Hello all! I have not blogged about Hippie cleaning for a while, so I thought I would walk you through making laundry soap. I am dangerously low, so today I NEED to make it. Cloth diapers+no laundry soap=FAIL! The recipe is the basic one found all over the internet. I have played with it a little and have a recipe that I think works best with cloth diapers to get them clean and smelling nice, as well as everyday laundry and eliminates the need for fabric softener, which I am allergic to!
Supplies:
1 bar Fels Naptha or Ivory soap (I like the smell of the Fels better!)
1 cup Super Washing Soda
1 cup Borax
1 vinegar
water
1 cup measure
1 small pan
wooden spoon
hammer or grater
cookie sheet
5 gallon bucket
laundry soap container
funnel
either grate or smash the bar of soap. I like to beat it with the hammer on a cookie sheet, it's more fun! Crumble it up with yous hands. I like to take out a Tablespoon of the soap and mix in a spray bottle of HOT water for a stain spray.
Put the crumbled soap in a pan with 2 cups water on medium heat and stir till melted. You need to babysit it a little, be patient.
While this is melting, fill the 5 gallon bucket half full of HOT water and add 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Super Washing Soda, and 1 cup vinegar and stir to dissolve.
Once soap is melted, pour into bucket and top off with HOT water, stir. Snap lid onto bucket and you have laundry soap concentrate! When ready to use open bucket and stir well, it will gel up a bit, and dilute 1:1 with water in your dispenser. I use a 2 liter bottle with the bottom cut off to pour the concentrate and water into my dispenser.
Use about 1/4 cup per load, I use a little more for diaper laundry. The vinegar naturally softens the laundry and I use no fabric softener, although I will spray a little vinegar water on it if it is way static-y and tumble it a few more minutes. Once it dries it will not smell like vinegar, I promise.
I never really paid attention to how long this lasts, but I will this time. Between our laundry, diaper laundry, and washing towels for the grooming shop I do a minimum of 3 loads a day. Happy laundry!
H.W.
Hello all and Happy Yule! The winter has come, and through the long, cold nights and short, snowy days we know that the Sun has been born again in the sky and grows stronger and brighter each day until the spring. As I have said in other posts, I am very much looking forward to Yule this year. For a lot of reasons it has great meaning to myself and my family this year. My daughter, Jiji, is now 5, and at an age where she wants to participate in more and learn about out festival traditions. This is the first year I feel like she really understands why we bake shortbread cookies with chocolate kisses in them to represent the light overcoming the dark. Or that we decorate our house and tree with lights and burn candles to represent the warmth and light of the Sun returning from the dark. We did most of our Yule traditions yesterday, since H.H. is out in the truck today. We made the cookies, taking time to talk about the egg being a sign of fertility for the spring, and how the egg hold the dark and light in it's yolk and whites, and about the wheat of the fields in the flour. We also made Peanut Butter and Jillys just for Jillian! I guess we will need to come up with a special cookie for Mojo in the next few years...Some of these cookies get saved back for Santa Claus on Christmas, since we celebrate both. My mother and sisters are Christian, but very awesome and accepting of our faith and we want the kids to grow up with those traditions as well. We also made the first of a new tradition of making a Yule candle lantern with the kids. The old tin can with a nail hole design, that will be on our altar, then get moved to the outdoor altar (in a bowl of water for safety!) at bedtime. So tonight, when the sun goes down for it's longest sleep of the year, we will call H.H., sing songs and light candles, tell stories about the Goddess giving birth to the new God, and pray the darkness gives birth to our dreams as we sleep on Solstice night. My family wishes the same for you.
