Wool Dryer Balls

Welcome to the final chapter of replacing dryer sheets and fabric softener.

Wool Dryer Ball
You Will Need:
100% Wool yarn
Nylon

Directions:
Instead of giving all the directions right here I'm going to actually show pictures of the step by step process. 

wind the yarn around 2 fingers about 5-6 times. Take your fingers out of the loop you just made and wind the yarn around the center of the loop a few times to make a bow.

 

Fold the bow in half and wind yard across the length of it.  Keep the yarn tight.  Repeat this process until you can no longer fold it in half. 

 Now just keep winding yarn around and around trying to keep the shape of a ball.  You want the final wool ball to be about the size of a tennis ball. When you get the size you want, cut the yarn and tuck the end in.

 Put the balls into a nylon and tie a knot in between each one so they are separate. Preferably you should do this step when your kids and husband aren't around or they might think it's a pretty awesome weapon and throw it across the room to try and knock toys over.  This may or may not have happened in our house.

Put your weapon balls into the washer and wash on the hottest setting, then put into the dryer on the hottest setting.  Do this 2 or 3 times.  Your goal is to get the wool to sort of fuse together.

And voila, you have some dryer balls. 

The Verdict: It took about an hour to make 4 balls and I wish I had done more.  They have a habit of disappearing in the laundry then appearing later in the play room or occasionally hidden in the dogs bed. 

They aren't as good at getting static out as dryer sheets but they are pretty close.  Close enough that I've been using them for 7 months and don't plan on ever using dryer sheets or fabric softener again.

 I use two for each load and occasionally they can get pretty loud and thump the sides of the dryer, but I just close the door and ignore it..... I use the same method on the play room and the mess in there.

I have heard that you can drop some essential oils in the balls to give your clothes a fresh scent but I haven't tried it yet.

And with that, I am DONE with the laundry posts..... for now. I'm sure I'll come across something else I want to try. 

Re-Usable Dryer Sheet

Part 2 of the dryer sheet replacement saga

Re-Usable Dryer Sheet
You Will Need:
Hand Towel
Fabric Softener

Directions:
Soak the hand towel in the fabric softener until completely wet. Wring out any extra fabric softener then let the towel air dry (this can take a few days) After the towel dries you just throw it in your dryer along with clothes and use it as a dryer sheet for 40-50 loads before soaking again. My clothes are softer then they have ever been when I used fabric softener.

I really liked the idea of being able to still have my clothes have a clean smell when coming out of the dryer, but not having to worry about the dryer sheets that tend to multiply.  Seriously, every time I do laundry I find random dryer sheets around the house for 3 days.

I soaked my towel then quickly realized that my nose was not going to appreciate the smell coming from the towel as it dried.  The fabric softener smell was very strong.  So I hung the towel in the basement shower.  It took about 2 days to fully dry.

 The Verdict: It helped but I didn't think it was as good as a dryer sheet.  The original poster said you can get 40-50 loads out of one towel before you have to soak it again.  I only got 10 before the static cling started to take over.  I read through a lot of comments on the original blog and this one seems to be an either love or hate project.  So it might be worth your time to try it. 

Aluminum Foil Dryer Ball

 As I was testing out all my laundry detergents I was also trying a few alternatives to dryer sheets.  Join me as we explore the fascinating world of DIY fabric softeners.

I tried three different kind, so guess what my next three posts are going to be about?

Aluminum Foil Dryer Balls
You Will Need:
aluminum foil

Directions:
tear off a sheet of aluminum foil, about the length from finger to elbow.  Crumple it up into a ball.  Put it into the dryer with wet clothes.  This can be used several times. 

That is simple enough.

The Verdict: Pretty much worthless.  When I pulled apart some of the kids fleece pajamas the sparks were flying.  Then I pulled a shirt over my daughters head and her hair stuck straight up from the static and needed a lot of coaxing to come down.  I thought maybe it just needed a few loads for the clothes and the foil to become acquainted, but the more I used it the worse things got. So I tossed the foil and moved onto another experiment.

 To be continued...

What I Have Learned About DIY Laudry Detergent

 Disclaimer: I have a HE front loading washing machine with a water softener.  Your results may vary from mine

I have spent the last 8 months experimenting with homemade laundry detergents.  I have tried many recipes and countless combinations of those recipes.  I know the laundry aisle in the store better then I know my closet and can navigate my way through that aisle blindfolded while holding an octopus.

I have learned a lot of things and will share a few of the more important ones.

