Doing the Laundry Dance

Laundry is a pretty big deal around here. It's on-going, all the time. If you come to my house for a visit, odds are you will hear the washer or dryer going in the background. I almost always have piles of clothes in our bedroom in various stages of being folded, sorted and waiting to be delivered back to their rightful owners. So, when my friend, Lainie, posted on her blog Mishmash Maggie, that she had successfully made and used her own batch of homemade laundry detergent, I was intrigued. Let's face it...laundry detergent ain't cheap!

She posted the recipe along with pictures and a detailed, step-by-step how-to back in September 2008. Let's see, it's now January 2009...hm...it's only taken me 4 months to finally get around to giving this recipe a try. Don't judge me! (grin)

Anyway, here are pictures of my process. I don't think my batch looks nearly as pretty as Miss Lainie's, but if the end result is the same, then I guess it's ok. Here's the link to Mishmash Maggie to get the breakdown "Mishmash Style".

This stuff is so cool! (I know it's lame to excited about soap, but until a few months ago I didn't even know it existed.) I had to look a little while at Target to find it waaaaayyyy up high on the shelf in between two big boxes of laundry detergent. There it was all by it's tiny lonesome:-)

I was so disappointed that the Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda wasn't at Target as well. What's up with that? Anyway, I had to go to Freddies to get this gem.

Good 'ol Borax. I found this at Target on a wall isle next to the Bleach.

I purchased a new cheese grater that I will keep with the soap making stuff. The only cheese grater we had was a Pampered Chef grater and I just did not want to use it to grate soap.




Isn't this pretty? I agree with Lainie, I love that it's pink!
I put the grated Zote soap in a pot along with about 3 quarts of water (as per Lainie's instructions) and this is what it looked like before the soap melted.
This is what the Zote and water mixture looks like after all the Zote has dissolved. I had more suds on it, but skimmed them off before I took the picture.
I just used an old buckeet we had out in the garage. It was just barely big enough. You can see all the suds on top of the detergent. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to leave those or not. For now, I'm leaving them. The detergent sits for 24 hours like this and then when it's done it has the gelatin-like consistency. At least that's what I'm told. I won't know until tomorrow.

*****

Happily, I was able to get all of my products for right around the same price as Lainie did at the same locations. I will be on the lookout for a store that sells all the products at one location, but if that doesn't exist, then at least they are sold at stores where I already shop. It's not like you have to buy this stuff every month. From the looks of things, Iwill only have to replace the Zote bar this year!

This was a fun project to do. I enjoyed knowing that I can make it myself for MUCH less than it costs to buy it at the store. I will let you know how it works for us. Thank you Miss Lainie Pants!

Blessings and have fun "Doing the Laundry Dance!"

Kim