Soaring food prices elicit creative solutions
 

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As American families face the double whammy of higher gas and food prices, moms nationwide are resorting to considerable ingenuity to stretch their monthly grocery budget.

For instance, Christina Pond of Arlington, Texas, makes her own detergent.

Pond, 26, a stay-at-home mom with an almost 8-month old daughter, does four loads of laundry every other day.

"Detergent is very expensive, so I make my own," she said.

She grates natural soap, boils it, adds Borax, baking soda and essential oils, and lets it cool overnight.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/21/news...ping/index.htm

YAY I am 'creative' and my sister said that making my own laundry soap was 'sad'


note: I believe she is using washing soda not baking soda

2 loads a day? Even when I had 2 kids in cloth diapers I didn't do that much laundry! :eek: My sis has 4 kids - 3 teens - & doesn't do that much!

You don't save that much money making your own detergent. I'd be willing to bet she's still buying expensive convenience food & pre-mushed baby food.

Yes, you do. I priced it out. Homemade detergent costs me about 5 cents a load when I make it with Fels Naptha. It's more like 3 cents a load if I use saved-up ends of bar soap, or whatever bar soap is cheapest on sale that week at the store. Store-bought detergent is usually 15-30 cents a load, and over time, that sure adds up, especially if you do a lot of laundry.

Two loads a day might be excessive - but I would guesstimate that I wash about 10 loads a week, sometimes more, depending on the weather or if it's time to wash bedding, someone's sick, etc.

Which reminds me, I need to make another batch!

I wash a good bit of laundry. Probably close to what Edayna does. If it is a rainy week hubby will stop home and change several times a day into dry clothes and he and I both get quite dirty during the day. Our clothes need washed after they are worn. I have never made my own detergent but I may try it and see if A) I like it B) it saves me enough to make it worth my while

Homemade laundry soap doesn't work in my hard water. I've found the best brand for my washer & water is Planet. I use 1/2 the recommended amount.

I just buy cheap stuff and it works well for us ( hard water and all ) My time is worth more to me than the little bit of money I'd save making my own laundry detergent.

Not to argue, but. . .

Six years ago I did an experiment: I wrote a tally mark on my bottle of laundry detergent for each load I did. Found that a $5 bottle of detergent lasted about 12 loads (or about 1 week for my family of six). Now, with 3 of the 6 having eczema and not being able to use any detergent with dye or perfume AND 3 of the 6 being allergic to chlorine bleach, buying cheap detergent was not an option for me. So I was spending about $15-$20 a month for laundry detergent.

I then made a batch of homemade detergent (2 gallons). Cost for the entire batch was something like $1.50 at the time. Took all of five minutes to cook up and mix together. Again, I made a tally mark for each load of laundry I did out of that batch of detergent.

At the end of one month I had used the entire 2 gallon batch. Clothes seemed just as clean as using expensive laundry detergent. No one had any allergic reactions to the homemade soap. We have hard water too.

Hmmm, $15-20 a month to wash clothes, or $1.50 and five minutes of my time a month? Six years later I am still making my own soap. Even pack it when we go on vacation!

Kris, would you care to share a recipe, please? :)

:D RedTartan

I make my own laundry soap. I figure it saves me about $135 a year minimally. It works great too.

I agree, a recipe is in order. I have a wife and four kids at home. I like che.... ummm inexpensive...lol

I made my own till just recently, it worked great where we used to live- hard water- but it's not too great here where we have soft water....any tips to make the homemade work better in the soft water?

And someone please post a recipe!!!

do you you make the gel or powder? I found the powder mix did not dissolve well in our soft water but the gel works fine.

Why did the title of this thread make me think of Haiti and the dirt cookies?

Here is the recipe I use:

1/3 bar Fels Naptha soap, grated
1/2 cup Borax
1/2 cup Washing Soda

Melt/dissolve the soap in 2 cups of water in a pot on the stove on medium heat. (Note: use an old pot for this, not the one you cook in, or else your spaghetti will taste like soap for a month. Ask me how I know.) Stir in the borax and washing soda till it gets kind of gloppy and thick. Pour it in a bucket (I use a cat litter bucket) and add enough water to make about 2 gallons, stir till well mixed. You can use it right away, or let it stand overnight to thicken. It gets thick and gloppy and kind of gross looking, but it works great! Use about a half-cup per load, more if the laundry's really dirty or you've got an extra large washer.

You do not have to use Fels-Naptha soap, though many people prefer it and say it works best. I use whatever soap I have - ends of bar soap from the shower, cheap stuff I bought on sale, etc. Ivory works great, and I suppose homemade soap would too. I've also used the yellow deodorant soap, Castile, and a bunch of those little hotel soaps. :)

Because you have a "dirty" mind my dear friend! ;)

I pretty much use the same recipe as Edayna listed above. Sometimes it is smooth and sometimes gloppy looking. Seems to work the same either way.

I am showing my ignorance...can you get all of these ingredients at the regular grocery store or do you find them someplace else?

Recipes here for laundry soap, household cleaners, and other stuff:

http://agricommunity.com/christian/i...p?topic=4954.0

You save a LOT.LOL same here, sometimes it looks store bought, sometimes it gets weird, but it works anyhow.The ingredients are in the laundry section of the supermarket. If by chance you can't find them, ask the manager if he can order them.