• Castile Soap is not a good idea.  It leaves an oily residue behind that is impossible to get out, and over time it can damage clothes.  I've heard that it can also damage your washer.
• Glycerin is a great stain remover and it dissolves easily in any temperature of water (I have only tried glycerin in a solid form and don't know if results are different with a liquid form)
• Fels-Naptha is a popular choice for the bar of soap that most recipes call for, but in my opinion Ivory and Dove work just as well and they are easier on the skin.  Fels-Naptha can irritate the skin if to much is used. When I do use Fels-Naphta I always do half of what the recipe calls for and my clothes are still clean.
• A good food processor will save you an enormous amount of time and energy when it comes time to grate the soap
• The most important thing I have learned is that Borax and Washing Soda are a must.  Every time I eliminated one or both of those from a recipe my clothes did not got get very clean

So if your going to make your own laundry detergent then you should stick with the basics; Borax, Washing Soda and a bar of soap.  After that it's up to you and your preference.  Do you prefer a more liquid/gel detergent, a creamy one, or dry?

You can also add things to customize it a bit more such as glycerin, Oxiclean, or essential oils. Just play around with a few batches until you find the right combination that works for you.

Good luck and happy washing. I am off to purge my laundry room of a lot of unused detergents and ingredients I will never use again.

Borax Free Laundry Detergent

 Welcome to my final installment of homemade laundry detergent. Woo Hoo!!!!  I must say that I am overly excited to be done with this.  For the last several months my laundry room has been over crowded with many bins of half used laundry detergents, soap bars, and boxes of ingredients. 

When I saw this one on Pinterest I was very excited!  I don't have to use Borax or the stinky Fels-Naptha?!?! That is worthy of a celebration

Homemade Laundry Detergent Without Borax 
You Will Need:  
4 ounces glycerin soap grated 
1 cup washing soda 
1/2 cup citric acid 
1/2 cup baking soda 
1/4 cup course salt

Directions:  
Mix the ingredients together and store in a sealed plastic or glass container.  Use one to two tablespoons per load of laundry.

 The citric acid turned out to be difficult to find.  After several stores I eventually found some at Hobby Lobby in the canning area.

 The glycerin soap (which you can get at Hobby Lobby) chopped up very easily in my food processor.

The original poster said that the mixture can clump up and harden so she suggested putting in a moisture killer pack (I have no idea what they are called).  It helped, but the detergent still got a bit hard within 24 hours and I had to use a knife to break up pieces.

The Verdict: Let me put it to you this way; it washed my clothes about as good at my 3 year old cleans up her room.  It got about half way into the job then got distracted and wondered off. As I pulled some of the clothes off I could tell they were cleaner, but still seemed a bit dingy.  Then I got to a pair of my sons underwear that he had had accident in and it was very obvious that these clothes weren't clean. 

I put the same load back in, put in 4 Tbsp this time and let it run again.  There was no difference that time.  The clothes looked and smelled exactly the same as they did after the first wash. 

DANG IT!!!!! I was really excited about this one and was hoping it would work for me.  Oh well. Disclaimer: I have a front loading machine and a water softener so you might get different results

So there you have it, my laundry detergent experiment is done and I have learned A LOT, but that will have to wait for another post. 

Basic Laundry Detergent with Glycerin

Can I just take a moment to say that I'm starting to get a bit tired of laundry detergent.  But I'm almost done.  I have one more to test out after this one then I will upgrade my laundry detergent knowledge from "what the heck am I doing?" to "I totally got this"

I had never heard of using glycerin in laundry detergent before so I looked up the reason why I would want to put it in.  According to several websites, glycerin is a great stain remover.  I couldn't find any information about if it needs to be in liquid or solid form, but I really wasn't searching that hard.  I have solid glycerin on hand and I was to lazy to drive around town to try and find it in liquid form.

Basic Laundry Detergent with Glycerin #6
You Will Need:
2.5 gallons Water (hot)
1 Bar soap (grated)
3/4 cup Washing Soda
3/4 cup Borax
2 TBS Glycerin

Directions:
Melt grated soap over medium-low heat topped with water, stir until melted.  In a large pail, pour 2.5 gallons of hot water, add melted mixture, washing soda, borax and glycerin. Mix well.  Use 1/2 cup per full load.

I put the glycerin and soap in a food processor to grate it, then I melted them both over heat.

I mixed all the ingredients, and when it cooled it had formed into a fairly solid block of gel   

,

I gave it a good stir and got thinner gel that was easier to work it.

