Never Say Never

I have decided to start a new blog series entitled "Never Say Never."

As I age and grow I am finding myself on a regular basis saying, "You know how I used to say I would NEVER (fill in the blank), well..." I have decided to start blogging my "nevers."

This blog is specifically going to address the task of making your own laundry detergent.

First and fore most, I would like to apologize to my sweet Alisa.  I dismissed her years ago when she raved about the cost effectiveness of making your own laundry detergent.

In my defense (Jared always tells the kids the best apology is one that stands on it's own with no qualifiers...sorry Alisa :)), I have been having babies on a pretty constant schedule for 11 years and adding a task, any task, made my head explode.  Now that things have settled down I have begun to review my stand on making laundry detergent.

Pinterest making it not only popular, but almost an initiation to the cool cyber club has everything nothing to do with it.

First of all there's the issue with smells.  I'm smell sensitive.  I want my laundry to smell like fresh laundry.  Not like...nothing.  The biggest complaint I've heard about making your own soap is that it has no scent.  So I purchased some essential oils from Amazon.  My scent of choice is Clean Cotton.  I was hoping it would smell like the Yankee Candle, it does not but it is a very clean fresh smell.

The biggest kicker for me was cost.  I figured out that I spend around $.50/load with the Gain laundry detergent and fabric softener.  After doing the math on the homemade laundry I was sold.  As a family of 7 we average 3 loads a day.  The homemade soap is less than 1 cent per load.  

I can't stress this enough, that was not a typo.

LESS THAN ONE CENT A LOAD

That my friends is a savings of $1.49 a day for this household.  In the link I'm about to share she also suggests using vinegar as your fabric softener.  It does not change the smell of your laundry at all and it does work.  I was super impressed and it's great for your machine and your clothes.  Not to mention  the debate over the safety of fabric softeners (read here).

So, I said I would NEVER make my own soap.  That was ridiculous!

What was ridiculous was not looking into how incredibly simple it was let alone cost effective.  The second biggest issue I hear is whether it works or not.  In my experience so far it works better to remove yellowing and smells from our clothes.  I am super impressed.

So there you have it.  If you want to be cool, loved, liked, allowed into the elite Pinterest group frugal and smell clean you simply must click:

HERE