Good Bye Tide. Hello Homemade Laundry Soap

Yes, its true. I failed NaNoBloMo. I was doing so well, 29 posts in 29 days and then it just all fell apart, right about the same time I fell asleep.

Last night while  putting the GK's to bed, I was lying there next to the grand daughter who was telling me all about the origins of the velociraptor of the latter Cretaceous period (she is 7) thinking I would blog as soon as my science lesson was completed.

Next thing I know Keith is waking me up, from a distance of course because I have this tendency to come FLYING out of bed. Chalk it up to over a decade of sleeping with a beeper at my head when I was a hospice director. I was so tired from our big day of making homemade laundry soap (oh yeah ? YOU look at the following pictures and tell me how easy creating something wonderful for your clothes is when you're working with little people.( I was going to say "midgets" but people are so sensitive lately so thought I better make it little people. )

As I was rambling, I went into my own bed and slept without blogging. So here I am at day 30 of NoBloWriMo one post short of a full blog.

Laundry soap...why? Because I am already making all my own body soap, shampoo and dish soap so why not ? One day someone will buy this farm  http://certifiedorganicfarm.blogspot.com/ we love but have under grown, and therefore we must continue to work towards self sufficiency in all areas in order to survive on our new tiny farm of the future

The recipe is not complicated. One part washing soda, one part borax (please note; not Borat) and one part shredded homemade soap. Some people use Fels Naptha soap bar soap if they have not ventured into the homemade bar soap world. For me though, it is a great way to use up soap pieces, sample bars or those they work just fine but turned out tres' ugly.

Shred the bar soap with a grater. Don't worry if you get a little knuckle skin and blood in there, it'll wash out. BAHAHAHA Get a large bowl and mix all the ingredients together. Keep in mind, the smaller the helpers, the bigger the bowl should be.

Now you can use it just as it is mixed at this point OR you can put the mixture in a food processor and pulverize the heck out of it. The choice is yours. Since I will be selling this in my little farm store I choose to pulverize.

Below is the pulverized version on the left (just hit pulse on your food processor 6-7 times) and the non-pulverized version with the bar soap still in grated form. Both types will dissolve well.

Your next task will be packaging. I am using canning jars and will offer our customers $1 off their next soap purchase for each laundry soap jar returned. We found here at South Pork Ranch that a funeral works great, no wait, a funnel works well for getting the soap into the canning jar. Still, though, the kids kept calling it a funeral cause it made me laugh so hard the first time the four year old called it that.

Soon, we discovered that due to the cheap labor involved we could afford to set up an assembly line.

Seriously, each GK will receive a portion of the profits from each sale. They worked hard ! Of course it took about 3 hours to fill 4 jars so they will be salaried, not paid by the hour. Please don't tell their union. Afterwards, the custodian was paged and clean up took place.

The final product in its basic packaging consists of 27 ounces of all-natural laundry soap free of perfumes, artificial colors and other garbage just not needed. Only 2 Tablespoons are required for each large load of laundry and since there are virtually no suds it can be used in the newer HE top loading machines. In addition, the natural water softening qualities of the Borax eliminates the need for fabric softener. Cost to our customers $10. The striking orange bow , hand cut and tied of course, is complimentary.

All that to say...I was too tired to blog yesterday. Tomorrow is Monday and I will be back on my raw milk campaign. Do I have news to share with you!