Frugal Laundry

In my search for less toxic and more environmentally friendly cleaners, I've been wanting to make the homemade laundry soap recipe from kidsorganics.

However, it calls for grated castile or glycerin soap flakes. Where do you buy that? Not at Wal-Mart. I can't even find good old-fashioned Ivory soap flakes anywhere. (Can you?)

So my thrifty self thought of a way to gain access to grated soap for free: you know those bits of soap bars* that are too big to throw away but fairly annoying to use? I started collecting them.

When I had a pile--actually, when I ran out of my Seventh Generation Natural Laundry Detergent --I put the bits of saved soap in the Cuisinart and pulverized them. (Here I learned that soap grinds to a very fine powder--which wafts everywhere and makes one sneeze furiously.



I didn't have the required eight cups of flakes--I had two. Adjusting the recipe, I added three cups of borax and four cups of baking soda, along with the little bit of bergamot essential oil I had left in my little jar (less than 1 tablespoon).

The result is nine cups of very beautiful smelling laundry soap, made for very little cash or labor. Also, according to kidsorganics, I need use only 1/8 cup (that's two tablespoons) for every load. If my math is right, that makes 72 loads. Wow.

If it works, it will be fine value indeed--recycling soap and using cheap, natural, non-petroleum, phosphate-free ingredients.

Can't wait to do laundry!


*I'm talking real soap, not detergent bars. To learn about the difference, please read The Dope on Soap.