Homemade Lavender Laundry Sauce ~ CHEAP and EFFECTIVE!!!

     Okay, I seriously thought I posted this in APRIL, only to see it as a draft when I logged in today. Oops! Please feel free to read my blog, and check out the bottom for an update on how the product is still working for me now.

     Who hasn't wanted to find a great detergent that take out stains, whitens whites and brightens brights? That seems to be what all the top brand of laundry detergents claim they do, but most of the time my laundry begins to look a little grungy, dingy or stained up fairly quickly, and for a mom who sells at JBF (see my Congisnment Sales Blog) it is IMPERATIVE that our laundry looks it's best when my little ones have outgrown their gently used, but well loved items. We started with Tide with Stain Fighter but it has always been cost prohibitive, then Surf, and it did great for a while, then went to All Free and Clear (sensitive skin alert), then tried Gain because my hubby likes the scent (fragrance DID NOT last as long as they claim!) and  now we are back to Tide and using Dreft for my Little Lady. I CANNOT pay $26.00 for a bottle of Tide again, especially when the original formula I loved is no longer available and, once again, I feel like our clothes are looking a little dingy........ughh.

     We have a front loading washer and stacked dryer, which I love, but sometimes I miss my good old fashioned top loader, especially whenever I want to soak something overnight, and one  of my favorite benefits of our front loader is that I can see the cycle, and I feel like I can see my clothes getting clean because of the suds, but I just learned (um, duh! really I didn't know this) that most detergent companies add an ingredient to make the soap lather and foam, that the foam is NOT what is cleaning our clothes, foamy soap is a FRAUD! I feel like I have been lied to my whole life. Hand soap, body soap, dish soap, laundry soap...........all a lie! So, after learning of this lifelong fraud I decided to look up some recipes for homemade laundry soap and Pintrest, once again, has not let me down. Now, I looked, and looked, and looked some more until I found a recipe that sounded good to me, and would have my favorite lavender fragrance, AND has fabric softener built in, SCORE! I found Budget101 Lavender Super Laundry Sauce recipe and decided that I was going to make my own laundry detergent, around $2.00 and I can make 128 loads, and it only takes 1 Tablespoon of detergent to clean a load of laundry!

     So I set out to get the ingredients, of which I already had the Purex Lavender Crystals, and I found the Washing Soda and Borax easily enough, but could NOT locate the Fels Naptha (what the heck kind of name is that? Check the blurb at the bottom....). I tried three different Wal-Mart Stores, A Kroger, Tom Thumb and Albertson's, they all had Zote Soap, but the recipe specifically says use Fels Naptha if you want the stain removal abilities, so I continued to look. FINALLY, on a Milk run to my closest Wal-Mart I saw someone restocking the Fels Naptha, I grabbed 4 bars, because at .99 a bar I could afford a little room for experimentation. WooHoo! I am ready to give it a shot, and I have the perfect load of laundry to try it on!

     So, the next morning, after I get the big boys off to school and work, I set out to make my detergent while the Little Ladybug sleeps in. Good thing too because the smell is fairly powerful. I open the doors for a bit of a breeze and to carry the strength away, not a bad smell, just strong. So I follow the directions explicitly and IT WORKED!!!! My detergent did exactly what it was supposed to do, so I broke the thick layer with my wooden spoon , popped on my old (very tired and useless) blender base and whipped up some laundry detergent. Pretty simple really, the hardest part was waiting for the Fels Naptha to melt away. Now us try it on some gardening clothes, then a Tinker Bell and Fairy Friends Toddler bed set I got at a JBF sale (FOUR PIECES FOR $3.00!!!!!), then some kitchen towels. EVERY TIME the load came out clean and fresh smelling from the washer and static free and still fresh smelling from the dryer. All clothes seem a little whiter, a little brighter, and FEEL cleaner to the touch. I know this sounds weird, but I am a true believer and may never go back to store bought laundry detergents!

     My only hints to this recipe is to be sure to finely grate your soap, or grate it then put it into a MagicBullet. Blending it for a few seconds worked great, and since it is soap you can just wash it out really good and run it through the dishwasher. If you are dissatisfied with your store bought laundry detergent, whether it be because of the financial aspect, or the lack of cleanliness, give this a shot. You, too, may vow never to go back to the expensive jugs of pre-made liquid and instead choose the Super Laundry Sauce!

Blurb: Fels Naptha, where did the name come from? Well, the Fels part comes from the inventor, Joseph Fels, who originally made the product to cut through the oils in Poison Ivy and Poison Oak and the Naptha part is a name for the solvent originally used in the soap. Interesting....

UPDATE:
     So, I have been using this Lavender Laundry Sauce for over two months now, and it still works great for getting out stains, BUT I have noticed that my Ladybug's baby clothes are becoming worn out faster, and are 'pilling' more than with traditional detergents. It still seems to work fine on my big boy's clothing, and most of my own, but I have reverted to Dreft for the Ladybug. I am a consignor mama, so her clothes need to look their best for resale. ALSO, I only use this powerful detergent on my towels about every three washes, as it seemed to make them a little bristly.  

O.M.Gum!!!!

For about the 100th time since summer started I could literally wring my son's neck!!! 

     At 16.5 (as I am regularly reminded) years old my oldest child has decided that he is an adult and we parents know nothing.......come on, we have all been there, and usually admit we are wrong about the time we become parents ourselves. My wonderful child has decided that texting is the form of communication of choice (as most teens in this era have), that his dad is an idiot (I have to admit, I do occasionally agree), and that he no longer has to check his pockets when it is time to do the laundry!!!!

     While trying to prepare my Boy Scout for reality without Mama in his not so distant future (come on mom, you'll do my laundry forever, right? ~ Um, NO!) I have taught the boy how to check pockets while sorting clothes into various piles, how to use the Washing Machine with all it's fancy cycles and temperatures, and the dryer with all of it's different settings and impressive knobs and buttons, did I mention that the silly things sing a song when they are finished with their cycles? Well, they do. So you would think that with all that training, and the implanted knowledge that you fold while the clothes are still HOT, that the boy would have learned to do the job properly, BUT NOOOOOO!

     I go to the laundry room to start a load of the Ladybug's clothes only to find that my son did not finish the laundry he started..............three days ago! So, STRIKE ONE is the souring laundry left in the washer, UGH! Warm water and vinegar to the rescue! After a cycle of the warm and vinegar I washed it AGAIN with laundry detergent and softener. That's better. STRIKE TWO, not folding the laundry in the dryer while it was still hot enough not to get wrinkles, wait! What is that sticking to the glass of the dryer door? Could it be? REALLY??? Yes, yes it is, MY Orbit Spearmint GUM (so that's where it went)! AGH!!!! I pulled each piece of clothing out of the dryer checking it for gum and residue, blessedly it seems to be only on the glass and the dryer itself, not the clothing. 

     O.M.Gum! I have NEVER had to deal with this before, and I had NO CLUE how to get gum out of a dryer. I tried ice, but the streaks of gum were not thick enough for ice to do anything to it. I tried alcohol, didn't really do anything. I tried peanut butter (hey, it works for hair!), but that also didn't do anything. BUT, as I was using a paper towel and vinegar to get the peanut butter grease out of the dryer the darnedest thing happened! The gum started to come off! I tried another area that I hadn't used the peanut butter on, just to make sure it wasn't a combo effect. Nope, the gum was still coming up with just the vinegar. Sure it smelled strongly awful, and hot (ever smelled hot vinegar? NOT pleasant!), but IT WORKED!

I can now officially say: Been There,  Tried That on removing gum from a dryer drum! 

(not that I ever wanted to be able to say that, but whatever!)