being thrifty

Recently, it got in my mind to try to save a little money and try to make my own laundry detergent.  I actually heard about this idea from a friend of mine, but i dismissed it because i didn't really know what was involved and one of the ingredients was somewhat foreign to me (the elusive Washing Soda). But a few weeks ago as i was jumping around on the net...okay, i'll let it out, I was on the Duggar's website, looking at their recipes. And one of them was laundry detergent.

i thought, hey why not try to save some money and try this out.  The first obstacle was getting all the ingredients.  There are very few ingredients really, Borax, Washing Soda (as mentioned above, i'll get to that later), some sort of bar soap, like Fels Naptha or Zote...(i remember trying to hunt those puppies down when Paul was being deployed overseas.  After he left, i saw them everywhere...now when i wanted them, do you think i could find them easily???? NOPE) water and a 5 gallon bucket, if you want to make liquid soap.

Okay back to that darn Washing Soda...or Arm and Hammer's Super Washing Soda....not to be confused with baking soda.   I think there is a chemical reaction involved or something crazy like that to make the difference.

The process is really easy:

Step 1-grate the bar soap, and melt in 4 cups of water in a large pot over medium heat

Step 2-fill bucket with hot water, pour in melted soap, 1 cup Washing Soda and 1/2 cup Borax, stir

Step 3-cover and let it sit over night, it will become gelatinous, stir that...

pour into halfway into a clean container then, fill the rest of that with water...shake every time you use it.

Cost cut down

1 bar Fels Naptha-$1.29

Borax-$4.99 (i'm sure it is cheaper everywhere else but here in Highlands Ranch)

Arm &Hammer's Super Washing Soda (found in our local ACE) $3.99

5 gallon bucket from HomeDepot $2.34

lid to said bucket $0.98

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total spent $10.27(excluding the bucket and lid)

the recipe i used above makes 10 gallons...we usually spend over $10 for Kirkland brand detergent that comes in a 1.32 Gallon container....

Not sure if this will be a long term deal, but with Megan's sensitive skin and her eczema it is worth a try, plus all of those cleaners i bought work awesome throughout the house, so no real loss.

This is what it looks like after all the ingredients are added, if you use Zote, it will be a pretty pink. You can add essential oils to make it smell good, but i like the "Clean" scent of Fels Faptha

I should add that it is a low sudsy detergent, which would work great in my mom's super efficiency washer, it is really picky about how much soap you add

I hear the washer stop...we'll see how it turned out