eco friendly Friday!

I hate laundry. I do more laundry then any one person has a right to do. The sad thing is I have the big duet washer and dryer, so you might think that would cut down on the amount of laundry that I do. Wrong.

There are five of us living here. That means five outfits a day. I do make everyone wear their jeans twice. We also have six beds and seven sets of bedding. Hubby and I may now be sleeping in one bed but we have separate covers. I have twelve throw rugs that I have to wash every week, and that is if they make it to rug changing day. Then all of our furniture is covered with sheets. So that is an extra four sheets a week, if they don’t get dirty before the week is up. If I have a litter of kittens they use enough bedding to make another load of laundry every day.

None of this includes the laundry that the marines bring over and that they so kindly stack in the laundry room.

I go to the store and I buy laundry soap in bulk, I prefer the liquid, so I look for the biggest and cheapest thing I can find. The cheap stuff is now getting expensive! For a women who runs her machines none stop I had to find something to help cut back on the amount I was spending on laundry soap.

I also don’t like traditional laundry soap’s because most of them are petroleum based. I really don’t need oil to wash my clothes in. The all natural products are much more expensive, so I don’t buy them as often as I should.

Then my girlfriend mentioned that she made her own laundry soap. So I asked her to send me the directions. It looked really easy! O.K. this is cheaper than buying laundry soap and it is a heck of a lot more natural.

So I started investigating. I was holding my breath as I showed Rusty the videos. I was not sure how my uneco husband would react to this. He said this looks easy, more natural then what we are using and if it saves us some money then let’s goes for it.

Off to wal mart I go. I found the borax and the zote, no problem. I could not find the washing soda anywhere! So, I investigated a little more. Washing soda is sodium carbonate, and you can buy that at a pool supply shop or at wal mart.

Now I had to ask Rusty if he thought we could use this in the dish washer. The soap has no suds and it is natural, so Rusty said to give it a shot. Note: I think my dish washer gets just as much use as my washing machine, but that is another blog.

I think that making the homemade is going to be a great solution for me. I can make it in bulk, pay less, it is a heck of a lot more natural, and most of all I won’t have to purchase any more plastic jugs!

Let’s not forget that we all need to wash our clothes in cold water. The biggest expense in washing clothes is heating the water! If everyone would just wash an extra load on cold it would save so much energy.

Please check out all the following links. I have a few videos on how to make laundry soap and with a few different ingredients and there is also a video on how to make powdered laundry soap.

http://www.thefamilyhomestead.com/laundrysoap.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndUlR7-CUG4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IOfUaMqr-E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNA8cyvrBB0&NR=1