Monday, April 19, 2010

When you don't have laundry soap...

... all housekeeping comes to a full stop.

The dish rags are piled up. 
Too gross to use.
The floor is dirty, but the mop cloth is even dirtier, 
so really, what's the point?
Gross.

The stove top is covered with ramen noodles and various other yuck.
I'd clean it up, but the rags are too gross to use.
So now the stove is too gross to cook on.
And when you don't cook,
the teenagers get hungry and generally cranky.

Time to break out the laundry soap supplies.

Rinse out the dregs of the last batch of detergent.

Grate the bar of soap.
Make sure the kids know that it's not cheese!
They could be in for a big surprise.

Dissolve the soap, borax, and washing powder on the stove top.

Dump it into a bucket full of 36 cups of cold water.

Stir...

until you have a whirling vortex of laundry soap,
basically because it's fun,
not because you need to.

Fill a jug with some of the detergent
(leave the rest in your awesome lime green bucket)
 tell the kids to do the laundry already! 
(What are they waiting for? )
and the world will be a much better and much cleaner place.

Seriously... I made my last batch on October 17th, which means that I've done laundry for a family of six for six months
on about five dollars worth of laundry soap!


***edit***
Thanks to my fantastically persuasive sister,
I found the recipe on this blog here.
:)
***second edit***
Rebecca asked the question that I should have thought to answer which is,
Does it work?
The answer is, "YES."
The clothes get just as clean as any other detergent that I've ever used.
For those of you who love that strong smelling Tide, you won't get that here.
It still smells good, but it's a very faint scent.  

12 comments:

Leslie said...

via your fantastically persuasive sister!!!!

Grammie/Mom said...

I need to make a batch. I have everything I need. I wonder what's stopping me? Maybe the grating of the soap. Is there a grandchild that would like to do it for me?

Brown Family Blog said...

OK I was thinking that was quite a fabulous green bucket!

Jientje said...

Sounds interesting. I'm not sure where to find borax and washing soda though.

Suburban Girl said...

So does it work, are the clothes clean?

EG CameraGirl said...

Good for you! I'll have to follow the link! Thanks!

T.J. said...

It's like you read my mind- now that Bear is just about out of diapers, I don't need to use special soap anymore. I've been chomping at the bit to find a good detergent recipe!!! Yay! Thanks to you and Leslie!

Suburban Girl said...

Good to know...I usually buy unscented detergent anyway so I won't miss the Tide smell!

koreen (aka: winn) said...

It is cheaper, and I loved having the huge batch that it makes, and lasts forever, but I found the borax was too hard on my clothes (and I'm rough enough on my clothes already as it is!), so I've decided not to continue with it. Glad it works for you, though. And great idea... getting the kids to do it. ;)

Unknown said...

It's funny I just read about how to do this on yahoo yesterday. Sounded like too much work I thought. But you made it seem simple. :)

MyMaracas said...

Sounds like a money saver, for sure. Is it biodegradable too?

Killara girl said...

that looks good...i see you used the castille soap...haven't thought of that. I tried to do this years ago but just didn't find the ingredients...where did you get them...they weren't at my supermarket.

$5 is good, i'm spending that every week at the moment....although i think the castille soap would be more than that here.