{"id":2153,"date":"2010-05-28T19:57:30","date_gmt":"2010-05-29T00:57:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2010-05-28T23:25:49","modified_gmt":"2010-05-29T04:25:49","slug":"adventures-in-soap-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/?p=2153","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Soap-Making"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/a><\/p>\n

I think the first time I ever heard of making your own laundry detergent was on the show 17 Kids and Counting<\/a> (back when it was only 17, it’s 19 now!). \u00a0At the time I probably thought it seemed like a reasonably good idea… for a family that owns something like five industrial sized washers and does ten loads of laundry a day. \u00a0 But really, how much could it save a “normal” (well, comparatively speaking) family?<\/p>\n

Trevor, who had long been encountering homemade laundry soap on his personal finance blogs, convinced me it was enough. It’s apparently not how much you save per load, but how much you save per batch – and a batch lasts for.ev.er – that is a pretty persuasive figure.<\/p>\n

So, we began making our own laundry soap (freaks!) a little over a year ago. \u00a0Here<\/a>‘s the recipe we base our soap on. \u00a0It’s a pretty quick little job to make several gallons, and we fight over who gets to grate the bar of soap. \u00a0I guess that makes us sound pretty easily amused, but, uh… it really is fun.<\/p>\n

It was all going marvelously well, until we were shopping for a new washing machine back in January. \u00a0The frontloader we wanted to buy came with the caveat to use only “high-efficiency” detergent. \u00a0This immediately set off our sneaky-cost detectors, so we asked the salesman if we could still use our home brew. \u00a0He thought so, since we assured him it wasn’t very sudsy at all, and this is the main failing of the ordinary detergent when used in our new machine, so we bought one.<\/p>\n

Fast forward, through three-plus months of perfect performance by washing machine and homemade soap alike, to last Friday.<\/p>\n

I started a load of wash, walked out of the kitchen, and walked back in a few minutes later to find a huge puddle on my floor. \u00a0At first I thought our poor terrier-on-steroids (long story) had had an accident. \u00a0Then I wished<\/em> our terrier-on-steroids had had an accident, because the truth was, the puddle was still expanding at an alarming rate and coming from the bottom of the washing machine.<\/p>\n

Of course I let the cycle continue anyway – I didn’t want to deal with sopping wet clothes on top of the dozen sopping wet towels that now lined my kitchen floor. \u00a0Then after this fiasco, I went through the same very wet process twice more over the weekend before resigning myself to the fact that it wasn’t just a fluke.<\/p>\n

On Monday, I called the manufacturer. \u00a0A lovely, if slightly stiff-sounding lady talked me through emptying the filter and drain pipe. There wasn’t much in there, so I wasn’t hopeful, but when I ran the “rinse and spin” afterwards, lo and behold, no water pouring all over my kitchen floor!<\/p>\n

‘Fabulous!\u00a0 Problem solved’, I thought. \u00a0‘I’ll just run a load now that the machine’s all fixed up.’ \u00a0Five minutes later, I heard “Mommy!!!” And the kitchen floor was under water again.<\/p>\n

When I called back, I got a woman in India or similar. \u00a0 After a series of questions, she asked me what kind of detergent I was using. \u00a0Here we go. \u00a0“Well, we make our own, but I’m sure it’s not that, because it’s not at all<\/em> sudsy, and they told us it’s the suds that cause the flooding with that other detergent.” \u00a0 Reluctantly, she sent out a technician.<\/p>\n

When he arrived, I explained to him what was happening.<\/p>\n

Washing Machine Man: What kind of soap you using?<\/p>\n

Me: Well, we make our own, but it’s not at all sudsy. \u00a0The people in the store told us we could use our own, as long as it wasn’t sudsy. \u00a0And it’s not. \u00a0At all.<\/p>\n

WMM: Did you just say you make your own soap<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Me: Yes.<\/p>\n

WMM: Out of what?<\/p>\n

Me: You can get the recipe online. \u00a0We didn’t just make it up. \u00a0Lots<\/em> of people do it.<\/p>\n

WMM: Well, you’re the first one I’ve ever met.<\/p>\n

Me: But we’ve been using it in this machine for months, and it’s always been fine. \u00a0I’m pretty sure it’s not the soap.<\/p>\n

WMM: (Reaching into the filter at the top where the soap goes in, and pulling out a fistful of undissolved soap) Well… here’s your soap…. Smells like Dove.<\/p>\n

Me: \u00a0It probably is.<\/p>\n

* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0* \u00a0*<\/p>\n

So, the bad news: it was the soap.<\/p>\n

The good news: WMM did *not* think we needed to stop using our soap. \u00a0In fact, he was quite impressed with how clean and odor-free it kept the machine compared to ordinary store-bought soap. \u00a0He even said we should market it! \u00a0He also said we should dissolve it in hot water first or mash it up, rather than just clumping jello-like chunks of it into our machine. \u00a0I knew that.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t<\/em> the suds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think the first time I ever heard of making your own laundry detergent was on the show 17 Kids and Counting (back when it was only 17, it’s 19 now!). \u00a0At the time I probably thought it seemed like … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frugal-living"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yiBw-yJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theyoungpages.com\/jodis_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}