heart attacks and mcbutterpants

No, hubby didn't have another heart attack, thank God. But last time I was in the Costco laundry detergent isle putting my hand on the big ol' box of detergent we always buy, I almost had one! It went up in price over $6 from the last time we bought it!
So, my hand flew off that box like it was on fire and I slowly backed out of the isle, shaking my head in disbelief. No way. No how. Luckily for us, I'd been reading up on home made laundry detergent, how much cheaper it was and how much less of it you have to use than the commercial stuff. So my thought was, I can do this!

Here's what you need:



1 bar Fels Naptha (can use regular Ivory or Zotes bar too), grated finely
1 1/2 cups WASHING soda (NOT baking soda)
1 1/2 cups Borax powder

I found all of these items on the laundry detergent isle at Kroger. The first batch I made, I only used 1/3 of the bar, 1/2 washing soda, and 1/2 cup borax. Then I figured out, you could just make a bigger, longer lasting batch if you used the whole bar and tripled the amount of the powders.

Here I am grating the bar of soap, using gardening gloves so I can get that last little bit of soap through the grater and not my skin :-)



Mix it all together and store in airtight container. Mine is in an old, (large size) sour cream container. All three ingredients with tax cost a grand total of $7.43 and the boxes of powder will probably last me all year, I'll only have to buy more bars of soap (those were $1.19)

Here's the deal about this. And it's NO JOKE, we've been using it for over a month and so I know it works. You use 1 TABLESPOON for light loads or 2 TABLEspoons for heavy loads. Just mix it all together, don't worry about the amount of grated soap you get in each scoop, it all comes out in the wash! Yes, your clothes get clean!!



OK, the final kicker is this. Don't faint. I've been using VINEGAR as my fabric softener! Yep, regular white vinegar! And we don't smell like a pickle! In fact, all of our towels, sheets, etc. smell better than they ever have! And I'm a faithful Downy user from way back, so I was skeptical! Actually, I read somewhere that if you had any fabric softener left over, you could mix it with the vinegar for scent (some people add essential oils for fragrance, but it's not a must), so I've been adding 1 teaspoon to each 1/4 cup vinegar and putting that in the Downy Ball with each load. But when the Downy runs out, that's it. A huge gallon bottle of vinegar cost a little over $2 at the WalMarts :-)

I feel better about laundry now :-) Cutting back in small ways really adds up!

Speaking of cutting back....have you seen Muttley lately? He's one year old now and we're thinking it's time for him to get rid of that baby fat....

so here's Muttley, aka Fatty McButterpants, aka Laser Eyes



Yes, we have an Amazon pug!

Astro is not fat, but check out that face roll....



Happy Sunday y'all!