upping my dirty hippie-cred

   SO! I felt like my dirty hippie-cred was somewhat diminished after a conversation that happened on my wall over at the Facespace (basically I admitted that while I knew good and well Splenda was already showing up in our waterways and having unknown effects on the feeding pattern of key bottom-of-the-foodchain small critters, I found powdered Stevia in coffee to be utterly repulsive and resorted to some sweet, sweet molecularly-muddled sugar product instead like a damn ecoterrorist and then a bunch of friends weighed in until finally a friend of mine from a third-world country pointed out that were were all a bunch of overly-precious assholes, although not in so many words), plus we were almost out of laundry detergent. So today I followed some instructions I found in several spots around the innernet, added my own little twist, and made us some at home.

 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

  You will need Ivory soap: 

washing soda:

borax:

and (optional) an essential oil of your choice to scent your detergent (I used lavender):

Step One: gather your ingredients. You will also need a large pan or mixing bowl, a grater, and a whisk, as well as something to put your detergent in (I re-used a laundry detergent box that already had a scoop of the right size--you're supposed to use two to four tablespoons of this stuff per load of wash).

Step Two: grate one bar of Ivory per "batch" of detergent that you are making. I found that five "batches" filled our detergent box to about the same level as its' original contents, which was important since I wanted to do a price comparison. Use the fine side of the grater; the soap is very easy to grate and ends up looking a lot like something you'd want to put on top of spaghetti.

Step Three: add one cup per "batch" apiece of the washing soda and borax, blend with the whisk until you reach a nice "scoopable" texture. Then add a few sprinkles of essential oil and blend some more.

   And there you have it: homemade laundry detergent. Here is my box with four of five "batches" in it.

   I did a test load of wash, and in my opinion the homemade detergent works at least as well as what I had been using before (in fact, I think it works BETTER for removing odors--included in the test load were some hand-me-down sweaters my co-worker/friend at PseudoCorp gave me, and she is a smoker so to me they kind of reeked going in but smelled nice and clean coming out). But does this actually save any money? Here are the prices I paid for the ingredients.

Ivory: $18.06 for 32 bars = $0.56 per bar
Washing Soda: $5.97 for 55 oz = $0.87 per cup
Borax: $7.88 for 76 oz = $0.83 per cup
Lavender Oil: $8.75 for 0.5 oz* = I figure I used about $0.10 worth of this per batch

   So one "batch" of homemade detergent costs $2.36, and it took five batches to fill my detergent box. Therefore, the per-box cost of the homemade stuff is $11.80. How does that measure up against the retail equivalent (green-friendly, scented)?

   VICTORY! I saved $2.25, plus there's the intangible value of being insufferable and saying I make my own laundry detergent any chance I get, which you really can't put a price on. Probably I could get the cost down a little further if I bought my ingredients from an actual store (with the exception of the Ivory I ordered mine from Drugstore.com in order to use eBates and get cash back at the rate of 12% as of when I made my purchases, plus "Drugstore dollars" [5%] and accounted for my savings in the prices I listed), but I prefer shopping online, and pretty much ONLY do so when I can score free shipping. This saves me time and schlepping. Plus to really save I'd most likely have to patronize a Soulless Corporate Megalith store, and I don't like to do that; I don't know for a fact that Amazon and Drugstore.com treat their workers well, but I DO know for a fact that Soulless Corporate Megalith treats their workers like SHIT, and that's to say nothing of what they do to small businesses when one comes to town. So I'll take saving the $2.25 and earning bragging rights and call it a day.

   And how are all of YOU?

 

*  If you're looking at what I paid for lavender oil vs. the price listed on the Amazon Affiliates widget and wondering if I be cray, the answer is yes and no. The lavender oil I used was what I had on-hand, which was organic and therefore kind of pricey, but I prefer to use organic essential oils since I mostly use them for bath and body products and other things, like detergent, that will come into contact with human skin. We have sensitive skin here. So I didn't overpay, but I did consciously choose a more expensive product.

Comments

[krlr]

so, um, please take this lightly, 'cause lord knows I wouldn't want to give you a hard time, nor sick the "damn ecoterrorists" on myself, but is the homemade stuff all that more awesome for the environment? I mean, what IS borax, really? I'm unilaterally ruling out self-sustainibility because when the zombies come, it's going to be just as hard to pick up more Ivory as it would be to buy more Tide. And maybe you wouldn't WANT to smell like fresh lavender anyway, if there were zombies running about, since they'd probably sniff you out that way. So that leaves, as you say, bragging rights. That and your $2.25... will get you a cuppa coffee, which you now may have earned the right to pollute with yummy yummy splenda.

[MFA Mama]

That is an excellent question! Ultimately while I think this stuff is better than, say, Tide, it is probably still not suitable for use if you're re-using your greywater for irrigation because of the borax (boron). Boron is a necessary micronutrient that all plants need (you know how you sometimes see broccoli with hollow stalks? That is boron deficiency), but when you're making homemade soil amendment you only use about three teaspoons per hundred row-feet (I was wrong when I said 1.5 in my e-mail to you, krlr, and looked it up before addressing in the comments) and excess boron is toxic to plants (which will continue to absorb the stuff as long as there is more there) and so I am thinking that this would be too much boron to use the washing-machine water in your garden. Which is a buzzkill, because we're planning to start doing just that when the weather warms up. There is a detergent called Oasis that is specifically formulated for use in greywater systems, and I think I'll be switching to that in a couple of months but for now I think this is, if not GOOD, then at least BETTER than most commercial preparations.

God, I'm insufferable.

[lala]

and how much do you factor in as the cost of your own labour?

[MFA Mama]

Well, I didn't. But seeing as this literally took less than ten minutes, I still think it's worthwhile (and even if I factored it in at the current hourly rate I make at my highest-paying job, we still come out ahead).

[K]

I've yet to go there with this homemade detergent business, but I HAVE heard from multiple people that it is crazy easy and also smells great and works well.