Saturday, September 29, 2012

Laundry Crisis Resolved!

As many of you know I make my own laundry detergent and a lot of my own cleaners. Yesterday when I went to make some detergent I realized I had let myself run out of the Fels Naptha soap that I usually use. So I decided to try a bar of Oil of Olay instead. I found several websites that said they did the same thing and it worked well so I gave it a go. Soap was grated, Borax was in the mixing bowl when I realized, I had also ran out of washing soda. Now I know it's readily available everywhere here but the store is 30 minutes away and I just wasn't up to it. So I went back to searching the web.

Oh the interesting things you can find online! I learned that if you take Baking Soda and heat it in the oven until the fluffy texture is gone and it turns more grainy, that you have Washing Soda. I had one cup left of baking soda so I pre-heated the oven to 400 degrees  , poured the cup of baking soda on a cookie sheet, and "baked" it for 30 minutes. Sure enough, the fluffiness was gone, and I had that grainy texture! So I may just have a new recipe for the detergent:

What I used:
1 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of "homemade" Washing Soda
1 Bar of Oil of Olay Soap (grated)
and then I realized I still had 2 sample packs of Downy Unstopables so I added those to

Combined all the ingredients in a bowl, poured it into an old (clean of course) pickle jar I had and VOILA! It smells wonderful and my clothes came out just as clean as always! 

(I add 2 TBSP of detergent per load)

Now when I can figure out how to get the clothes to wash and fold themselves, I'll be doing good!  :/

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