Sunday, January 30, 2011

DIY Washing Powder and Hand Soap

 My friend Kath is a self-confessed greenie and has been reading Wendyl Nissen's "A Home Companion" which has lots of ideas on how to live like your Nana used to live.

I have been called a Nana many times, mainly by my Partner and mainly because of my incessant need to make jams and preserves. And I am ok with this! I have embraced my Nana-like qualities!! So making some recipes from this book is right up there with my values.

The washing powder was rather easy and extremely cheap to make. I bought a bag of baking soda for about $5, a box of washing soda crystals for $4 (both from Moore Wilson's) and a box of sunlight soap (6 pack) for about $3. I already had some essential oil. So here it is:

Washing Powder
1) Mix 3 cups of baking soda and 3 cups of washing crystals together.
2) Grate in 1 bar of sunlight soap
3) Add 10-20 drops of essential oil (I used rose).

Ready to use! I did two loads of washing today with a 35ml scoop per load and both came out clean and fresh. I'm not very good at math but I usually buy the EcoStore powder at around $7 for 500g. Roughly I made about the same amount for less than $3. One day I will get really good at maths and work it out properly!

Liquid Hand Soap
1) Grate 1 bar of soap
2) Add 1 cup of boiling water and whisk until combined. Leave for 1 hour.
3) After this time the mixture should have solidified again. Add another 1 cup of boiling water and whisk a bit more this time. Leave for an hour.
4) The soap should be more of a liquid consistency now. Water it down with more boiling water or heat up in the microwave or in a pot if it is too runny.
5) Pour into hand pump bottle ready to dispense.

My mixture was quite runny as I think my bar of soap was a bit on the small side so I heated it up a bit. It is still cooling at the moment and I've decided that if it doesn't thicken I'll just add some more soap to it and heat it up again. This is a probably a good way to use up those old bits of soap that you never seem to finish. I'm sure you could add essential oil to it too.
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1 comments:

Emily Lopez said...

I like Your DIY Washing Powder and Hand Soap Blog. This article help me. Thank your for sharing.

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