Archive for the ‘Frugal Finds’ Category

Today, I made homemade DIY laundry soap, and I’m pretty excited about it! Considering it cost less than $15 to make, and is rumored to last 8-10 months (averaging 6-8 loads per week), I’d say it’s something to be excited about!!

To get started, you’ll need the supplies above. 4lb box of Baking Soda, 4lb box of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, 4lb box of Borax, and 4 bars of Fels-Naptha Soap (optional: 2 small containers of OxyClean). These can all be found in the laundry aisle at your grocery store.

First, grate the Fels-Naptha soap. Yes, just like cheese. Optionally, after you grate it, you can put it in your food processor to make it more “powder-like”. I attempted this, but it was sticking to the inside of the food processor, so I stuck with the grated cheese look, which works just fine. Once all 4 bars are grated, you will mix all of your ingredients together. I used a large garbage bag to mix mine in, as it makes a lot more than it looks like it will, and you’ll need the space to adequately mix all of the ingredients. Once you’ve mixed everything good, that’s it! You’re ready to put your homemade laundry soap in container(s) of your choice and start that washer! I put mine in a glass cookie jar type bowl I found for about $5, and the rest I stored in some christmas tupperware I found for $2 (I gave one to my grandma, and put the rest up for when we run low). Use 1 tbs per load of laundry, and enjoy

Related articles

• Best of Suddenly Frugal: Top 1 Post (suddenlyfrugal.com)
• Homemade Laundry Detergent Concentrate (claimingliberty.wordpress.com)
• Homemade Laundry Detergent (kathleensblogspot.com)
• Frugal Tip: Homemade Laundry Detergent Recipe (livingrichwithcoupons.com)
• DIY Laundry Soap (backwardslife.com)

So last weekend after coming in from work, I stayed up until N woke up because I knew someone having a garage sale I wanted to go check out. Garage sales are like potato chips – no one can eat just one.. And I cannot eat just one garage sale. While hers was great, and I got a ton of awesome stuff, I just hadn’t quite had my “fix” yet… so we hit a few more places, and decided to checkout the local warehouse garage sale place to see if they were open. Much to my delight, they were.

N was acting up in there, he was over it and wanted to go home so I didn’t get to do a whole lot of digging around. But as I walked down the last aisle of things I planned to look at, something caught my eye…

A wire shoe. Of all things, a wire shoe? My hand could not retrieve it fast enough for my eyes to devour it and my heart to fall in love with it. By God, this shiny shoe was making me smile. And it was just .50 cents! This baby was going home with me.

I was certain it had a purpose, but I could not think of one on the spot.

Do you see the wiring? It’s very reminiscent of chicken wire, and dredges up a part of me has a desire to build a crab trap now in the shape of a beautiful shoe… I wonder if that is possible?

The shoe does not have to have a useful purpose, I have decided. When I look at it, it makes me smile. Party because it’s really beautiful in it’s simplicity, and partly because I got it for fifty cents. But mostly because it’s just dad-gum pretty!

And I really like that there was only one… in a weird, Cinderella kind of way.