Homemade Laundry Detergent - Success!

After reading about my failure to make laundry detergent, reader Melissa posted her mom's recipe. Today I decided to try this recipe, only I used a different soap because they didn't have either kind she mentioned (Fels Naptha or Ivory) available at the store today.

Ingredients

1/2 C Borax

1/2 C Washing Soda

1 Bar Kirk's Original Coco Castile

I chose this soap at the organic store because it is made of coconut oil. Coconut oil has many great qualities and is used in natural cleaning supplies, so I think it will be a good substitution (my usual detergent, Planet, is also coconut-based). It was also under $2.00 per bar.

First you have to grate the soap (until it is too small and you are afraid you will scrape your fingers):

Dump it into the bowl:

Add washing soda and Borax:

Stir it up (I ended up using a smaller wisk than what I grabbed originally - or just mix with your fingers like my son):

Put it in a leftover bag from your old detergent (or any bag that you find around your house):

Now go attack the giant pile of laundry in your basement :) (sorry, not sharing a picture of that - go look at your own!)

I think it's fun to get the kids involved. My son loves to stir and mix things, just make sure you put everything away after you're finished - otherwise, you may wake up to a giant pile of baking soda dumped all over your dining room table.

Homemade Detergent Fail

I had the brilliant idea to make homemade detergent last week. I searched for some recipes, then decided to combine a few and make my own. The website Tipnut had a great list of recipes - I took the very last one on the list and made my own, combining...

-Washing Soda

-Borax

-Liquid Castille Soap

-Baking Soda

-Vinegar

So I mixed all the ingredients and took some pictures to share.

It turned into a mushy, sticky paste. Ok, that is usable. I even did a little test on some wipes - I rubbed a blueberry onto two wipes, then washed one in my homemade detergent and one in some Free & Clear detergent. They came out equally clean after being hand-washed in the sink. Things were looking promising! I then did a load of clothes with my detergent - everything smelled fine! This is going to be a fabulous blog post!

...but then the next morning, I looked at my detergent that I had stored in a leftover plastic bag from another detergent. It was no longer a mushy squishy liquid, or a nice powder - it was a solid rock! Seriously, I think I could throw this through someone's window if I so desired, or possibly at someone's head if I wanted to give them a concussion.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. I will be making some homemade detergent, but maybe a nice mix of Borax & Washing Soda, or perhaps one of the liquid recipes on the Tipnut site. I'll keep you posted!

3R - Reuse

Growing up, all I knew about being "Green" was Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (and that recycling symbol, too). So for the next series of posts, we're going to focus on those three items, and I picked my favorite to go first.

I love to Reuse items. This sometimes makes me a pack-rat because I look at an item and think about all the things I can do with it and then never get rid of it (I'm trying to be better about this, I really am!) One item that we seem to accumulate at our house is bags. Lots and lots of bags. Paper bags, plastic bags, you name it - we have it. Obviously we can reduce the accumulation by using reusable bags, but we'll get to that in another post. Instead, I would like to show you one of the many things you can do with a paper bag.

I'm going to use my paper bag (from a fabulous local organic store, MOM's Organic Market) to make a pattern for a pair of pajama pants for my son.

Step 1 - Cut open the bag

Step 2 - Draw your pattern

Sorry, no pictures of this phase, but you get the point.

Step 3 - Cut it out

You're done! Now you have a sturdy pattern to use and you saved a paper bag from the trash (or recycling bin, but that's another post). I like to trace patterns that I print from my computer onto a bag so that it lasts longer.

So what are YOU going to reuse this week?

Cleaning Greenly

Today I decided to make some green cleaning supplies to use around the house. Josh of course is always up for mixing potions in bowls, so he decided to help me out. First, I went to the store and bought a whole bunch of recommended ingredients from the book, Green Clean.

Liquid Castile Soap - $8.99

Borax - $2.99

Lemon Juice - $1.69

Baking Soda - $0.47

3 Spray Bottles - $5.97

Club Soda - $0.99

Total: $21.10

I already have lots of microfiber towels to use as cleaning rags and a bottle of vinegar, so I didn't need to stock up on those today. I found a couple recipes and started mixing away.

First, we made this - but I didn't buy any essential oil, so it doesn't smell yummy like it should.

Vinegar Spray

1 tsp. Borax

1 tbsp. Castile soap

1/8 cup Distilled white vinegar

2 cups hot water

5-10 drops essential oil (optional)

We started with a couple cups of water....

Added the Borax.....

And the soap....

Josh helped by pouring in the vinegar and stirring it up...

Then we put it in a spray bottle....

And wrote the ingredients with a Sharpie (I would have used my label maker, but it's missing).

After we were done, he still wanted to make more and wanted to use the club soda. I thought we should just leave it in the bottle for when we needed it, but he was persistent, so we poured it into another spray bottle. He wanted to add lemon juice, so we squirted a bit into the bottle (but mostly all over the dining room table).

The true test will be to see if these items work as well as our non-green items or our store-bought green cleaners. I'll let you know if I ever have time to actually clean!

If you don't have all these items available, just take a bottle and mix up some vinegar and water. This is the spray that I use most often for cleaning, it's great for the high chair, windows, mirrors, dining room table, and more!