found the recipe Here


Homemade Laundry Soap
1/3 bar Fels Naptha or other type of soap, as listed above
½ cup washing soda
½ cup borax powder 
~You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size~

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan.  Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts.  Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved.  Remove from heat.  Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket.   Now add your soap mixture and stir.  Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir.  Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel.  You use ½ cup per load.

After I did all the measuring I made a mark on the top of the water line in my bucket so that next time I don't have to measure out all the water.  I'll just pour the soap mixture into the bucket and fill it under the sink until I reach the line.
I used an old Costco sized powdered detergent bucket and it was plenty big.

I've been hearing from a lot of my friends who say that they do this and I've been wanting to try it for a while.  DON'T WAIT ANYMORE!  GIVE IT A TRY!!!


1 comment:

  1. We had a class in RS of all the homemade stuff and I did dishwasher detergent. The plastic gallon ice cream tubs really came in handy!

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