I embarked on huge mission recently; to change my family’s views on everyday life. The first step I took was eliminating our cleaning supplies made from chemicals. As you’ve seen in my previous post, I’ve gotten down to using baking soda and vinegar, however I’ve also discovered some other wonderful natural products (I hate to use this term because it totally evokes an image of unshaven arm pits, Birkenstocks, naked babies, free love, and some really “homely” smells.) Making the switch saves so much money. You have to ask yourself at some point; is it really worth the large amounts of money that I'm paying for stuff just to get it in a pretty package and to save 15 minutes? The answer is NO. You spent 5 minutes driving to the store, 5 minutes picking out your soap, and 5 minutes back home, but you just paid 94% more for that laundry detergent then you needed too and spent gas to get there! So try saving some time and money. Here's how:
Cleaning solution for…well EVERYTHING:
Dr. Bronner’s castile soap: This stuff is insanely awesome. You can seriously use it for EVERYTHING. It comes in all different scents or unscented. The only thing that gives the soap a scent is essential oils that are pure and natural. I personally find the lavender scent to be overwhelming, but I completely adore the peppermint!!! I thought it would be awful to clean with, but it’s so light and fresh. Tonight I bought the tea tree oil scented solution, and it smells pretty good. It isn’t like a perfume kind of good, but it just smells like tea tree oil. I bought this because my husband and my daughter both suffer from seborrheic dermatitis. This is basically extreme dandruff that cakes up on the scalp but also looks like dry flaky skin around the eyebrows, mouth, and nose. The best thing to take care of it is tea tree oil. Many essential oils are disinfectants and natural cleaners, and because Dr. Bronner’s is completely natural with essential oils its completely safe to use on your skin, hair, teeth, and then turn around and use it for all of your cleaning purposes!
It seems a bit pricey, but if you think about it, it’s really not. For a 32oz bottle you will probably pay between $13-$16; however it is highly concentrated. The first time I used it I had gotten a 2oz bottle from the travel section at Target. I poured that into a large spray bottle and filled it the rest of the way with hot water. So, if you break it down, if you just use it for a cleaning solution, you would get 16-24oz bottles of cleaning solution! Most all-purpose cleaners average about $2-$4 a bottle and most bottles are about 24oz.
Let’s do the math:
16 x $2.00(the cheapest cleaner)= $32 for 384oz of harsh chemicals (16 bottles x 24oz a bottle)
Or
384oz of cleaner made from 2oz of Dr. Bronner’s castile soap mixed with water for $16 (the highest price for the castile soap)
Answer:
$16 safe dollars spent is much better than $32 unsafe chemical dollars. The dollar amount alone is enough to make you switch.
As the bottle says, it has 180 uses; including as toothpaste, shampoo, laundry soap, etc… It cleans everything. It’s safe and I don’t worry about it touching surfaces that our food touches. This was a huge plus for me. I’ve recently developed a sensitivity to bleach, and I’ve always used a diluted bleach solution to clean my counter tops. When I realized that the bleach was making me sick I freaked out because I didn’t know what the heck I was going to sanitize with without using chemicals. Needless to say, I was ecstatic about this stuff.
Well now that I’ve gushed about Dr. Bronner’s castile soap…let’s move on to making our own laundry soap. This was probably the scariest thing I’ve decided to do, and yet it is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.
I am the pickiest person in the entire world. I’m not germ a phobic, but I definitely have my neuroses. I will NOT use a public restroom unless it is forced upon me. Hotels freak me out; I mean the idea of sleeping in a bed that a million strangers have slept in just kills me. A person wouldn’t dream of going into a stranger’s house and sleeping in their bed and yet that’s exactly what we do when we stay at a hotel…anyways, that’s a “soap box” for another day! My point is, if it looks weird, gross, questionable, or commune style, I won’t touch it. A long time ago I was introduced to the idea of making my own laundry soap. The source; the Duggars on TLC. It really intrigued me, but I was still too scared to try it. Plus it seems like we are always broke so the idea of potentially wasting money just killed me. Then recently I’ve really embraced the idea of being self-sufficient. I have gotten so tired of everyone bullying me into thinking that I NEED to pay for conveniences. My child does not NEED to go to preschool, especially if she can learn from her mama at home one on one. I don’t NEED to buy expensive detergent with the latest greatest twist. My kids do not NEED mp3 players, computers, or video games. And this last one will probably offend most but I’m tired of hiding my feelings; my children do not NEED scheduled play dates(this conversation is better left for another day)!
