Got Soap?

A little bit of my weekend was spent making random homemade soaps/cleansers for the house. It all snowballed from a blog post a friend had posted on facebook about making your own hand soap. And on that blog, someone else had commented about making your own laundry detergent, and then while looking into that, someone else had referenced making your own dishwasher detergent...I was intrigued! The supplies for all 3 of these projects were SO slim!...and yet the finished products reaped HUGE quantities of cleanser! I am very excited about all of my new stuff! :0)

Aaaaaand, if you are savvy enough to make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese on the stove, then I'm telling you, you can make this stuff too! :0)

I first started with the hand soap. I'm not going to spend too much time blogging about that, because if you click here you can just read the blog post that I read, and it gives PERFECT instructions, with photographs on how to make your own hand soap. The only comments that I will make, are that I purchased my bar of soap from Trader Joes, and I used Dr. Bronner's Organic Peppermint Soap. And, after not finding the liquid glycerine at Target, Michaels, CVS, or Trader Joes, I had to cave-in and go to Walmart to get the liquid glycerine. (Sprouts sold it also, but it was double the price for a fraction of the quantity.) I followed the instructions EXACTLY as they were written and I had ZERO problems! :0)

Next, was the laundry detergent. Apparently this recipe is the same recipe that The Duggar's use in their home (The Duggar's are the family that have "19 kids and counting"). Here is the recipe...

* 4 cups hot tap water
* 1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
* 1 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
* 1/2 cup Borax

Add 4 cups hot water to a small saucepan. Grate the Fels Naptha soap and add it to the saucepan. Heat over low heat until the soap is melted and combined with the hot water. Fill a 5 gallon bucket 1/2 way with hot water. Add the melted soap, Borax, and Washing Soda. Fill the bucket to the top with more hot tap water. Let sit overnight to thicken.

Stir, and dispense thickened soap into cleaned laundry soap dispensers (use empty containers from commercial brand laundry detergent): fill each bottle 1/2 way, then top the container off with water. Shake before use.

This liquid laundry soap recipe yields 10 gallons. For HE machines, use 1/4 cup per load. For top-loading machines, use 1/2 cup per load.

I found all of the ingredients at Walmart...



The above items cost me $7.50...however, I BARELY made a dent in either of the Borax or the A&H Washing soap! I won't have to buy more of those products for a LONG time. In the future, when I need to make more laundry detergent, I will only need to pick up the Fels Naptha bar of soap...which was only 97 cents! :0)

I grated the bar of soap, and then melted it on the stove with the water...



Finally melted...



I then added the melted soap mixture to the bucket of water...and because I only had a 4 gallon bucket on hand, and not a 5 gallon bucket, I had to use one of my large stock pots as well...



After it had set over night, the concoction was gel-like and had a white cloud formation in the center...



But after mixing it up, it was the consistency of normal laundry detergent...



The one change I made to the above recipe, is when it said to put the detergent in 10 different gallon jugs, fill them half way, and then fill the remaining half of the container with more water. They then say to use 1/2 a cup of this detergent to wash your clothes.

So here was my alteration: I don't have ROOM to store 10 gallons of detergent in our home! So, in my mind, using my math skills from LONG ago, it made sense to just pour this concentrated detergent into FIVE different gallon containers (instead of 10, and omitting the additional water), and then just use 1/4 cup of detergent in the wash. Make sense??? Well, it did to me! :0)

The finished product only seemed to yield me 4-1/2 gallons, not 5 gallons...but still, this is a whole heck of a lot of detergent!!! I'm guessing, this finished product cost me about $1.50...and I'm guessing I won't have to buy laundry detergent before July!...that's an INSANE amount of savings!



Now, I haven't actually washed a load of laundry with it yet, so I will have to let you know how that goes at a later time.

And finally, the dishwasher detergent. Here's the recipe for that..

1/2C washing soda
1/2C borax
1/4C kosher salt
1/4C citric acid (unsweetened “lemonade” flavored koolaid or crystal light product)

Mix ingredients together, and store in a container.

Use 1TBS per load, and fill the rinse aid reservoir with vinegar.

This recipe was SUPER easy...there is no grating, or melting of soap...it's just a matter of measuring the ingredients...



...and then shaking them up in a container...



If you don't count the vinegar and salt (because those were things I already had in my cupboard) this recipe cost me approx. $2.50...I doubled the recipe...each of those boxes of generic crystal light yielded 1/4 cup, and each box was $1 at the dollar store.

I did run one load of dishes through the dishwasher with this detergent and my dishes came out SPARKLING CLEAN! I am SUPER happy with this recipe! :0)

I had so much fun being a Chemist over the weekend...and I'm even more thrilled that I won't have to be spending gobs of money on these products, and can instead apply that savings into buying more healthier foods for my family. :0)