Homemade laundry soap is kindergarton...if you want to really learn how to save read the thread Tightwad Tips/Frugal Things done lately and then go thru the previous months in the archives. You'll soon have a graduate degree in frugal.

Fels Napha is not in all stores although most larger supermarkets probably have it or will get it if enough requests are made. My s-i-l brought me a bar of laundry soap (it is pink) from the Mexican store. I used it to mix up a batch of laundry soap but do not like it as well as Fels Napha. For one thing it was lightly perfumed and I'm allergic to perfume.

When I use the homemade laundry soap I use white vinegar for the rinse. I hang clothes so don't use fabric softeners.

Here's the stuff, with a visual aid: :D


I never have any problem finding any of this in my grocery. Well, sometimes the fels-naptha isn't there, so I just use something else.

"natural soap" "essential oils"... those two items alone cost more than a huge box of laundry detergent... I wonder how much money she's saving?

If she really wanted to get frugal, she'd get free fat from the butcher, boil it down, add lye and make her own soap. Purchasing value added goods like "natural soap" essential oils, borax, and baking soda negates any savings. And borax isn't cheap...

Cloth diapering mommas really can't use homemade laundry soap, and I save a lot more by cloth diapers than making my own detergent. Because it contains soap and it is not a true detergent it can cause build up and water resistance in the cloth. I use Charlies Soap (which is not really a soap, but a detergent) and it is only $14 and it does 80 loads - so .17 a load? So maybe this lady should start cloth diapering - I bet she would save a TON more (considering I just passed a "sale" on diapers and they were $27.00!!!!)

Did you look at the recipe? It's a fraction of the cost of the store bought stuff.

I used it when I had cloth diapers to wash, never noticed any problems. Not saying I don't believe you, but maybe it doesn't matter that much?

There might possibly be a difference between them in certain water types, but the homemade stuff works fine here.

I tried both but mostly the dry. Maybe I should switch to the gel.....

I saw that story on the news tonight and she does use cloth diapers for her baby as well as make her own baby food. They also buy their organic eggs from a local feed store (much cheaper than "organic" eggs from the store). The whole story was about how she cut costs at home because of rising costs at the grocery store.

It's kinda funny (or sad really) that doing these things is unusual enough to put on the news.

the pink mexican soap is Zote, and has a citrus scent, tho the scent doesn't linger on clothes. when i cut and grated it up, the scent lingered on my hands for a few hours, and made eating my next meal, shall we say, "interesting".

I can't compare to fels naptha since i haven't found that in a local store. I found Zote at both the local Dollar General and Walgreens, so I've used it to make my own laundry detergent. I just leave the ingredients dry, i don't liquify them. still works fine.

You can order Fels Naptha, and Zote, from vendors on amazon, altho at a higher price than I found locally.

re: the original article
I think many people are going to have a hard time saving money, because so many costs are "baked into the cake" from prior decisions, and aren't easy to undo. eg, if you already bought the monster SUV gas-hog for 40k, you can cut back a trip here and there, but your gas mileage isn't going to get better. And if you think you're gonna sell it for something cheaper to run, guess what, everyone else is having the same idea and the same time, and the market is flooded with used SUVs for sale.

Same with buying the house, which more than likely locks in your commute distance to your job. And the size and energy efficiency and climate affect your utility payments. If you just bought a 3000 sq ft mcmansion in the arizona suburbs that had only modest insulation, it'll be expensive to keep it cooled, and very expensive to retrofit it to have higher insulation, and expensive to try to sell it in a down market when everyone else is having the same idea.

as they say, "sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences"

--sgl

If I buy detergent I also use half the amount. Clothes are just as clean and don't have as much detergent build up in the fibers that lead to fabric softener.

A quarter cup of baking soda or a splash of vinegar will help with hard water. If you use vinegar the clothes don't smell like pickles when they're done.

Has anyone tried home made products in a front load washer? In a fit of "being green" and saving on energy and water we bought one of these things several years ago. I've never been quite happy with it. I find I need to use both detergent and a clorox bleach for colors for whites to come out white. It might be different if I used hot water but the point of "energy savings" was to not use.. er.. energy!! And when I was using hot water my propane bill DOUBLED. That put an end to hot water in really short order!

Morrisoncorner, I have a front load washer and use the homemade stuff in it. Actually, that's all I've ever used in it because I was making soap before I got the washer (in other words, have used homemade in both a top loader and a front loader.)

I also wash in cold water for everything except 'lights' (white shirts, underwear, pastel clothes) which I wash on warm, and white socks which got on hot (but only 1 load a week). Don't use chlorine bleach because 1/2 of us are allergic to it.

So, yes, our whites don't stay white long, but I've solved that problem by just not wearing white, lol!

*laugh* I wish I could get away with "no whites." Unfortunately... the husband. Has to wear white. I keep telling him it is over rated, but what can you do?

However, if homemade does a fine job on all but whites, I could just keep a bottle of heavy duty detergent for those loads, which make up probably > 1/3 of the laundry.