Washing clothes and Saving Money

Drum roll please......................Preeeeeesenting the best laundry soap recipe on this blog! Tee hee - Seriously, as I stated in the last post, I made and tried a recipe I found on the internet for homemade laundry detergent. I absolutely LOVE it, and I will never buy store brand again. This particular recipe came from the Duggar Family website. However, I have found it on several other websites as well.

Our family of 5 does about 10-15 loads of laundry a week. This recipe will last us approximately 15 months. (We have a high efficiency washer and dryer) Each batch will make a 5 gallon bucket full, which will produce 10 gallons. I'll explain in a minute. Each batch costs about $2.00. The only cost outside of that is the initial investment in a 5 gallon bucket and lid. So, here we go......

Ingredients:

* 4 cups water (for melting soap)

* 1 bar of soap (I recommend Kirk's Hardwater Castile, found in Kroger)
Other suggestions are Ivory, Fels-Naptha, Sunlight, or Zote bars - DO NOT USE HEAVILY PERFUMED SOAPS

* 1/2 cup Borax (Found in Kroger in the cleaning aisle, I think they call it 20 Mule Power Borax)

* 1 cup washing soda (Also found this in Kroger, right beside the Borax)

Directions:
Grate bar of soap and melt in 4 cups of water in saucepan on med-low. Fill 5 gallon bucket half full with hot tap water. Add melted soap mixture, Borax and washing soda to the 5 gallon bucket. Stir well. Fill bucket to rim with hot tap water. Put lid on and let sit overnight. After sitting, take off lid and stir. Get an empty container (like used laundry detergent bottle) fill halfway with soap mixture. Fill bottle rest of the way with water. Gently shake. You are ready to wash some clothes!!!! Be sure to gently shake container before each use, as the solution will gel. For front loading washers, use approximately 1/4 cup. For top loading washers, use approximately 1/2 - 3/4 cup.

Front load machines (approximately 640 loads)
Top load machines (approximately 180 loads)


Inexpensive Softener Idea- I have tried this also, and it is working well.

* 1 Container of Name Brand Fabric Softener
* 4 Inexpensive sponges, cut in half

Pour entire container of softener into a 5 gallon bucket (you can probably use a smaller bucket, depending on the size of your softener bottle). Fill empty softener container with water twice. (2 parts water to 1 part softener) Add sponges to softener/water mixture. When ready to use wring out extra mixture from one sponge and add to the dryer as you would a dryer sheet. I put some of the mixture in a small container by my dryer, and keep the other bucket in a storing area.

Hope these recipes work out for you. I told you in the last post that I was making homemade liquid soap; I did, and I don't recommend it at this time. It was very labor intensive and did not yield much. I think for now I will stick to the dollar bottles at Kroger or Wal*Mart, or maybe baby shampoo from Dollar General. The baby shampoo makes a great hand soap, and it's very gentle on the hands.

As always, I hope these recipes will be helpful. Let me know if you try them, and how they work for you.

"She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness." Proverbs 31:27