Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Chemistry in the Kitchen!

Tonight my friend Tessa came over, and we made laundry soap in my kitchen!
It was great...
We started out with Borax, Washing Soda, Water, and a bar of Fels Naptha soap (but you can use homemade soaps, or Ivory)...and ended up with a big container of gel.
The recipe is all over the internet, and I even found a nice little video of a Mama making her own; so I won't bother to post the exact recipe.
Here's a photo!
It's gelling up really nicely. When we first put it in there, it looked like an egg soup type mixture. Just now, upon opening it for the picture, I was surprised to find such a thick gel. I've never been so excited to do laundry before!



Here is a video of making a similar soap - just using a bar of Ivory instead.

4 comments:

TulipGirl said...

I was inspired after reading several laundry soap recipes, and modified the ones I read to make a super-easy, powdered laundry soap.

One Part Washing Soda
One Part Borax

Shake together well in a mason jar.

Add a squirt of castille soap. (Currently we're using Dr. Bronner's Peppermint, though in the past I used lavender.) This is the tricky part. The soap will want to clump, so you have to shake the jar a lot to mix it up.

Use one jar lid full of soap per load. So far, it has worked GREAT. My clothes have never been softer.

(Caveat: I do keep conventional laundry soap on hand for spot treating or really greasy, nasty stained clothes. Not that I've needed to use it for that, but I do have it on hand. I have a feeling greasy, nasty stains may need something more than my homemade mix.)

Jen said...

I just edited my post to add the link to a video of a Mama making a similar laundry soap recipe.

Your dry soap sounds good - though I am not a big fan of Dr. B's peppermint soap.

Thanks for sharing that!

Lucy said...

Cool, I like to see other mom's making their own laundry soap. I make mine all the time. I need to make some more today but keep doing other things. I will post my recipe on my blog. I love it for washing diapers and, well just about everything.

Anonymous said...

Frankly speaking your soap making instructions are very informative.Thank you! I am going to add a link to this page from my Natural Bath Products site.And if you do not mind, I will add your soap recipe to my collection of soap recipes here. thanks!