DIY Laundry Detergent

Welcome to what I plan to be a three post blog series that reaches out to my hippy, tree hugging side. I wouldn't say I'm a huge hippy, but there are several practices that I've adopted over the years to become more frugal. Back in 2011, I left the world of teaching (side note, I'm looking for a job....are you hiring?). The Woodman's job isn't a highly stable (or highly paying) job so we had to start thinking about how to cut costs. One day I just sat down and googled "How to cut costs" and came across one of those lists of 15 things you can do to save money. One of the items listed was to make your own laundry detergent. That makes sense....it's crazy expensive and we HAVE to wash clothes (unless we moved to a nudist colony...then we'd have an extra expense of sunscreen). I looked up all kinds of recipes. Ok, this technically isn't a Pinterest post because was it even around back then? Back to my story- found a recipe that was cheap and simple. Made up a batch and found the stinkiest, grossest clothes I could find in the house- the Woodman's two day old sweaty gym clothes. If the detergent can get that clean, then we have a winner! Two and a half years later, I'm still using the same recipe, so it must have worked! 

 Here's what you need to make your own laundry detergent. Keep in mind, this is bare bones stuff. It doesn't have a "scent" to it. The scent is just yucky chemicals that you really don't need, so I'm ok with no fancy smells. I do cheat a little sometimes with good smelling soap though. Items needed:

I usually buy a 10 pack of Ivory soap. If you want a scent, get the aloe soap. Cost- roughly $8

Washing soda. I find this in the laundry section of Kroger. Cost- roughly  $5

Borax. Can be found with the washing soda in the laundry section. Cost- roughly $5

That's it! I spent about $20 and was able to wash clothes for close to 7 months before I had to replenish any of the ingredients! I was even doing lots of loads because I had a two year old Peanut at the time! 

The recipe is 1 bar of grated soap, 1 cup of washing soda, and 1 cup of Borax. Mix well. Use 1 Tbsp. of detergent for each load of laundry. I have a HE machine and it's perfectly safe for them! Will also work for standard machines.

Now here are my notes on how to make the detergent easier. At least a week before I want to make my first batch of detergent, I take all the bars of soap and grate them. I used to use a hand held shredder and this would KILL my arms. I then got smart and began using the shredder blade on my food processor! I grate one bar at a time and put it into a Ziploc baggie. I close the baggie up about halfway and then continue with the rest of the bars of soap. Set all the half closed baggies aside for a week and let them dry out. The drier the soap, the easier it'll crumble.  Then, when I'm ready to make my detergent, I grab a bag of shredded soap, throw it in my food processor, add a cup of Borax and a cup of washing soda, and then process away! It'll crumble down to a fine power. I store my detergent in an OXO Good Grips container.

I make 3 batches of the detergent at a time and it all fits in this container!

To show how much we were (and still are) cutting corners, that Christmas I spray painted a bunch of mason jars, made my own labels, and made up a ton of this detergent to give as gifts. I may be mistaken, but I think everyone enjoyed it!

And that's it for part one of my hippy, tree hugging posts. Part two will either be about all natural face cleaning or about going no 'poo. (Not no #2....but no shampoo). Which one would you like to hear about next?

Swirly Cookies

Because I forgot to write about this Pinterest project In order to not overdo the Christmas related posts, I held off on writing about this cookie project until now. However, depending on which colors you use to dye your cookie dough, this could work for any major holiday!

Every year, I try to come up with *the* Santa cookie. The cookie that my son and any future children will fondly remember helping to whip up at Christmastime for Santa Claus. Plus, it's a bonus for Santa... maybe it'll be different enough from all your neighbors cookies to sway the big guy to change any potential names on the naughty list over to the nice list!

Start off with your favorite sugar cookie batter. I actually used a butter cookie recipe that I got from a friend, who got from another friend. It was shared very hush hush like over Facebook Messenger as opposed to on someone's wall for all to see, so I don't know if I have permission to share the recipe. But I digress....find one you like! After mixing up your batter, divide it into halves and color using food coloring. I read that using gel food coloring would produce brighter colors, but I just used the liquid food coloring I had leftover from Easter and I think it looked just fine! If you want to go a bit crazy, you could even add flavoring extract that would correspond to your dough colors- mint (green), vanilla (uncolored dough), etc...

Place dyed dough into the fridge for 10-15 minutes, then roll out to a thickness of 1/8 to 1/4 an inch. Brush water onto one side of the "outside" color of your cookie. Place other color over the top. I then lightly rolled the layered dough, trying to seal them together. Roll dough like you would cinnamon rolls.

I then cut off the raggedy edges to make my roll look neater.

The next step is to roll your cookie dough into jimmies (sprinkles). Note to self, use regular sized jimmies. I thought these circle ones were cute, but made it hard to slice cookies. Tightly wrap your roll with plastic wrap and stick back into the fridge for 10 minutes or so.

At this point, you have made your very own slice and bake dough! Remove wrap and slice off cookies about 1/4 inch thick. Bake according to your recipe! I was worried about the gaps in the roll, but most of them closed up while baking.

Ignore the yucky circle jimmies (the ones that actually stuck to the dough)! Yours will look better with regular jimmies. This picture looks very hypnotic!

I smushed all the leftover edges together, rolled out, and used to make traditional cookie shapes for our taste test.

I think Peanut enjoyed these more than the swirly cookies because of the funky coloring!

There you have it! Very easy to make and very easy to change up for different holidays. Pink and red for Valentine's Day? Green and white for St. Patrick's Day? Pastels for Easter? Double the recipe and make it a three layer red, white, and blue for Fourth of July? Purple and orange for Halloween? Your child's two favorite colors for their birthday? The possibilities are endless!