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!
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