Laundry List

It's been awhile since I've been in my rhythm.  So many things I used to do are finally starting to be done again.  Like making laundry soap.  It's not hard, I just didn't do it while we were moving (why, I don't know.  I could have whipped up a batch in the time it took me to realize I was almost out and run to the store...silly me.)  However, today was a very productive day.  The laundry soap set up perfectly, two loads were washed with it (insert sigh of awesome contentedness here), and dried, and they smell wonderfully clean.  I have many different recipes that I like, and I've found them on various websites and blogs over time.  And many of those sites will tell you how great it is that you're washing your clothes for a penny a load over the price of commercial detergents.  Some will tell you how much better it is for the environment (much less packaging for many more loads). 

But my favorite thing?  The ingredients are not things that can only be used to wash clothes.  If I stock a bunch of laundry detergent, pre-made, by whatever brand, that is what I can use it for.  It is already mixed up, has optical brighteners and fragrances, and I wouldn't use it to wash my floor (unless I wanted to rinse and rinse forever, and still go flying across it if ever my feet were wet).  However, the three (yes THREE) ingredients in the simple soap I make can be used for other things.  And when you are looking to stock your shelves with emergency things, as well as practical ones, having things on hand that serve multiple purposes makes more sense.

1) Fels-Naptha Soap: 

• Poison Ivy treatment/prevention
• Cleaning showers
• Insect control
• Spring/Fall lawn tonic (it's one ingredient)
• Hide tanning (if you're into that stuff--the hides of deer and moose and elk and such, not people!)

2)  Washing Soda (NOT the same thing as baking soda).  Annie has a great list...so I'm not going to copy her.

3) Borax

• Making homemade Gak (do you remember this stuff from childhood?!?  My kids love it when I make it)
• A list of 25 uses