That's Me

That's Me

Monday, January 14, 2013

Homemade Laundry Soap Update

I have had a lot of people ask me how my homemade laundry soap worked & if I liked it. I had to give it a good go before I would answer anyone.

I washed sheets, towels, dark & white clothing, and...dun dun dun...the true test, basketball & wrestling gear. In 4 days, the hubster & I did 14 loads of laundry, all with my homemade laundry soap & homemade fabric softener.

After the first 4 loads, when the clothes didn't have a scent on them (my lovely almond scent disappeared, boo hiss!), I added tea tree oil. I didn't add it at first because I didn't want to mask the almond scent. Having used tons of essential oils for various purposes for the last 13 years, I figured about 20 drops for the 2 gallons of soap that I made would be a good amount. I wanted the tea tree for its fungicide, antibacterial, antiseptic, and antiviral properties.

I opened up the tea tree EO & without checking to make sure the dropper top was in the bottle. Yeah...see where I'm going with this? Tip the bottle upside down for the drops to start dropping & whoosh. The dropper top was stuck to the cap in my hand. Instead of 20 drops, I'm guessing I added oh, about 5,000 drops. Good thing we all like the scent.

Another good thing: when the clothes come out, they don't smell like a tea tree EO factory.

I'm actually really surprised by how incredibly soft & clean everything is. There is no film from soap residue, making the towels or jeans stiff. Nothing is dingy & the clothes just smell clean. Like Hang on the Line in the Spring Clean. Being in WI, it will be quite a while before I hang clothes again. Yes, I know there are some that trudge through the 6' of snow drifts to get to their clothes lines, but I have a great dryer, a fear of my fingers falling off my hands after hanging wet clothes in 9 degree air, & I have no desire to pick icicles off of my clothing at the end of the day.

I had a white shirt that I spilled marinara sauce down the front. Never fails...me + white shirt = red stains. I could even be standing 12 feet from someone eating a pizza crust. No sauce on it whatsoever, just crust. And an hour later I will see that I somehow got sauce on MY white shirt.

So I had this shirt & it wasn't even mine. It was hubby's shirt. When you are 7' tall (according to hubby who is 2" shorter than me, that's how tall I am--I'm a tree), it's awesome to have a man in the house so that you can wear his dress shirts with your leggings. They're perfect for covering the heiney & it helps that my hubs thinks I'm sexy in his shirts. (Not so much when I wear his jogging pants.) The problem with wearing hubby's dress shirts is that I feel a need to not ruin them with stains.

I didn't pretreat the stain because...well...to be honest...I forgot to. I am happy to announce that the shirt came out with no hint of marinara sauce whatsoever. And I'm not just saying that because the hubs is color blind & wouldn't see it if it was faint anyway. I hate stains. My family will not wear stained clothing.

This soap is awesome! No joke. I can't believe it got day-old marinara stain out without pretreatment. I am very happy with the job this soap does, along with my fabric softener. I am going to tweak my recipe a bit so that making it goes a wee bit smoother, but when it's $0.02 a load vs. $0.16 a load for the soap I was buying, & that I feel a sense of pride when I use it ("I made this, honey! Isn't that cool? Aren't I just so amazing, dear?"), that something I made actually lives up to my extremely picky standards for laundry soap...I will be sticking with it.

Feel free to play around with my original recipe or stay tuned for how the new, improved version when I need to make it again.

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