Quick and Dirty on the Cheap and Clean

I made another batch of laundry detergent yesterday. Who makes her own laundry soap?, you ask.

I do. And here's why:

A big part of the job of She Who Does Not Earn Money In Any Kind Of Bread Winning Capacity is controlling the flow of money that goes out. Bryan and I have goals for where and how we want to live. Goals that are sometimes specific and sometimes as vague as "Be available to do what God wants us to do when He wants us to do it."

And one of the most basic determining factors below each of those goals is money. It's not that we're obsessed with making it or keeping it or investing it or spending it. We just want to be good stewards of it.

It's Bryan's job to bring it in. It mostly falls on me to see that it goes out it in honorable ways.

All of which was on my mind about a year ago as I stood in the laundry soap aisle of the commissary, wondering a) how soap could be so expensive and b) why it was blue.

I haven't researched the answers to these questions, but I suspect there's another Proctor & Gamble conspiracy behind it. You know the kind: At one point in American history, homemakers were told they needed a certain product to get along, they started using it, their children only ever saw them using it, and so the culture as a whole forgot that there was ever a time when we didn't need it.

But that day, I just couldn't bring myself to spend the eleven bucks on soap. I don't even spend eleven dollars on soap to wash myself!

And I hated that it was blue. And that it claimed to smell like mountain breezes. I can step outside to get a whiff of a mountain breeze. . .

I found a recipe for making my own and washed my first load with it.

Were the clothes clean? Looked like it.

The test, of course, was the smell. Shirts checked out. Then I sniffed underwear. Hey. This is the test that really counts, right? Checked out just fine.

I washed another load, this time with some clothing that was very dirty from Bryan's yard work.

All clean. So we made the switch.

Let me break down the price comparison:

I can buy (blue) store-bought laundry detergent at a price that comes to 11 cents per load. (And I suspect this is a commissary fantasy-price somewhat lower than what people pay in the real world.)

I can make laundry soap at a price that comes to 1 cent per load.

The batch of laundry soap makes enough for 64 loads, which means that every time I make a batch, I'm saving $6.40. We do a lot of laundry, it feels like. I make about 8 batches in the year, for yearly savings of $51.20. It takes me 15 minutes to make it, so that's a total of 2 hours of work, though not the kind that interrupts my life with my family. $25.60 is not a bad hourly wage for this kind of work.

Just a little snapshot of my philosophy of thrift.

Who, now, is dying to know the recipe?

Ingredients:

Fels Naptha soap (in the laundry aisle, or any other brand of bar laundry soap works)
2 cups Washing Soda
2 cups Borax
2 empty milk gallons


1. Heat about 1 gallon of water (exact amount doesn't matter).
2. Grate 1/3 the bar of Fels Naptha and save the rest for future batches.
3. Dissolve Fels Naptha in hot water.
4. Add washing soda and stir until dissolved.
5. Add Boraz and stir until dissolved.
6. Leave on heat until mixture boils.
7. Pour half into each milk gallon--using a funnel helps a lot.
8. Add warm water from your tap to fill each gallon to the half-way point or a little higher.
9. Shake, shake, shake.
10. Top off each gallon with cold water.
11. Shake, shake, shake.
12. Let sit overnight. It will thicken up to resemble egg whites.

I've made batches that have ended up both thicker and thinner, and it all works the same.

Use 1/2 cup per load. A bit more if it's a full load, or especially dirty.

This soap does not suds up. For this reason, I would think it's fine for high efficiency machines as well, but I haven't talked with anyone who's tried it.



And my soap is not blue.