As my cousin so appropriately told me, to make the laundry soap is so cheap and easy to make its ok if you don’t like it and don’t use it. So here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
1-Fels Naptha bar of soap (Yeah this one was the hardest for me. It pretty much screamed hippie, but actually it is made by the Dial Corporation.)
1 Cup of Super Washing Soda or basically Sodium bicarbonate. (Do NOT use baking soda. It’s not the same. Sodium bicarbonate is another handy thing to have around the house because it’s just like the Dr. Bronner’s; safe for everything.)
½ Cup of borax (Again, another thing that has multiple purposes, like drying flowers…who knew?!)
Hot water
(If you want, you can also add a few drops of your favorite essential oil if you want it to have a certain scent.)
That’s it!
What you’ll need:
1 pot
1 - 5 gallon bucket with lid/foil/plastic wrap
1 grater
1 long spoon
Funnel (optional but definitely makes things easier and cleaner.)
Several clean and empty detergent bottles, juice bottles, or even cat litter jugs…pretty much any container that you can recycle from what you already have to store the detergent.
Instructions:
Use a grater (like an A-frame cheese grater; I used the course grate) and grate the entire bar of soap into a pot. Add 4 cups of hot tap water. Cook on medium until all of the soap is melted. Make sure to keep stirring it.
Once that’s done, fill a 5 gallon bucket half way with hot tap water. Now add your melted soap mixture, the borax, and the super washing soda. Stir, and then finish filling the bucket with hot water. Stir again.
Once the bucket is completely full, cover it and let it sit overnight to thicken. The next day, stir the soap, fill each recycled container half way with the soap mixture, and then fill each container the rest of the way with hot water. Shake each one and then you’re done!!!
If you have a top loading washer, use 5/8 of a cup of the solution per load. If you have a front loading washer, use ¼ cup of solution per load.
Let’s do the math:
1 Gallon=128oz, 10 gallons=1280oz
Store bought:
1-100oz bottle of tide original is $11.97 through Wal-mart.com. This breaks down to .1197cents per oz.
1280oz of Tide = $153.22
Or
Homemade:
1 12oz box of 20 mules borax at Target $3.39
1 55oz box of Super Washing Soda at Wal-mart $3.24
1 Fels-Naptha bar of soap $1-$2 depending on where you buy it.
$3.39+3.24+$2 = $8.63 +the cost of your tap water (very minor amount)
1280oz of homemade laundry soap = $8.63 (And you have a huge box of washing soda and borax left to use for other stuff!!!)
So 1280oz of harsh chemicals in a fancy bottle for $153.22, or 1280oz of natural effective soap in the same fancy bottles for $8.63….no brainer!!!!
You seriously save $144.59 per 10 gallons of detergent. That is HUGE!!! I LOVE the detergent. It actually works better than my regular detergent with a tide stain booster pack. You can always add extra amounts of borax or washing soda to boost the power of the detergent, but I don’t feel that I need to. I HIGHLY recommend switching to making your own laundry soap. It’s so much cheaper, you save tons of time by not having to shop for soap all of the time, you can buy in bulk, you have materials leftover, its dye free, etc…It is almost impossible NOT to make this instead of buying it.
Here is the link to the Dr. Bronner’s soap (You can buy it on the website, or Target just started carrying it. In fact, Target carries travel sizes in case you just want to try it out first):
Here is the link to the original recipe:
This is what it looks like after its been all mixed and left to sit over night.
(I had already poured some into bottles. That's why it isn't completely filled up.)
This is three out of seven bottles that I was able to fill!
Enjoy your new found money and some really good laundry soap!
