Thursday, June 2, 2011

Making my own soap

So here is the update on making my own dishwashing detergent and my own laundry detergent.

Dish washing - I am making it with one cup of Borax, one cup of Washing Soda and 2 packets of Lemon aid Kool Aid.

It was working in terms of cleaning my dishes but we have extremely hard water and there was a horrible film on everything and it was making aime nuts. A friend told me about Lemon Shine which you can purchase in the same aisle as Jet Dry. I add a little to each load and viola, squeaky clean again. The total cost per load...pennies

Laundry - One cup of Borax, one cup of Washing Soda and a bar of soap. If you have hard water like me add 1/4 extra cup of the Borax as this is a water softener.

This one has been frustrating. Quite frankly I don't think it works as good as Tide. With Tide I could toss my clothes in, add the detergent and walk away. Everything came out spic & span. NOW - I have to spot treat everything and I found that to be annoying. However, I am using "Folex" and this stuff is amazing. I use it on my carpets, couches, clothes...basically any fabric. It will take pen marks out with one spray and a scratch or two from your nail. MIRACLE So even though it's more time consuming and I have to be sure to spot treat everything I'm saving hundreds of dollars every year. It use to cost me 20.00 every three weeks and now it costs me 1.25 per batch. Which translates to pennies.




You can find Folex at most hardware stores like Lowes, Home Depot and Fred Myer. It cost me $5 in Iowa and in Seattle it cost me $8. But it's worth it if you have children or pets.




Borax, Washing Soda and bar of soap can all be found in the laundry aisle of Target, Walmart or Amazon. There are probably other places but that is where I shop.

3 comments:

  1. Do you use the lemon shine instead of the lemon aid Koolaid? If you used Koolaid it seem as though everything will come out sticky.

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  2. U put the sugar free lemon-aid packets in there. It's basically citric acid I'm using. And I'm adding the lemon shine as well for the hard water film. It's working out pretty well. It's so easy to make and SO cheap that I will never go back.

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  3. hmmm. a post I have not commented on. Well, I'll fix that!

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