Frugal Homemaking

I’m of the opinion that we are a culture who will believe an infomercial over our grandmother.  We will believe a company, making money on us, over a friend.

We believe that cloth diapering is complicated origami and unhygienic.  A lot of work and dirty.  If we didn’t believe that, an entire industry would go down the drain.

We believe that feeding our baby either food or milk is complicated and time consuming.  If we didn’t believe that, another industry would fail.  When we get it through our brains that baby food is as complicated as taking the vegetable from your plate and mashing it with your fork, life actually gets more simple…not more complicated.  If you’re like me and don’t have many hands to spare during a meal to mash a vegetable, it’s pretty simple to do ahead of time in bulk as well!

If you ever wonder why the cost of having kids is so high, look into what you actually need for your kids.  Knut continually shakes his head at how cheap having kids has actually been for us.  Sure, things have to be done differently in bigger numbers than small.  It’s cheaper for us to drive than fly now.  They certainly aren’t free, and now that they do eat food, they are eating lots of it.  The older they get, the more expensive they are getting.  However, a baby’s needs are more simple than our materialistic society seems to tell us.

It’s not like you get one big bill when you have a child.  It’s dollars here and dollars there.  Most people don’t realize that they spend over $600 on disposable diapers in a year.  Depending on when you potty train your child, you’re looking at over $1000 easily, and let’s get real…probably closer to $1500…if you use generic.  $300 for cloth may look expensive because you don’t buy it in $15 increments like disposables.  In all reality, it’s cheaper.

Baby food doesn’t look expensive when you see the little $.80 price tag on it.  When you realize that making your own would cost $.10 or less, though…it’s pretty expensive.

The cost of living is so expensive because we are a culture saturated with the message that everything is hard.

Let me enlighten you that hard is easy over 90% of the time.  As in, it takes you 1.2 minutes to do instead of 1 minute.  Sometimes, the same exact amount of time.

Here are things I do because I find them fun, not easier/cost effective/faster:
knitting
sewing clothes from scratch (not mending)

Here are things I do because they are as easy/take as much time/EXTREMELY cost effective and I can make fun because I’m saving so much money, and the end product often tastes better/is healthier/is more valuable:

cloth diapering
cooking from scratch- including homemade stock/broth, using my bread machine, etc.
making baby food
breastfeeding
gardening (OK, this one takes a lot of time in my opinion, but the taste can’t be beat and I’m hooked)
and…
making homemade laundry detergent

What’s that?  Yep, I’m converted to the homemade laundry detergent crowd now.  Well, at least I’m about to give it a try.  In all honesty, with my track record it was just a matter of time.  When I heard of other homemakers cutting their laundry cost by 80%, I perked up.  If I complain about laundry, it’s usually the work, not the cost. 

Looking into making my own detergent led me to a number of sites where people got into these huge arguments over ingredients and whether or not their recipe works with cloth diapers, and with sensitive skin.  One thing they all agreed on were that store bought detergents have fillers to make it look pretty, dyes, fragrances, and chemicals that are the scum of the earth (in their opinion).  So basically, any recipe you find is an improvement from that.  So while I’m sure you could find something better than mine, or something that would work better with your water and your washer, here’s what I’m trying.

Here is the recipe that I’m using (#1) although I’ll be doubling it and putting it in a 5 gallon bucket.  Here’s my breakdown of costs:

Fels Naptha bar soap= $.97
Washing Soda = $2.77
Borax = $2.98
total: $ 6.72

I got all those things in the laundry aisle at Walmart, so pretty easy to obtain.

Plus a 5 gallon bucket with lid = $3ish (I paid an extra dollar to get a simple white bucket instead bright orange Home Depot one that was cheaper.  Call me vain but I couldn’t stand the idea of the ugly orange thing in my sewing room that has to accommodate laundry as well!  Walmart had 5 gallon buckets cheap but not a single employee there could find the lids to go with them!) 

The detergent I used before was $4.74 for 32 loads.  That’s $.14/load

A double batch should stretch 128 loads, which will almost fill my new bucket.  That makes $.05 a load for the first bucket.  Although for the next double batch I’ll need to buy another laundry bar soap (as a double batch uses 2/3 bar).  I have plenty of leftover of the other 2 ingredients for several more batches. So the next time I fill up the 5 gallon pail, I’ll have to spend another $.97 for more bar soap and that will cover my supplies for the next 2 bucket fulls.  So if you average the cost of filling the 5 gallon pail 3 times, it will average out to about $.02 a load for laundry soap.  That’s an incredible drop from $.14 don’t you think!  We do roughly 10-14 loads of laundry a week including diapers.  So one pail of this should last me at least 10 weeks.  Savings for one year I estimate to be over $80.  That’s not an enormous amount, but for so little work, I think it will be worth it.  It will just take a few minutes over the stove every 3 months or so.  From the recipe, it sounds easier and faster than a batch of no bake cookies, and I make those all the time on a whim.

There are easier recipes out there for powder laundry soap, but I have a front loader and I’ve had a tough time using powdered soap.  For some reason anything powdered makes it not drain very well.

From my google research, it seems as though some cloth diaper people don’t like recipes with the bar soap, as the oils in it can clog diapers, and other people say they have no problem with it at all.  Still others say if they notice a drop in absorption, they simply add some vinegar to the rinse cycle to strip out any residue.  That’s my current plan.  Plus I picked a recipe that had a smaller ratio of the bar soap than others, hoping that will help as well.  Homemade laundry soap is supposed to be better for sensitive skin, waaaay better for the wallet and easy on the clothes.  We shall see!  I’m hoping to whip up a big batch tonight.  Then I’ll probably make some cookies to reward myself for being so cheap frugal.