Unstuffed: Suds

Monday, January 23, 2012

Suds

I hope my recent spate of posts on household frugality aren't becoming too tiresome for readers. I suspect I'm probably mostly preaching to the choir anyway. It's just that, being deep in winter hibernation mode at the moment, I have a lot of time to look around my space and reflect on my habits and daily routines. I have the time to make changes and shift patterns if I want, and so the subject of frugality is all very top of mind. I'm just going to go with it while it lasts.

This weekend I made my own laundry soap. For the past couple of years I have been getting bulk refills of environmentally friendly dish and laundry soap. I really like having this option because it significantly cuts down on packaging. However it is fairly expensive, the store where I buy the soap is in an area I don't frequent regularly, so I would make special trips just to go there, and sometimes they would be out of what I was looking for. I've also become increasingly concerned with the use of palm oil in detergents (even environmentally friendly ones).

So when I came across this easy method of making my own laundry soap, very inexpensively and with relatively safe ingredients, that is nearly waste free, I jumped at the chance to give it a try.

This was so quick and easy to make, I washed my first load of laundry with the soap within a half hour of starting the process. Time will tell how well it compares to the detergent I was using before, but I have a feeling making my own laundry soap will become part of the routine from now on.

I also found this recipe, using the same ingredients, to make a large amount of laundry powder. I might try it at some point as well, although I'll probably halve the amount.

I'd love to hear from anyone else making their own laundry soap and what the experience has been like!

2 comments:

Tony R said...: Thanks for the video, I love the idea of reducing packaging. Over the years, I have just stop buying stuff (Not laundry soap) because of all the packaging...now I'm learning I can just make it all at home.

Do you agree with the narrator that this soap works better?; January 24, 2012 at 9:09 AM
Amber said...: Well I did a load of whites yesterday and noticed that they seemed brighter than usual, and some old stains, that the other stuff I used never got out, are gone now. The soap doesn't leave any residue behind and my clothes smell clean and fresh!

It did congeal like she said it would, and shaking it up liquified it again, but it still is a little gloopy. That doesn't seem to make a difference though in performance. I'm happy with it so far. :) I can't believe I haven't been doing this for ages already.; January 25, 2012 at 11:04 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali