One of the goals for July is to get a three-month supply of non-food items. Things like laundry and dish soap, shampoo and toilet paper. Non-food items are not necessarily essential to survival when times are hard, but they are important to making life comfortable and sanitation convenient.
At first glance, it may seem like stocking up on non-food items will take a lot of precious space and cost a lot of money.
Not so.
I’m going to give you some money- and space-saving suggestions for making this goal completely doable, starting with laundry soap.
Homemade is cheapest
Homemade laundry soap really is a super bargain. It costs one-half to one-third what commercial soap costs. And not only is homemade the cheapest by far, homemade soap is concentrated so it also takes up the least amount of space. So if storage space is a concern, you definitely want to try homemade laundry soap.
If you haven’t already gotten my booklet on making your own cleaning products, get it now. It’s free for the month of July. There are two recipes for powdered laundry soap in the booklet.
Recipe #1
This recipe is the simplest and cheapest laundry soap you can make:
2 cups washing soda
2 cups borax
1 bar of castile or fels-naptha soap
Grate the bar of soap. (A food processor makes it fast and easy.)
Mix all the ingredients and store in an air-tight container to keep moisture out.
Use 1-2 tablespoons per load.
This will wash 65 loads for a cost of $4.50.
A bottle of Tide that does 100 loads costs $20 at Walmart. This homemade laundry soap costs $4.50 for 65 loads or about $7 for 100 loads. That’s about one-third the cost of the commercial brand and takes up about half the space.
This is the simplest and easiest recipe, but what if you have kids that stain all their clothes and you need something more potent? Then you’ll want to try this recipe:
Recipe #2
3.5 – 4 pounds baking soda*
1 55-oz box of washing soda
1 65-oz box of borax
3 pounds of Oxyclean
1 24-oz container of scent booster
3 bars of Fels-Naptha Laundry Soap
Grate the bars of soap and mix just like in the first recipes.
This has become my favorite recipe for laundry soap. The Oxyclean gives an added punch to the cleaning while being safe on colored clothes. The baking soda balances the pH, acting like a fabric softener and it helps to neutralize odors.
Package Sizes
This recipe uses whole boxes of each ingredient (well, part of a box in
the case of Oxyclean and baking soda) so you can just open the boxes, dump everything into a big bowl and mix it all up.
But as you know, manfuctureres often shrink their packages an ounce or two instead of raising prices, hoping you won’t notice. If the sizes you’re able to get are an ounce or two different from the recipe, no big deal. If the sizes change a lot, you may want to adjust the recipe.
The total cost for this deluxe cleaning and odor neutralizing soap is about $30 and will clean about 300 loads. That’s just 10¢ per load. You can make it even cheaper by omitting the scent booster. Without the scent booster it will cost just $24 or about 8¢ a load. I’ve made it with and without the scent booster. The scent booster is a nice touch, but I think the baking soda alone does a good enough job removing odors.
A word on bars of soap
Fels Naptha has been the gold standard of laundry soap since the late 1800’s. The key ingredient, naptha, is a volatile hydrocarbon that works wonders on most kinds of dirt. But it’s hard on the skin and the safety of naptha (like a lot of products from the 1800’s) is questionable. In the 1960’s the company was bought by Purex (the makers of chorline bleach) which was then bought by Dial Soap in 1985, then a series of buyouts from bigger and bigger corporate conglomerates.
Sometime during all those acquisitions by different companies, the formula was changed and naptha is no longer listed as an ingredient. Many people believe that it just doesn’t clean as well without the naptha.
But you have other options besides Fels Naptha: Zote is a soap (comes in either bar form or flakes) that has been produced in Mexico since the 1920’s, so it’s another long-time favorite. It has a long history of satisfied users (a product made for over 100 years has got to have something going for it, right?) and is considered the heir to Fels Naptha.
Castille soap has been made in the Mediterranean region for hundreds of years. It is made with all natural ingredients: fat (usually olive oil) and lye (which is caustic but during the soap-making process the alkalinity is neutralized.) That means it is much less abrasive to the skin but there is some question if it cleans as well as the Fels Naptha.
Ivory soap was first produced in the late 1800’s, about the same time that Fels Naptha was created. The formula for Ivory soap has
remained pretty much the same for the last 140 years. But it was made for skin, not laundry, so it is milder and less irritating to sensitive skin.
I cannot find a definitive answer on which one of these cleans best. I think the biggest factors for choosing will be price and availability. If you have family members with sensitive skin, test these soaps. Wash hands with it a couple times and look for a reaction before making an entire batch of laundry soap that might cause a rash or other reaction. Whichever one you choose, substitute cup for cup or bar for bar in these recipes.
What about liquid soap?
Before I started making my own laundry soap, I was a devotee of liquid soap. So, if you really, really love liquid soap, there is a recipe for the liquid version of homemade laundry soap in my booklet. It takes a couple extra steps (adding water to the mix and making sure everything dissolves) and takes up more space to store. Plus you’ve got the goopy mess of liquid soap. I just find the powdered soap so much easier to make, store and use.
Try it at least once
For years I was immune to all my friends encouraging me to make my own laundry soap. I only bought laundry soap when it was on sale, so I figured I was getting it for a good price. Besides, I was sure nothing could clean clothes as well as Tide.
But then I saw this test comparing the two different soap recipes against Tide and I was impressed. The superior cleaning combined with the cost and space savings made me a believer.
You owe it to yourself to try homemade laundry soap at least once and see if it’s not a good choice for you.
