We made soap! (WFMW)

I’m so excited! I went over to my mom’s house yesterday and together we made our own liquid laundry soap. We used the recipe that I found before, which we doubled and divided, and the whole process went very smoothly. We used Zote bar soap to create our soap base, which smells like a strong version of Ivory, so the finished product has a nice pleasing scent and a soft pink color to it. (The pink is just a sweet little benefit!)

It was easy and I am pleased with the finished product. It takes about 24 hours to gel, but I went ahead and used a little to wash a load of towels. They came out smelling and feeling very nice. I repeat, I am pleased!

The best part is all the money we’re going to save. When we were done we sat down and calculated our costs. We used 2/3 bar of Zote (53 cents) and 1 cup each of Borax (53 cents) and Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (72 cents) to make 4 gallons of detergent for a total project cost of $1.78, or 45 cents per gallon. And one gallon is good for 32 loads.

After all the numbers were crunched, we realized that using a half cup of this soap per load will cost us a penny and a half!!

Just to put that into perspective, I calculated the approximate cost per load for some name brand liquid detergents (naturally prices vary by location–I used Amazon.com for pricing information).

• Arm & Hammer, 23 cents per load.
• All Small & Mighty, 24 cents a load.
• Purex Free & Clea, 24 cents per load.
• Gain Original, 30 cents per load.
• Cheer Color Guard Free & Gentle, 39 cents per load.
• Tide with Downy, 43 cents per load.
• Dreft, 45 cents a load.
• Original Tide costs 46 cents per load!

Now, I’m not trashing any of these products. I used Cheer Free for years and I like Tide with Downy and I’m happy with All Small & Mighty, too. But to be honest, I just can’t afford them. Our little store here in town overcharges for these kinds of things and it is 30 minutes to the nearest big supermarket. And at three dollars a gallon for gas, I don’t shop over there very often. So lately I’ve been using cheap soaps from the dollar store, which still runs around a quarter for a load. If I were to wash a load of laundry a day for an entire year with my homemade soap instead of buying…say, Arm & Hammer for example, I would spend 5.48 dollars on laundry soap for the entire year and save over 78 dollars!! Can you tell I am excited?!

Other benefits are that I better know what is going into my soap and also that by keeping these things in stock I can make other homemade products as well. I’ve already seen how useful Borax can be and I’ve also made my own dishwasher detergent which works very well and is also very cheap.

So in case you can’t tell.. I am thrilled!

Works For Me Wednesday is hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer. Head over!