The Verdict: One of my biggest gripes about the basic laundry detergent  is that it separates so you have to mix it up really good before each use.  This mixture never separated.  It stayed in the same gel state the whole time.  My assumption is the glycerin had something to do with that.

It also worked really well.  The clothes were really clean and didn't have any residue on them.  And the glycerin did great with stains.

My daughter split her head open and left some lovely blood spots on my shirt.  24 hours later I threw that shirt into the wash with no pre-treating.  The blood spots were completely gone. 


















7 laundry detergents tested, 1 more to go.

Dry Laundry Detergent

It's laundry detergent time again.

A friend told me about this one and I'll tell you right now, it's great! It uses the same ingredients as the basic laundry detergents, but without water.

Dry Laundry Detergent
You Will Need:
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1 bar of soap (you can use any soap but Ivory, Dove or Fels-Naptha work the best)

Directions:
Grate your bar of soap with either a cheese grater or food processor.  Mix all the ingredients together. Use 2 Tbsp per load. 

Grating soap by hand is a pain in the.... hand.  If you have any sort of food processor I recommend using it.  You will want to cut up the soap into smaller pieces first.

I threw the ingredients into a container, put on a lid and gave it a good shake to mix it all up.
Note: just in case your confused, the grated soap above is Ivory, the soap I used in the photo below is Fels-Naptha

The Verdict: Like I said early, this is great.  It cleans really well, there is never any residue on my clothes and the best part is it's not goopy like the basic laundry detergent.

I will usually triple the batch and it lasts me several months by using 1-2 Tbsp per load (depending on the load size and the yuckyness of it) It's quick to make and just as quick to clean up after. 

I have used Fels-Naptha and Ivory and didn't notice a difference in cleaning between the two.  

Just as a reminder (or maybe I have yet to mention this and I just think I have) I have a front loading washing machine and a water softener so your results could be different.

Hip Hip Hooray for a good laundry detergent!

Castile Soap Laundry Detergent

According to this site, you should never combine Castile Soap and vinegar because "They will directly react with each other and cancel each other out. So, instead of getting the best of both, you’ll be getting the worst of something entirely new."

 When I saw a claim about how a laundry soap with Castile soap and vinegar was a great laundry detergent I was very skeptical, but had to try for myself.

#10 Powdered
You Will Need:
1 cup Vinegar (white)
1 cup Baking Soda
1 cup Washing Soda
1/4 cup liquid castile soap

Directions: 
Mix well and store in sealed container. I find it easiest to pour the liquid soap into the bowl first, stirred in the washing soda, then baking soda, then added the vinegar in small batches at a time (the recipe foams up at first). The mixture is a thick paste at first that will break down into a heavy powdered detergent, just keep stirring. There may be some hard lumps, try to break them down when stirring (it really helps to make sure the baking soda isn’t clumpy when first adding). I used 1/2 cup per full load with great results.

I used peppermint Castile soap and mixed everything together. I stirred for about 10 minutes while the mixture went from a cottage cheese texture to a stiff powdery texture.

 I put it into a new container, sealed it tight and didn't use it until the next day. 

The Verdict: if you read the original directions, the person says, "There may be some hard lumps." What they call hard lumps, I call cement.  The mixture was rock solid.  I had to get a knife and small hammer to break off pieces to put in my washer.

 My clothes came out clean but I had to use about a cups worth (I say about because it was hard to measure the chunks)

So even though it worked, if you have to use a hammer with your laundry soap, it's not worth it. Time to try another one.

Baking Soda Laundry Detergent

My sister sent me a website that had several different homemade laundry detergents.  For the most part they all had the three basic ingredients (washing soda, borax and soap) but with a variation on the amount.  I saw two that caught my eye and I decided to try them. As of now I have only tried one of them so I'll share what I think and it then do another post about the other one.

Homemade Laundry Soap Detergent #8
Ingredients:
2 gallons Water (hot)
1 bar Soap (grated)
2 cups Baking soda (yes baking soda this time–not washing soda)

Directions
Melt grated soap in a saucepan with enough hot water to cover. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring frequently until melted.  In a large pail, pour 2 gallons hot water. Add melted mixture, stir well.  Then add the baking soda, stir well again.  Use 1/2 cup per full load, 1 cup per very soiled load.

