That's a Whole Lotta Money!!!!

Kelvin and I have been thinking about ways we can cut corners on our budget to help pay off our student loans faster so I have started to look into different things.  I watched an episode of "Extreme Couponing" and decided right away that that wasn't for me.  I mean lets be honest, I didn't want to store hundreds of items in a small space that we won't use within the next 6 months to a year or spend 40 hours a week getting the list together.  Plus I always HATE it when a sale item at the store is gone because someone bought everyone they had in stock.  Then I next looked into little things that we could do ourselves and came across a recipe for Homemade Laundry Soap on a blog.  I was intrigued and so I read all the comments about how it worked for other people.  There were a lot of good responses and a few people even posted that they used it with their baby clothes because it wasn't harsh at all.  Well, after some thought I decided that I just might try such a feat!  After getting the necessary items  Kelvin and I put it all together.  The house smelt WONDERFUL for the rest of the day, so clean and fresh.  It made 2 gallon zip lock bags worth (you should store the soap in an air tight container) and uses 1-2 Tbs per load.  Pretty sure we have plenty of soap for an entire year!!!  Total cost $19.24 INCLUDING tax.  FOR AN ENTIRE YEARS SUPPLY OF LAUNDRY SOAP!

All the ingredients necessary!  

Everything together in a 5 gallon bucket, the grated soap is on top and looks a lot like cheese to me!

 Everything mixed together.  We tried to use the spoon but it really didn't work well.  We ended up taking the garbage bag out and mixing it by rolling the bag around.  That worked a lot better and easier although I would say if you do it that way, make sure to line the bucket with 2 garbage bags so you don't have a mess!

When I used it on my clothes it did wash them well only it was weird because of a few differences.  The first thing I noticed is that it doesn't get many suds if any at all which is something that was strange to me when thinking about washing something and the next was the clothes didn't come out smelling like a "spring breeze"  which I equate to using too many soaps with fragrance!  You could add fragrance if you wanted I guess but the soap smells great on it's own, it just doesn't transfer to the clothes very easily.  All in all we are pleased with our homemade laundry soap and I feel great every time I use it knowing that I only spent $19.24 for an entire year of soap!

If interested in the recipe/blog or other ideas on how to save money making your own things, check out the blog I got my recipe off of.  It even has DIY dish washing detergent. 
beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/homemade-laundry-soap.html