Clean is Clean

Last summer I caught commercial promoting the upcoming newscast; they plugged a segment on a mom who made her own laundry soap.

What!? I'd never heard of such a thing! I didn't actually see the newscast that day but I looked into homemade laundry soap recipes over the following week. I decided to give it a try and see how easy it was to make, how cheap it could be, and how well it worked.

I've made three batches now. It takes about 10 minutes to make and lasts this family of four about 1 1/2 months.

The last time I made it I calculated what I paid for each portion of the recipe and approximately how many loads it lasted. I figured out that the laundry soap costs me about $0.02 a load! That's it. Well worth my 10 minutes a month.

This is a quick post about the process of making homemade laundry soap. The recipe I've followed lately is this one but really I just google 'homemade laundry soap' and make what I come across. Maybe it's about time I add the recipe to the recipe book.

I'm not going to post the entire recipe here because you can just go to www.thefamilyhomestead.com and follow her directions.


Start with Borax, A&H Washing Soda and Fels Naptha laundry bar soap. All these items can be found in laundry sections of larger grocery stores or most drug stores.


Grate 1/3 the Fels Naptha bar into a pot.


Cook the Fels Naptha shavings in water until melted down.


Add in the Washing Soda and Borax.


Stir until all incorporated.


Pour soap mix into a bucket already containing water. Add more water and stir.

Cover and let sit 24 hours.


It comes out looking like egg soup. The first two batches I made were runnier than this batch but it all washes the same.

Use 1/2 cup per load. I keep my 5 gallon bucket of soap (only half full) and scoop on the washer. Badda-boom, badda-bing.

The clothes I wash seem just as clean as when I use the expensive, scented name brand detergents. And I'm happy I'm saving money.

Lesson Learned

The lesson I've learned over the last month or more is that kids really don't care whether their room is a disaster. I grew tired of always reminding the kids to put away their things throughout the house so I decided to pick my battles in the main rooms only. What paid the price is their bedrooms, Carley's in particular. Josh is older and quite a bit neater. After a two month strike against bedroom duty, I've caved. Carley apparently has more staying power than me when it comes to messy bedrooms.


I'm completely embarrassed to admit it (obviously not so much that I won't post about it!) but this is what Carley's room looked like for the last month.


Please don't judge me harshly. I hated this view so much that I often kicked things out of the way to close the door. I really hoped that she would get to a point of possibly picking up something on her own. She used to clean her own room as a three-year-old. Why can't she do it now?


After our bit of Spring cleaning yesterday, I kept the motion going. Carley, with my guidance and assistance, tackled her room today.


And we finished. Completely.

My new strategy is to set my phone alarm to go off every evening at 6:00 for a quick clean-up rather than waiting until bedtime when we're all tired and crabby. Hopefully the new plan will work. We'll see.

Spring Cleaning

This is Spring cleaning Niki style.


(This is picture 11 of my 52 week project.)

Actually, I put the kids to work so they can feel accomplished and earn a trip to the playground. Recently I've slacked at giving them chores but I want them to learn that they need to contribute to the household. I want them to learn young that they can't just drift through life and expect everything to be done for them. I want them to learn that sometimes we all have to deep clean.

There is something about washing windows that they both love. They'll fight over who gets to do it. Today I side-tracked Josh by getting him to wash window sills and base boards instead. The house feels just a little brighter now. Aaahh. Now just to get them to do the grocery shopping and pay the bills.

Also note that Carely's hair is straight. I took the straightening iron to it today. Just for fun. Josh told her she should keep it that way.



Did you notice she's in the princess dress again? Any time she's not at school she's in a princess dress. With lipstick on. Such a girl.

Super Sunday

Here we are, Super Bowl Sunday already. Think we had a Super Bowl Party? Think we watched the Super Bowl? Nah.

Instead we had a Super clean-something-really-dirty Sunday.

It's been a beautiful week here. Unseasonally sunny and warm. After the gray, gloomy, rainy days when the sun starts to shine, it's easier to see things we've been missing. Things like really dirty windows.


Really dirty windows.


The bright, sunny days didn't look so great through the water spotted, smeared windows...


Or the finger streaked, chapstick kissed windows...


Or whole-face, goobered windows.

I couldn't take it anymore. I looked up a window cleaner recipe online and decided to give it a go. I mixed ammonia, vinegar and corn starch with warm water. I got myself a scrubber and a squeegee and went at the outside of those dirty windows.


After lots of hard work I could see the pay off. Clean windows!

Okay. There was still some water spots on the outside. Anyone know how to get those completely gone? What do they come from anyway? I am pleased as punch with my almost-completely clean windows.


Problem is... you can see my dirty yard now.


But I can see Walt washing the motorcycles through the clean windows. The windows are squeeky clean at this angle.

On a side note...

Walt was washing the motorcycles because he took Josh out riding yesterday. It was good for both of them to have some father-son time. And to top it off, they got to ride through some mud.


A lot of mud. They brought some home with them.

Back to the windows...

Don't they shine?

And now to wash the screens. And dust the blinds, paint the window sills, scoop the poop, clean the yard, sweep the patio ....

You know how it goes.