DIY-er To The Max
Don't laugh! I think traditional housewives are some of the most powerful women out there.
I know you guys are still getting to know me, but you will start to notice that I love to “do-it-yourself” on anything and everything I possibly can. Last year, I started making my own goat milk soap and even sold some of it to friends, family and online. Now that I’m nice and comfortable with it, I’ve decided to move on to other projects.
I plan to cloth diaper my baby, and have started accumulating quite a stash of diapers, covers and other accessories. For those of you who are unfamiliar with cloth diapering, it is a lot more work that using disposables, but to me it’s worth it. One special measure you have to make with cloth diapers is using a specially formulated detergent when washing them. So of course this is going to be more expensive and hard to find, right? Wrong. You’d be amazed at how easy it is to make your own laundry detergent specially formulated to be low-sudsing, therefore perfect for cloth diapering and our HE washing machine.
A simple powder detergent contains three ingredients:
- 1 cup washing soda
- 1 cup borax
- 1/2 cup soap flakes
When I started looking at the cost of ingredients, I was a little taken aback. Firstly, I couldn’t even find washing soda locally, and buying online was out of the question thanks to ridiculous shipping costs. After a little more research, I found out you can DIY simply by cooking baking soda at 400 until it has a slight color change and texture change. Simple enough. Borax is available at almost any grocery store in varying sizes and prices. Soap flakes are exactly what it sounds like: shredded soap. Remember how I said I make my own soap? Using my extra cheese grater, I can easily grate it into soap flakes. Turns out you can use almost any bar of soap, and the different scents available can make for different laundry detergent scents. I’m using my favorite commercial bar for laundry soap to try on my own clothes before I start nagging the old ball and chain to let me try it on his.
To make it more cost effective, I’ve contacted a few grocery stores and placed a special order for a case of borax (6 boxes, each box is 4 lbs- 12 oz.) and a case of baking soda (6 boxes, each box is 4 lbs). I’ll be able to make a big batch of detergent before Arbor is born that should last me quite some time before I have to do it again.
Do you have any neat home-maintenance tricks that you use to keep your house clean or within your budget? How about some stain-removing tricks for those nasty baby messes?
