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I tried another adventure in frugality; making my own laundry detergent. My blog friend, Mama Caffee, blogged about her trial of making laundry soap here and it made me want to try it, too! I used the liquid detergent recipe from the Duggar Family blog (scroll down the recipe page and you'll find it). I happened to have some Zote soap bars on hand - they're good for stains - and found the Washing Soda and Borax at our local grocery store. Thursday, Mally and I grated and stirred and mixed until we had about 2 1/2 gallons of liquid soap. It took me about 1 hour to get the grating & mixing completed. After that step you let it set overnight, but since we'd done it in the morning I moved on to adding more water later that night. I filled my empty detergent bottle and diluted it again and started washing with it yesterday. I'm waiting to see that none of us are allergic to it, since we all have sensitive skin, but so far so good!
My Borax and Washing Soda cost a total of $6 and I'll get another 4-5 batches from them. The Zote soap was about $1/bar and you can order it online or from your local Mexican store. In all, it costs about $2 per 10 gallons of detergent and I estimate a batch will last me 2-3 months. I'm pretty excited that it was so easy and hope it works well!
1 comment:
I'm really interested to see how you like this. I did this last year, and James (besides thinking I was nuts stirring laundry detergent on our stove)really didn't like it. My frugal ways don't always appeal to him.:)
I have a couple of kiddos with eczema and the soap I did didn't seem to bother them any. In fact I think it might have helped. We used Fels Naptha, and then the washing soda and Borax. I only did it the one time...I may have to try it again...you'll have to report back cuz I'm curious what you think of it.
When I ran out of dw detergent the other day I was glad I still had these items on hand so I could whip up a batch of dw soap too. It's working great! I might play with it though...I did just equal parts washing soda and borax.
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