Thursday, June 11, 2009

Homemade Laundry Soap

About a month ago I decided that I was going to try out cloth diapers for the next child. I ended up buying a few diapers to use while I was potty training Dayne to see if I wanted to invest more into it. I figured that it would cost us quite a bit less for diapers if I only had to buy them once and be done with it. I figure that the initial investment will be about $300, but then I won't have to buy anymore after that (I calculated that if the baby were potty trained by 2 1/2 years old then we would have spent approximately $1,000 for diapers).



After I had put the diapers through a few loads of laundry Ben did some calculations of his own. He figured that the cost is actually about the same because water is so expensive here (he calculated how much it cost per diaper/per load - for those of you who know Ben, that is soooo typical). Anyway, he also thought that it wasn't that much different for the environment. Anyway, to make a long story shorter, I decided to make my own laundry soap that was environmentally friendly and incredibly cost effective. I was really surprised with how easy it was and Ben was really happy that I'm going to be saving TONS of money (we go through a lot of laundry detergent). Oh and by the way, it actually works.

Next week I'm going to tackle making my own household cleaning products. . .





Here are the kids helping me to
make the laundry detergent.
They were calling it"magic potion."


7 comments:

Heidi said...

That's a cool idea with the homemade detergents. I think I'll try it too.

Anne said...

Wow! You have reached an entire different level, granola girl!

Dial Family said...

That's great, so what's the ingredients?

Sarah said...

Sounds like you and Ben were having a competition to see who was better at being cheap! I totally understand, tho. Sometimes you'll do anything you can. And you feel so proud of yourself when you accomplish it!

Eden said...

Amanda--you and I have the same blood. I've been thinking about making my own laundry soap and household cleaning products. I'm also a big, big fan of cloth diapers. There are a couple of blogs regarding cloth diapering that are really informative and helpful with which diapers to buy and why it is more environmentally friendly (doesn't fill up the garbage dumps with chemicals and plastics) and how it actually helps children potty train earlier because cloth diapers don't wick away the moisture as easily the child starts to comprehend their bladder control more quickly.

Also, really want to talk to you at the family reunion. I've felt like making some kind of declaration on my blog about being super crunchy because I'm constantly interested in eco living and less chemicals, more purity in food, health, and environment. I think we may be able to share thoughts and ideas.

Mindy said...

Amanda, Found your blog off someone else site. Hope you don't mind. Your family is so cute. Hope you remember me!
~Mindy~

Lindsey said...

You need to post directions on how to make your laundry detergent!