I decided to half the recipe just  in case it didn't work (spoiler alert: I'm SO glad I did that) so I broke a Fels-Naptha bar in half, then broke that half into pieces and put it in my food processor.  On the slight chance that any of you remember that my husbands skin doesn't appreciate the Fels-Naptha bar, have no fear, due to his lack of desire to let his cloths be guinea pigs, he is now doing all of his own laundry.  It's a win win situation. 

This was my first time trying to melt Fels-Naptha in a pot and I couldn't believe how long it took. I can now appreciate the expression "I slaved over a hot stove all day!"

 

Once it was finally melted, I mixed all the ingredients together and let it cool.

The Verdict: NO!  It did absolutely nothing.  I decided to try and give it a second chance, so I ran the same load of laundry again and used 2 cups of this detergent.  Not only did it still not work, but the urine smell that was on my daughters clothes was now all over everything else.  Throwing my clothes on the ground and spraying them with a garden hose would be more effective then this.   I'm glad I halved it, that way I didn't feel to bad when I disposed of it.

 

No Grate Laundry Detergent

A friend of mine once told me that she would like to make her own laundry soap, but she hated the grating part.  It was so time consuming and frustrating for her that it wasn't worth the effort.  When I saw a website about making your own laundry detergent without having to grate a bar of soap I thought, Eureka!  This could be the perfect solution for her.

No Grate Laundry Detergent
You Will Need

3/4 cup Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap (For laundry, I like to use the lavender, almond, and citrus varieties)

1/2 cup Super Washing Soda

1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax OR substitute with Baking Soda

 20-50 drops of lavender

2 one-gallon containers in which to store the detergent (I recycled an old laundry detergent container and a vinegar jug)

A measuring cup or two

A two-gallon bucket (I used my old mop bucket)

Funnel to pour the detergent from the bucket into the containers (not necessary but certainly helpful!)

 

Directions:

Take your two dry ingredients first – the Super Washing Soda and Borax or Baking Soda, and pour them into the bottom of the bucket.  Stir well.  Add enough hot tap water to cover the dry ingredients. It’s important to dissolve the dry ingredients BEFORE adding the liquid Castile Soap. Otherwise, it will get super clumpy and your batch will be ruined. Then, either add your liquid Castile Soap OR the water. The soap does suds up pretty well, so if you add it first, slowly add water. Otherwise, add the water first, then at the end, add the soap and stir it in with a long spoon. Fill your bucket up to the two gallon mark with hot water (or add your Castile Soap) Use about 1/3 cup for each load

 

The instructions say that you can either use borax or baking soda.  I chose to go with borax since that is the main ingredient in most homemade laundry detergents.  After mixing everything together I decided that this was going to be a fail.  It looked so watered down that I wasn't sure if my clothes were going to get clean, but only one way to find out.

 

 Using a funnel I poured my solution into an old laundry container and started some laundry that afternoon.

 The Verdict: I used it on the kids clothes first and when I pulled them out of the washing machine I couldn't tell if they were clean or not.  They seemed clean but they also didn't.  They looked clean but they sort of smelled like dirty water.  So I needed a better test subject. 

Instead of washing my rag pile that day, I decided to let them sit and fester until they had a lovely rotting odor to them.  When I finally washed them a few days later I used 1/3 cups.  I pulled my rags out of the wash and they still smelled.... a lot.  So I washed my rags again using 1 1/2 cups of the detergent, they still smelled and some of them still had dirty spots on them. The only thing this detergent is good for is to waste your time and money. 

I'm sort of 2 for 2 with laundry detergents right now.  I hope the next one has a better success rate.

A Quick Definition Of Essential Oils

Do you know what would be really awesome?!?!?!  If I spent 2 hours typing a blog post that I was really proud of, came back to edit it and just when I was about to hit post somehow the whole thing got deleted!

GRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGG!

To add insult to injury, blogger decided to do it's auto save right at the same time.  So I lost it all. The whole blog post gone *poof* 



So, instead of re-typing my entire post  I'm going to change gears and give you all a quick tutorial about essential oils. They are used in so many homemade products that I guess now would be a good time to give a quick run-down for anyone who may still be in the dark about what the fuss is all about.

An essential oil is the natural oil that is extracted from a plant. There are many, many oils and countless ways to use them, but mostly they are used for medicinal purposes, or for making your own products. 

Of course their are pro and con arguments for essential oils, but the basic argument is that oils are natural, so they are much healthier for you and there are no side effects like medicine or cleaning products can have. 

