make your own cleaning products

this blog post is a confluence of several streams of thought for me; one is my continued attempt to tread lightly on the earth and reduce toxics in my own life, another is my concern with treading lightly on my pocketbook, especially in this economy and with my (soon to be over) long stint of unemployment. so in all my unemployed leisure time spent cleaning the house, i've been bothered by having to shell out a lot of money for cleaners that are likely giving me - and moreso whomever is bottling them and living next to their factories - cancer.
that said, i'm also not one to suffer salmonella in my kitchen or mildew in my shower.
so with the energy of new years resolutions to get cleaner and more organized, i offer my efforts at making your own non-toxic cleaning products.

i started with laundry soap, because our house was recently graced by the presence of laundry machines (thanks, sele!) that have changed my life and made me smile daily. i've been filling the washer with buckets of water collected from the drip in our shower - which is really just a stop-gap measure until the landlord decides to prioritize fixing the leak. i'm not holding my breath. but what's really been irking me is how much laundry detergent costs at the store, and how i have to sort of shut out my conscious consumer mentality to just buy whatever's cheapest because i can't afford the luxury of nontoxic. so when my friend harold suggested that i could make my own laundry soap i was intrigued. it took me a while to compile all the requisite ingredients, so let me detail them here for you.

Fels Naptha: it's a laundry bar soap meant for treating stains. i've read that some people say you can use any kind of bar soap for this (as in ivory, lever 2000, etc) but i found fels naptha in the laundry aisle at my drugstore and it was under $2 so i got it.


Borax: a kind of scary-sounding, though apparently non-toxic, chemical compound that's useful for all kinds of around-the-house things like cleaning and making things less smelly and maybe warding off ants. also found easily in the laundry aisle. i love that it's called "20 mule team."

Washing Soda: this is potentially the hardest ingredient to find - i found it at the giant Longs instead of the down-the-street Longs, but i've read several comments online saying people have a hard time finding it at their local supermarket, so best of luck with this one. you can buy it online, but i couldn't justify the shipping cost. it's sort of like baking soda, as you can see, but a little different - so don't try to substitute. specifically, washing soda is sodium carbonate, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate (one less sodium and one more hydrogen atom). i'd never heard of it before, but apparently it is also useful in laundry and household cleaning.

other than that you'll need a big bucket, a grater, measuring cup, and big pot, and potentially a blender, but i'll get to that later.

there are several recipes out there for laundry soap, all basically using the same ingredients. i chose to go with this one because it used less washing soda and i heard somewhere that it can be harsh on your clothing to use a lot of washing soda. but i found this one today and it has prettier formating on its website, so i'm likely to try it next time. plus that recipe didn't really work out for me (details below) so i'm in the market for a new one.
i'll let you follow one of those recipes if you're going to make your own laundry soap, since my process went astray somewhere, but here's the general idea:
you grate the bar soap into cute shavings.


you boil this in water until they dissolve and then add the washing soda and borax, then you add a lot more water and leave it in a bucket overnight.


after 24 hours you are supposed to open up your bucket to find a laundry soap gel resembling egg noodle soup consistency. however, mine was a solid block of gel, more like cosby sweater consistency. here's what it looked like after i tried stirring it:


the guy who maintains the website i got my recipe from says that this has happened to other people where their soap turns into solid gel, but doesn't offer any advice further than it's not supposed to happen. he does offer that it still works fine, but i didn't want to have to take a bite out of my laundry soap every time i do a load, so i decided to blend it.


this resulted in a more watery-frothy consistency, which i decided was better than a solid, so i went ahead and filled an empty laundry detergent container and left the rest in a covered bucket, because this makes a LOT of laundry soap. which makes this a super economical way to do laundry. this guy has done a full cost breakdown analysis and says it comes out to about two cents per load of laundry, which is great even considering your own labor costs since the process is pretty quick and only involves grating and boiling water.


i haven't done laundry yet to tell you how the soap works, though that guy also has a case to make about that that involves spreading mustard on his shirts (i'm not about to go that far).
i hear you can put essential oils in your soap once it cools to make it smell however you want, though i couldn't find a scent on hand that both marty and i would want our clothes smelling like.


in addition to laundry soap, i also found this tutorial on making your own household cleaners. she has simple recipes for glass cleaner, furniture polish, air deoderizer, floor cleaner, and the two i made:

All Purpose Cleaner
1/2 tsp washing soda
1/2 tsp liquid Castille soap
2 cups hot water
10-15 drops essential oil
Spray Bottle

Disinfectant
Hydrogen Peroxide
10-15 drops essential oil
Spray Bottle

i used dr. bronners (magic hippy soap) for my castille soap, and though i was skeptical that 1/2 a teaspoon of soap was going to do anything for my cleaning purposes, i have to say that my bathroom sink never looked so sparkly.
as you can see from the photo, i covered my disinfectant spray bottle with opaque tape, since hydrogen peroxide loses its effectiveness if exposed to sunlight. and i used tea tree oil in both of these for its antiseptic qualities.
i believe you can also use castille soap to make your own dish soap, but it doesn't seem to be any more cost effective to me so i haven't tried it.
if this post inspires you to try making your own cleaning products or you have any money- and earth-saving tips to share, please comment.