Budgetess.com

Pop Quiz!

It’s time to do laundry. You reach up to the shelf to grab the detergent and remember, to your shock and horror, you’d used the last of it during a groggy, late-night laundry session. Your kids have no more clean clothing and you need to get them dressed ASAP. Do you

a) Run next door and beg for a cap full of laundry detergent?

b) Put your kid(s) in the most suitable PJs you can find and make a mad dash to the store?

c) Turn the water up to “kill everything alive” temperature  and hope for the best?

d) Dig through your pantry for something that could make detergent?

Results?

a) You have very nice, understanding, compassionate neighbors.

b) You need to brush up on your frugality.

c) You put too much trust in the power of the ultra-high temperature wash.

d) You understand that frugality means making due with what you have before spending money on a more convenient solution.

Of course, I’m a fan of D. It’s not that I don’t want to spend the money on laundry detergent. I just didn’t plan on doing it today and can probably find an adequate substitute in the mean time.

TipNut.com, a site that contains oodles of useful and thrifty information, offers 10 (count ‘em, ten) recipes for homemade laundry detergent. Today, when I discovered I was bereft of detergent, I took advantage of Recipe #8. It was ludicrously easy to make and, it seems, pretty darn cheap. I quartered the recipe to fit into a half-gallon liquid detergent bottle, and didn’t follow the directions exactly – I didn’t have the time to actually melt the soap – but it still worked great.

• Hot water
• 1/4 bar soap (I used Dial)
• 1/2 cup baking soda

Use a table knife to chop up the soap. Older, dryer soap will flake more easily. Drop it in the bottle.

Pour in the baking soda.

Fill the bottle slowly with water, to prevent the soap from bubbling. Replace the cap and give it a quick shake.

I had “excessively soiled” laundry, so I used two cap-fulls. The laundry came out smelling like a delightful nothing, which is much better than the Bohemian Market, Cascading Waterfall or Early Morning Wake-up scents that come in some commercial detergents.