Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Want to spend 1 PENNY on a load of laundry?

I have been making my own laundry detergent for a while now. I am a Tide girl through and through so I'm picky. Then I thought I'd just try this home made stuff and guess what...it works! Then Janiece started making the powder version and I like it even better! It's easier to store, pour, works great and it's pretty. The liquid made a big mess and I'd have to get out my funnels and ladle to get it into our detergent bottles. My powdered stuff can be stored in ziplocks but I prefer it in a mason jar, again I like how it's pretty :-) So here's the recipe I use and I will be using to start tackling the 50 loads of laundry I have. Do any of you have tips on keeping laundry under control? Besides having 1 outfit for each of the kids? ;-)

Laundry Detergent
1 bars of finely grated Fels Naptha soap)
2 bars of regular soap
3 c. borax
3 c. washing soda (not baking soda)

You can find these ingredients in the laundry section at Walmart. You grate your soap (it should equal about 6 cups) and mix it all together. Store it in a sealed container and shake to mix before you add it to your machine. Use 1 TBS. if you have a regular machine or I only need 1 tsp for my front loader. You'll have to play around and see how much you like. This will not sud and it will not smell heavily because it doesn't have the chemicals in it that regular detergent does. That's a good thing! More soap is not better either so stick to the above recommendations and see how it works for you. I'd love some comments letting me know! Also, this is not my original recipe, it's all over the web, but I'm posting it here so I can remember it and hopefully some of you will try it!
I did the math today. For my front loader I only need 1 tsp of soap so this gets me 125 loads of laundry! The product for today costs me about $4 (it was $7 but I only used 1/2 of everything but the fels-naptha and I had 2 bars of soap already purchased). That means I'm spending less than $.01 on each load of laundry! Praise God!

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