Not so fast

I was pretty excited when I first tried this homemade dishwasher soap 6 weeks ago, but I have steadily become disenchanted with it.  It started with a few dishes being a little spotty and then steadily progressed into not being able to tell the difference between clean and dirty dishes.  This one lasted a long time and if it had actually worked long term it would have been amazing but I've given it all the time I can and now it is time to eat off of clean dishes.

******UPDATE***** I mixed it with water into a paste and used it as cleanser for my tub.  So all is not lost, it works great as a mild bathroom and kitchen cleaner :)

Dishwasher soap

 Ok I had very low expectations for this homemade dishwasher soap.  I live in an apartment that was built in the 80's and I'm pretty sure I have the original dishwasher.  I cannot use cheap or generic dishwasher soap in this machine and get anything back but food covered nasty dishes.  So I have been shelling out for the cascade/ dawn dishwasher packs, which is fine, they work great, I love them and I mean come on who isn't going to pay to have clean dishes?  But if you can get the same results for cheaper FANTASTIC!  I am always looking for ways to slash small expenses from our budget.

The recipe calls for 24 packets of unsweetened lemonaide Kool aid...umm that is like 12 bucks worth of Lemonade this time of year.  So I just bought the 3 dollar can of Country time and called it good.

You need to use a rinse aid called Lemi Shine with each load to make this work, but it is only a few dollars and you can buy it at Safeway.  Use a Table spoon of Lemi Shine and a Table spoon of the dishwasher soap in each load.   Making this stuff is super easy, just get two big bowls and divide your ingredients between them and mix them up ( you could use one GIANT bowl if you have one but I don't)The recipe makes 5 quarts and according to a calculator I found online that equals 320 tablespoons!  Given the cost of the ingredients and the lemi shine making one batch of this dishwasher detergent costs the same as one 60 load package of cascade packs.  So that is more than 5 times as cost efficient!! Oh Please work!  Please!

I really tested this stuff.  I didn't pre rinse my dishes and I had been making cranberry salsa and I had emptied out my fridge of leftovers so I had some nasty tupperwares and sticky food processor parts, plus our regular dishes and sippy cups......

It totally works!  I was so shocked! So this one is getting filed under AWESOME!

Bonus I can now cut out 15 dollars worth of dishwasher soap from my grocery budget!

But.... we made soap yesterday!

ok so I got a new keyboard! hurray! I was so excited to find out that I didn't need to buy a new mac keyboard for my computer I could just get a regular keyboard with a usb plug-in.  Even better if your in-laws have an extra one laying around their office :)

here is the link for my last post on that Thanksgiving frame printable.  It's free and all I did was print it on plain paper and cut it down to fit an 8x10 frame that I had and then I painted it with some paint I had on hand.  done.  my kind of Thanksgiving decorating and I might just keep it up because I love the quote.

ok so on to the soap...
On Thursday I whipped up a new batch of my laundry detergent, because I finally used it all up (2 months worth of laundry for about 4 dollars worth of ingredients...and I do a TON of laundry).

  I am still really loving this laundry soap, if it has one problem it is that it doesn't have perfumes in it (which is actually why I am using it because of my sensitive skin) but since it doesn't have any perfume in it is not very forgiving if you forget your clothes in the washer all day...or weekend.  So if you depend on the over perfumed power of tide to keep your clothes smelling fresh this might not be the detergent for you.

On Friday my husband asked me what my plans were that night and I said I was going out with the girls for dinner and then coming home and making soap, and he said..."But we made soap last night!"  Have those words ever been said by anyone else?  I don't know but I thought it was funny that we have become the type of people who make soap more than once in a week.  So we decided I would make soap and he would watch a movie I wasn't interested in.  Marriage is all about compromises right? :)

I had been wanting to try making my own body wash for the same reasons that I was interested in homemade laundry soap.  Hives suck.

 So while Peter watched Tron: Legacy I grated two bars of soap into a big pot.  I chose Yardley oatmeal and almond because I know it doesn't bug my skin, it smells great and i can get it at the Dollar tree :)  (this is something I really like about this recipe, you can pick whatever soap you want, so if you have a favorite bar soap that doesn't come in body wash you are all set)

  The recipe calls for 2 cups of grated soap and I found that each bar was a little more than 1 cup so I just stopped grating as the bar of soap got small enough that I feared for my fingers.

 Just a warning...this bottle is $17.50 BUT...I will probably be able to make 20 batches of body wash with it and each batch makes a little over a gallon so you really are only using less than a dollars worth of Glycerin per gallon of body wash. Glycerin is a skin protecterant so I wouldn't recommend skipping it, it's what makes it so body wash won't dry your skin out as much as bar soap will.

 So the original recipe is to only use 1/2 gallon of water and I was able to fill these 4 bottles with that much, HOWEVER when the soap cooled it was almost as solid as the original bar of soap so I scooped that soap out and melted it down and added another 1/2 gallon of water and that made a much more liquid like body wash.  It ended up being the consistency of a creamy body wash, and I bet the type of bar soap you choose will affect the consistency of the end product so I would start with a 1/2 gallon and see how your soap reacts but for the soap I used I needed a whole gallon....which resulted in these 4 bottles being totally full plus another 1/2 gallon storage container. (2 dollars worth of soap and maybe a dollars worth of glycerin and a gallon of water= more than a gallon of body wash...cha ching!)

Oh and I love this body wash!  It smells great, it feels great, and it rinses nicely without a film left on your skin, so I'm calling it a success!  I'm definitely keeping this recipe.

It's cheap and it doesn't give me hives

Laundry soap!  I have a major love hate relationship with laundry soap.  On one hand it makes my clothes clean....but on the other it sometimes makes me break out in hives!  Yikes!  So after years of paying for either the expensive organic, dye, and scent free laundry soap or a costco size bottle of antihistamine I decided it was time to try home made laundry soap.

I first saw homemade laundry soap on 19 Kids and Counting.  Although I think it was just 17 kids back then.  There is something about the Duggar family that I love, but homemade laundry soap? come on.

Leave it to Pinterest to force me to try something home made that I would not have bothered with before.  I tried The White Silk Purse's recipe for laundry soap a few weeks ago.

  First of all it's super cheap to make which makes up for the super big mess I made in my food processor, Giant stock pot and stand mixer.

 Secondly, It smells like Dial soap! Fels Naptha, which I found at winco is made by Dial and I love the smell of it.  I had been using fels naptha as a stain pre treater so I new where to find it.  Winco has all sorts of cool stuff like that.

Third, It's concentrated so I only have to use a tablespoon for each load.  Now I do a TON of laundry, and I have been using this for about 6 weeks now and I am about a 1/3 of the way through the 3rd of 4 containers.  Normally I would have spent like 20 bucks on laundry soap by now instead of around 3 dollars.

So it's cheap, it smells nice and it lasts forever and DID I MENTION IT DOESN'T GIVE ME HIVES?!?!?!  seriously that part is the coolest part.  Sorry makers of Benadryl I will no longer be your poster child.