Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Am I becoming a pioneer woman?





Well I'm going in deeper into the green over here. Not sure if I told anyone out here in blog land but I have been hanging my clothes to air dry instead of using the dryer. It kind of started after air drying the cloth diapers that I have been using on T-Bone and just turned into to something more. It seems like every time I turn around I am thinking about doing something else that could make me more self efficient and cost us less. Today I ventured out further and made my first batch of powdered laundry soap. I am proud to say that one load of this stuff will cost less than a penny a load. It's natural and very easy to make:
One cup of grated (I used the food processor) Zote bar soap
1/2 Cup of powdered Borax
That's about it. I found both products at Walmart. The Zote soap is for hand washing clothes and smells great. It was a bit messy at first trying to figure out the best size of cut up bar soap to put in the processor but soon I was done. I used about 3/4 of a bar and they were 97 cents each! Some also recommend putting 1/2 cup of baking soda in there as well but I read that it can cause wear and tear on the cloth diapers so I passed. So everything looked like it was going well but nothing to yahoo about till we seen what this stuff can do in the washer right? I did my first load this afternoon. It was kind of weird not seeing any suds in there (they warned me that this was normal since no detergent is in there) but I did see the clouded water so it was cleaning.
After a spin cycle I hung them out to dry. Well I think we have a keeper.
I had checked into this before but for making a liquid soap. It required cooking, not that deep into it yet! ") But hey I can cut up bar soap and put it in the food processor right? Sure I can.
And I did. Mission accomplished.

2 comments:

The Joys of having Boys said...

I am glad to hear that it is a keeper. When I get through with my umpteen bottles of laundry soap I might have to try it!!

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'm not sure what to do now... how much did you use in the load? I want to know your ways...