So, laundry detergent, eh?

I was on a roll, I was feeling good, I knew failure was imminent!

But not today, or so I told myself!

As I was busily making my Ghetto Wipes and cleaning fluid I was also chatting with friends on the interwebz doing serious research.  In a facebook group of totally awesome people, many of whom far more skilled than I clearly, a recipe for laundry detergent surfaced.  The idea was born and I was obsessed.

I compared notes with about a million other recipes on Pintercrack.  I wanted a liquid and not a powder, and wound up doing one similar to this.  It is apparently the Duggar's recipe, but mine had slightly different ratios and made less than this one but I am not complaining.  Since it was a recipe shared by someone who makes this to sell it, I am not sharing the exact thing here -- not like I have such huge traffic it would matter but not risking it anyhoo!

So the ingredients are simple ... water, Fels-Naptha soap (or any bar soap apparently), Borax, and Washing Soda.  I made a quick Walmart run for the bar soap, the bucket (cheaper BTW at Home Depot or Lowes, NOT at Wally World go figure), and the washing soda.

Start by grating the bar of soap with a cheese grater.  Try to not be totally appalled at how much it looks like cheese.

Boil 4 cups of water and add the washing soda and borax to it (see, different steps than the Duggar one!) and once it is mixed around a bit add the cheesy soap bits.  I was trying to be really patient and get it to dissolve, but it was only mostly dissolved by the time I gave up and moved on.

I filled my big assed expensive bucket (it was like $5 instead of $3 at the hardware store LOL) with about 3.5 gallons of water by using an empty and rinsed out apple juice bottle.

While doing this step the Beans mocked my superior parenting skills by breaking into a room with a baby proof knob cover that *I* can barely use but he can remove.  Threw it into the bucket of water for good measure to let me know what he really thinks of my attempts to keep him out of my bedroom.

I then dumped that yellowish mixture into the bucket, clapped the lid on and let it sit for 24 hours.

The next day a hard film about a quarter inch thick had formed on the top and I tried to break it up.

Then the messy began.

I had an empty giant Costco-brand-of-Tide bottle and a couple big containers from the dollar store.  No matter how careful I was about it, I wound up smelling very very clean by the time I was done.

End result, we have been using it for a bit and I love it!  I use a full cup that came with the "Tide" of it for a wash load, because I read that somewhere... now that I think about it I may try less and see how that works.

What I Have will last a while.  I do have to occasionally shake the bottle because the chunks settle into the bottom and pug the sucker up.

So while I am not giving you a full how-to here, this should serve as a lesson.  I appear to not have caused any permanent damage to anything and am still off of all the government big brother watch lists (that I know of or wouldn't be on already LOL) ... so you can totally do this too!

So no massive failure yet ... the streak continues and I am not sure what I will do next!