Eco-Friendly Living

I cannot provide you with a recipe for eco friendly laundry detergent, but I can give you a couple of other tips which will help the green in your wallet.

If you have bubble bath, shampoo, liquid dish soap, or even liquid or bar soap, that you don't care for (Perhaps some of the sweet smelly bath soaps we get as gifts).  Use them to wash your clothes in.  When I have a bar of soap that I don't care for or am sick of, I take my cheese grater and grate soap into the washing machine.  It depends on the size of your load, but a regular sized bar soap can do at least 4-5 loads of laundry.  I also use shampoo that I want to get rid of, using less than you would liquid laundry soap.  Shampoo, dish soap, laundry soap...they have grease cutters in them.  Naturally you can use these to do the opposite too....shampoo with dish soap (harsh though, but still cleans) Wash dishes with laundry soap, shampoo, etc.  I buy shampoo in the big bottles sometimes and end up using it up as liquid hand soap too.  It's all interchangeable.

Speaking of liquid laundry soap.  I love doing research.  So, I was certain that the liquid laundry soap was NOT giving me the number of loads that it said on the bottle.  So I tested a couple.  One was store brand, the other was not.  I do not remember which ones; it was a couple of years ago.  Neither one provided the number of loads that was stated on the bottle.  So, I did powder detergents.  They DID give the number that was stated on the box.  One even gave a few extra washes.

Just thought it was interesting.

I've never counted the number of loads....that's really interesting!

Rather than grate down old bars of soap, I soak them in hot water until they are mushy and refill the bathroom soap dispensers with that mixture. Sometimes I have to add extra water or it clogs the pump, but we manage to use every scrap THAT way so I've never even thought of the laundry.....good idea!

 

MARTi, CL (Crazy Lady) of Crafts and Co-CL of Crafter's Community ! CL for Eco-Friendly Living !Come and visit me!!

Be Green! It's good for the earth and your budget, too! 

MAKE ART, NOT WAR!

I like people so much I decided to be one .

 

(and I love them!)

Do you use Oxiclean with cold water?  Years ago I read that you must use warm. I soak  things in it but since I have only cold water running to my washer, I have not really used it there until the last few loads. Since I am a person who has dingy whites, this would be a big help to me.

Trudy