Homemade Laundry Detergent = Big $ Savings!

How would you like to do your laundry for .03 cents a load as opposed to over .21 cents a load of Tide? How would you like to save a huge amount of money each year in detergent? How would you like to remove the worry of running out of detergent for a year at a time?  How would you like to be environmentally friendly by eliminating 8-10 plastic laundry bottles from your yearly carbon footprint?  How about I show you how to do this and it will only take about 30 minutes 1 time a year. 

I am talking about making your own laundry detergent.   A concept when I first heard of it seemed so odd, strange, bizarre – something that never even crossed my mind as a possibility.  Not only is it easy peesy many say that the cleaning performance is equal to or better than Tide and some of the leading detergents.  Once you do this one I am telling you will never go back to store bought brands for a plethora of reasons.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of 20 Mule Team Borax – this can be found in your local grocer or Wal-Mart in the laundry detergent isle.

1 cup of Arm and Hammer Washing Soda – again found in the laundry isle.   Don’t get this confused with Baking Soda as it’s not the same.

1 Sunlight Soap Bar – another item I never knew about (apparently amazing as a stain remover). Soaps used in other recipes Fels-Naptha (harder to find in Canada), Zote and traditional Ivory bar soap (the basic one with no additional scents or moisturizers).  I wanted a laundry bar for extra cleaning kick and I found them at Ace Hardware and Wal-Mart Superstore for $1.00 a bar.

HOW-TO

Using my food processer I first used the shredding blade to shred up the Sunlight soap bar. 

Pour out the shredded soap in a side bowl then attach your dicing blade to processer.  Pour back in your shredded bar soap and add 1 cup of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda and 1 cup of Borax.

Blend and chop it all together.  At this point the bar soap breaks down very small blending right in with the other ingredients. Store in any container you wish (keep out of reach of children).

Remember to wash all your utensils very thoroughly after use.  Many folks who don’t own a processer simply use their cheese grater on the ‘fine side’.

AMOUNTS

You only need 1 tbs of this mixture per load (2 tbs for heavy soiled loads) and this will make 64 loads of laundry (based on 1 tbs per load).  I repeated this process 3 times to make myself 192 loads but you can do it as many times as you feel fit.  Remember 1 tbs is all it takes.  This is a low-suds super concentrated soap and because it is low suds it is fine to use on HE washers (which all their soaps are low suds).

Per Load Cost Breakdown

(based on 1tbs per load and 64 loads)

1 cup Borax = .40 cents/cup

1 cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda = .30 cents/cup

1 Bar Sunlight Soap = $1.00

64 Loads = $1.70

1 Load = .03 cents

Yearly Cost Breakdown

In Canada an average of 392 loads of laundry are washed per year, per family (Source Gov.Canda).

Tide with Bleach = .21 cents (ave.)per load/$82.32 year

Home Recipe= .03 cents per load/$11.76 year

Savings: $74.56

There you have it so easy, so quick, so environmental – try it!

Happy Washing,

All-Purpose Spray Cleaner - 7 Cents a Bottle!

As I was cleaning my kitchen today I thought it would be a good idea for me to share with you a great trick to saving a lot of money off of your bottled kitchen spray cleaner.  For years I did what everyone did and picked up my bottle every week or two and the average cost per purchase was about $3.00 plus taxes. I got tired of wasting so much money on it and thought there has got to be a better way.

I started with purchasing a 4.25 litre bottle of Pine Sol for approximately $11.00 (buying the largest size often gives better value for household cleaners).  I made sure to keep my last empty bottle of cleaner solution with the spray nozzle or you can buy a new spray bottle at the dollar store or general retailer.   I added 4 tablespoons of Pine Sol cleaning solution and then filled the bottle with warm water.  As you use this method you can increase or decrease the amount of cleaner you add to suit your desired solution strength and bottle size.  Keep in mind any of your favorite all-purpose cleaners will do – I just like Pine Sol as my house smells so clean afterwards.  Also make note the general cleaning solutions such as Pine Sol, Mr. Clean etc are not safe for all surfaces so when in doubt do a test area before using a new solution on your surfaces.

 

By making your own cleaner using this method you can get approximately 70 bottles of spray cleaner out of your 4.25L concentrated bottle.   The price per bottle is 7 cents as opposed to the standard $3.00 a bottle!  Buying 70 bottles of pre-mixed cleaner regular retail costs appromiately $210 or use this trick and pay $11.00 that is a $199.00 dollar savings.  I bet there are alot of better things you would like to spend that $199 on.

Happy Cleaning,