It started years ago as a way to save money, even though we lived in a condo. We made our own laundry detergent powder with simple ingredients that we could pronounce. Washing soda, borax and Fels-Naptha. Somehow as time went on, we got away from the practice.
Additionally, the powdered recipe didn’t work in the high-efficiency washer and dryer that were installed at the new house we had purchased. Although we preferred the cleaning action of our homemade detergent, we eventually started buying it.
That is when we began having issues with our skin. My wife couldn’t tolerate certain detergents and neither could the kids. It took a while of costly experimenting before we found a brand that worked for everyone. And by the time we were used to a brand, the prices escalated quickly.
It seems everywhere we turn the prices are increasing. The cost of living has gotten out of control and personally, I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. On a side note, the grain market has seen a decline, since the Ukraine war started. While it’s a welcome price change for feeding my animals, it’s bittersweet watching friends farm in a market where they could lose money. The financial burdens are real. And this is just one way I try to keep ahead of curve.
After replacing a broken dishwasher with an high-efficiency model, I discovered that it required a specific type of soap. The replacement couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time financially, but it had to happen. Although we are capable of washing dishes by hand, we use an extraordinary number of dishes, and the cleanup is a bit of a nightmare. Although nightmare doesn’t describe the cleanup, it does describe the headache that micromanaging two children who constantly fight each other can cause.
In all honesty, the only fighting that is worse between them, is when they must clean their room. The amount of name calling, yelling and bickering between the two over a couple of Legos and army guys is amazing. The fact that they’re best friends and spend every waking moment together getting along, outside of doing chores is testament to the insanity of homeschooling them.
One of the first chemistry projects this year is to make soap. We’ve been using our own cold processed lard and lye soap exclusively for a year or more and have no intentions of going back to the store. It’s a waste product of the butchering process and it saves us a ton of money. Additionally, we started using our old laundry detergent recipe, although we had to convert it into a liquid soap. We found that it worked. What’s better, we tried it in the new dishwasher, and it worked too.
We added some pumice to a batch and filled mason jars with special lids and created our own line of hand soap. We experimented with the cleaning power of our liquid soap for general purpose cleaning, and we found that it cleans better. Now we use it on the toilet, showers and sinks as well. The bar of soap works fine as a shampoo and is very gentle without any superfluous ingredients. In total, we spent about $20 to produce 12 gallons of liquid soap and liquid hand soap and several dozen bars. We just used some to complete our annual fall cleaning and expect to have enough to last until next year’s cleanup. Perhaps next year, we’ll hire a professional referee to manage the sibling rivalries.
