Laundry soap

I don't know if it is all the spring projects and the seemingly never ending amount of cash that is diverted off the farm to fund them or that new ideas seem to hatch at this time of year in my brain; my thoughts turn to ways to reclaim some of that cash.  Last year at about this time I talked about my attempts at resourcefulness in crafting all manner of homemade items.

Inspired by a post from an online homesteaders magazine, From Scratch Magazine; I decided that $2.00 for five gallons of laundry soap was far better than the $4.69 per gallon I am spending now.  I looked in the cabinet and found I had two bars of Fels Naptha and I always have Borax and Washing Soda around.  So began my attempt at making laundry soap.

While Little man was having his lunch I sat at the kitchen table and began grating the Fels Naptha.  I could have tried the food processor to make faster work of it, but there are the simple pleasures in performing and completing a task by hand especially while entertaining a fourteen month old.  Careful to clean up after myself, as the original post advises the grated Fels Naptha seriously resembles cheddar cheese; the table was wiped down and my bucket of gratings moved to the kitchen counter adjacent my large pot.  The soap is added to warm water until dissolved, the powdered ingredients added along with more water and finally added to hot water in a five gallon bucket and then finally more hot water resulting in just shy of five gallons of viscous yellow liquid.  Finally, the mixture is left to set overnight.

My mistake, and I make several throughout my trial and error education, was carefully placing the bucket out of Little man's reach in the mud room to set overnight.  The temperature in this particular room is only slightly warmer than the outside temperature as it is insulated but there is no heat in there.  This beautiful bucket of soap congealed into a semi-solid, soap-like mass.  Tomorrow I will get out my largest canning pot, add the mixture to re-warm and dissolve the mass and then will carefully place it in the bathroom to set overnight.

I chose not to add any essential oils as the Fels Naptha does not carry with it an offending odor.  Our current bottle of laundry detergent should be about empty on Sunday - this weekend will determine whether I wasted my $2.00 or have found another cost savings thanks to the wonderful homesteading world on the Internet.