While you can buy essential oils in most health food stores, doTERRA is usually the most popular place to buy oils.  Young Living is another popular place to get essential oils. 

Personally, I think of myself as a low end oil user. My knowledge is pretty basic.  I have about 5 different oils that I use, but not on a regular basis.  Except for my melaluca (or tea tree oil) I use that stuff by the gallon and it is in a lot of my homemade cleaning products.

If you want to learn more about them then Camp Wander is a great blog to start with.  Or you can check out this facebook page about using doTERRA products.

So there you go, you can now jump into an essential oil conversation and pretend you know what people are talking about.  

Basic Laundry Detergent

Whenever I talk to people about DIY projects and how much I enjoy them, one of the first questions I get is "do you make your own laundry detergent?"

Laundry detergent is one of the most popular DIY right now.  My guess is because of the savings.  A bottle of Tide can cost close to $20 and will give you about 90 loads.  Even though there are many ways to make your own detergent, it usually costs a few dollars to get the same amount of loads.  Some people claim they can do 150 loads of laundry for $2.

Making your own laundry detergent has become so popular that some Walmart's have jumped on the band wagon and are making displays using the basic ingredients for homemade laundry detergent.

But where to start?!?!  There are countless ways to make your own detergent and a plethora of variations.   Which ones are the best?  Which ones aren't worth the hassle?  Have no fear, your own personal guinea pig is here. I've been testing a few and will continue to test many more and will share my opinion with each one.

Today lets start with a basic and more popular type of laundry detergent. This one requires three basic ingredietns.  All of them can be found in the laundry detergent section of any store.  While there are many variations of how to combine the ingredients and the amount to use, you will basically get the same results. And at this point I have said basic basically 100 times so I should probably use all my money I'm saving on laundry dtergent to buy a basic Thasarouse.

The process I used is below but you can find another similar process here , and here is the recipe the Dugger's from TLC use.

Liquid Laundry Detergent
You will need:
1 bar of soap (any kind you want)
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of washing soda
a big pot ( that holds more than 2 gallons)
a grater
a funnel
a long spoon
2 empty gallon jugs/containers
 
Grate your bar of soap into your pot. Fill one gallon jug and pour water into pot with grated soap. Cook until the grated soap dissolves. Add the Borax and washing soda. Bring to a boil. It will coagulate.Turn off the heat. Add 1 gallon of cold water. Stir well.Pour 1 gallon of your detergent into each container. Now you have 2 gallons of homemade laundry detergent.  I use 1/2 cup per load.

If you have a food processor or a good blender I highly recommend using that to chop up your soap.  Grating it by hand with a cheese grater is very time consuming and not very fun for your fingers.  Cut your soap into small squares, place it in your food processor and within a couple of minutes you will have grated soap.

For my first batch of laundry detergent I used a Fels-Naptha soap bar.  Within a week my poor husband was sporting a lovely rash on his legs.  I looked on the back of the Fels-Naptha wrapper and had a good laugh

Did you catch that?  A bar of soap with the sole purpose of cleaning your clothes can cause skin irritations with prolonged contact.  I understand that there is a rinse cycle and that the soap should all be rinsed away but it isn't.

Here is a fun fact for you, this comes from my mother-in-law who taught clothing and textiles at a large University for 30 years.  Laundry detergent is never fully rinsed off your clothes.  There will always be a residue, so you don't have to use as much laundry detergent as the container says because there is already some on your clothes.

Anyways, I threw away my batch with the Fels-Neptha and started over using Ivory soap.  I poured it into an old All laundry detergent container because it had a nice easy dispenser. 

The Verdict:  My clothes smelled and felt really clean and they didn't have any sort of residue on them that I could see. The last few loads weren't as clean though.  The detergent kept separating so I had to shake the container before each use, but clearly I didn't shake good enough because I had mostly water for the last few loads. 

I liked the gel consistency, I don't have a particular reason why, I just liked it. How is that for a helpful opinion!?!

After about 5 uses, the spout on my dispenser and the cup started to get a gross build up.  The only way to avoid this was to clean them both really well after each use. 

 Overall it was great at getting the laundry clean but it is a bit high maintanace.  I got annoyed that i had to shake it everytime (i'm really glad I had a container with a handle, it made the shaking easier)  and that it caused such a build up on the dispensers.  Call me lazy, or maybe i'm the high maintance one, but I like thigns that don't cause extra work. 

So one down, a plethora more to go (any Three Amigo fans out there, or is my use of plethora just confusing people?)