The Laundry Fairy

I wish there was such a thing as the Laundry Fairy, I think I would bottler her up and keep her for myself forever. When R & I planned our family never did I think Oh well having 4 kids we will have this much laundry. But now that we have 4 kids I am starting to think I should have thought that way.
Any one who has a big family understands that laundry is a never ending job. I cant figure out how people have a laundry day...just a day to do all the laundry in the house, how do you have time for all of it? I tried to do this one week and well 1) we didn't have enough clothes to last the whole week and 2) it took me from the time I woke up until I went to bed to finish all the laundry in the house. I'm sorry but that wasn't for me. So we do 1-2 loads every day and it seems to fit into our schedule just fine. Then on Fridays I wash all the bedding in the house. Now when you do that much laundry you use a ton of soap. My little red headed monkey's have very sensitive skin. If I switched detergent they would break out, if I used the cheap soap they would break out, so we were buying Tide laundry soap and since we do so much laundry I was buying it from Sam's Club. That started to add up, we were spending anywhere from $80-$100 every 2 months on laundry soap alone!!! For a family on a budget that was ridiculous!!!!
I have always been Leary on the make your own stuff, I didn't think it was worth the money or my time to be honest with you. Boy was I wrong!!! I had a friend let me test out her laundry soap. I liked it but it wasn't the one for me so I didn't some looking around and found the perfect recipe for me! I figure I will make it once and compare  it price wise along with quality to see if it was worth us making our own soap.
I made a batch up in a matter of 10 minutes, when it was all said and done it filled half of a 5 gallon bucket. I saved the Purex crystals container and use that to store some on top of my washer. We then counted how many loads we got out of each purex crystals bottle. We got 20 loads out of 1 purex bottle. We filled the purex bottle 7 times out of the 5 gallon bucket. That 5 gallon bucket lasted us 2 months. I normally would have spent close to $100 on soap for those 2 months but instead I spent $35 to make my own. That is defiantly worth my time!!!
Now you ask how do I make this soap? Well here it is:
1 (3lb 7 oz) box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
1 (3lb) container of Oxyclean
2 (14.1 oz) bars of Zote Soap
1 (4 lb) box of Arm & Hammer baking soda (Might be in the cooking isle)
1-2 (55 oz) bottle of purex crystals fabric softener
bucket to store it in
cheese grater used just for the soap

 

 

The first thing you will want to do is grate down the bars of soap. I normally do this on the couch watching one of my shows. It will make about a big bowl of shredded soap. Then you will want to layer each ingredient, it will be easier to mix if you do this. Once everything is in the bucket stir it all together. Make sure the soap gets mixed in really well. I then pour some back into one of the purex bottles and keep that on top of my washer. I use the cap of the bottle as my measuring cup and only fill that about 3/4 of the way full and YES I use this in my HE Washer I just take out the liquid dispenser and pour it where that used to sit.

 

Now I will have to tell you, my 4 monkey's are some messy kids. I have always used Tide stain release tablets even when I used Tide laundry soap so I have continued to use those with my own laundry soap. I also noticed that I need to make sure all my clothes are turned the right side out so they can get clean.

 

 

I will say since we started making our own soap our clothes have smelled so much better, and for some odd reason I'm not so sour about doing laundry. I actually like to do laundry maybe its because I know what is cleaning my clothes and I know they are actually getting clean!

 

 

 

Becoming a family of 6!

We became a family of 6 on Novemeber 1st 2012. Our kids are very close in age and normally when we add another child everything just flows into place, I thought this would happen when we added A4 to the group. Boy was I wrong. Adding A4 has been the biggest challenge we have encountered. Not in the fact of how are we going to love her? Will we have time for her? In the fact that we now need to adjust all of our schedules, money is tighter now with 2 kids in diapers, and we are getting less sleep (HA!) I was on maternity leave for almost 8 weeks with the christmas holiday in there, in those 8 weeks my family hit rock bottom, we struggled a lot. I beileve in order for us to figure out how to be a family of 6 and function right we had to hit rock bottom. I have made it my mission since going back to work that we will never be in that position again, this means we need to BUDGET! We need to figure out how to cut down on costs whereever we can. Pintrest has become my bestfriend in this department. I am starting this blog to hopefully reach out to other families who are in a tight spot and need to figure out a way to build themselfs back up!

A little bit about my family.

J - I am the mom :) I currently work at a mothers day out program and the nursery for a church. I love my job and being able to take my kids with me is an extra bonus. I dont have something that defines me as a woman, I feel my kids are who define me. I want to be able to raise my own kids and have them remember their mom be there for  them whenever they need me.

R - He's the daddy :) He has been in the Airforce for over 7 years now, he works with lots of weapons and trains everyone how to shoot those weapons. We both orignally come from Michigan and would love to go back. We spent almost 4 years stationed in Minot, ND and are going on over 3 years in Abilene, TX.

A1 - He is our oldest (5), he started Pre-K this year and that made me so sad, I did not like sending him to school every day of the week but I know he needs it. Do you know what they have to know before they go into kindergarten now a days?

A2 - Our biggest princess (4), She wants to start school so bad that has been our biggest challange about having our kids so close in age. A2 wants to do everything that A1 is doing at the same time. She is definatly our little drama queen. I never thought I would have a girly girl but she has gone against all my attempts and loves dresses, makeup and purses!

A3 - Our little fireball (2) this little one will get into anything and everything he can. We have locks on almost every door in our house, we have gates to prevent him getting into the kitchen without an adult but somehow this little monkey will get around it all and end up on the kitchen counter trying to get into the cupboard.

A4 - Our baby girl (3 months) Our smallest monkey and I have no doubt she will be our toughest....it seems to be a pattern the more kids we have the more they test us! She is still too small now to figure out her standing in our family but im sure with time she will find her place :)