The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.

Saturday 20 February 2016

The word on clean laundry

I have still been making soap. I have also been making things from soap. Let me explain...
I was interested in making my own laundy soap. I know my family in the past often used homemade soap when doing laundry. On laundry days we would often find the stainless steel pot simmering all day on the wood stove as it melted away the chucks of home made soap. Mom would continually add more water and the soap would continue to melt. Then she would simply pour her desired amount into the washer and that would be that.

So I found a recipe to make powdered laundry soap. One bar of laundry soap grated, 1 cup washing soda and 1/2 cup borax. Sounds simple enough except! its pretty hard to grate a hard bar of launry soap. I found it did not work that great as I have one of those new washers which uses less water. I found too much soap residue on the clothes and had to run a second rinse too many times. Plus, I was probably using too much soap.

The next attempt was for a liquid. I used the same basic recipe, only added water to melt all the powders. Added more water as it cooled and geled and poured it all into empty milk jugs. Other than needing a good shake before each use and getting past the gloops, it worked a little better than then powder. I ended up adding a little bit of store bought detergent just so it would be a nice blue colour and I would be assured there would be enough soap used.

Finally I came across a laundry sauce recipe. Basically, you melt the soap, add the washing soda and borax, divide the solution into jars and allow it to sit. The soap separates as in this picture here.


The idea is that you attach it to your blender and whip it into a nice a creamy sauce. Would have been great, except my blender attachment did not seem to fit my jars. So I put it all back into a pail and used my stick blender to get it nice a creamy.


This is definately my favorite way to make my own laundry soap. Over this past December holiday season we went to Phoenix. While there I purchased some of their ZOTE laundy soap and one bar of their Fels Naptha laundry soap. All the ladies are using it... so I thought I should give it a try for laundry. The ZOTE bars come in pink... and it is much softer than our Sunlight laundry bar, However, it melts up beautifully and blends even better into a nice saucy consistency. Will certainly get some more if the opportunity arises.


I just keep the pail next to the laundry and toss a dalop into the machine each time I run a load. Not once have I had soap residue on the clothing and it smells nice and fresh!