Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Eye Surgery Tomorrow and Other "Green" Laundry Soap Alternatives

My Lasik surgery is scheduled for 1:00 tomorrow afternoon (Central). Please say a prayer that I will be calm and there there will be good results and no complications. Thanks! I'll try to post an update on the results on Friday.

The hardest part might be that I can't read the day of the surgery or the day after. What's a girl to do? Borrow an audio book from the library, of course!

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I made my detergent last night. I altered the recipe a little bit because one bar of soap produces more shavings than I expected. I used 1 c. of borax and 1 c. of washing soda. I washed my sheets and Mercy's pillowcase in it today (that will be the real test of cleaning power!). I'll take a look when I get home and post a final verdict on it.

I saved the little chunk of soap that I couldn't grate without grating my fingers. I'm going to use it to spot treat any stains.

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Another note about natural/environmentally friendly laundry detergents:

I mentioned yesterday that the laundry detergents available in most stores are filled with synthetic chemicals. Another issue with them that I didn't bring up is that they're made with petro-chemicals. "Petro" as in petroleum. Which comes from oil. Which is a non-renewable resource. Oil which is getting more and more expensive (you might have noticed that at the gas pump) and will continue to be expensive as long as we continue to rely on it so heavily.

Natural detergents are derived from plants--renewable resources.


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For those of you who are interested in environmentally friendly laundry detergents, but don't want to make your own, you might check out Charlie's Soap. It uses a lot of the same ingredients as the recipe I gave yesterday. I haven't tried it myself, but I've seen very good reviews of it. And shipping is free to the 48 contiguous states and to APO addresses. It's less expensive than most of the detergents you can buy at the store--.17 per load if you buy the 2.64 lb. bag, and the savings are greater if you buy in bigger quantities. No tax unless you live in NC.

Just for price comparison purposes:

32 loads of laundry with Tide liquid: .34/load

120 loads of laundry with Tide powder: .26/load

42 loads of laundry with Seventh Generation powder(natural/non-toxic): .37/load.

80 loads of laundry with Charlie's Soap powder (natural): .17/load.

1 comment:

Pamela said...

when I was little - my mom used a soap. No detergents. We had a septic tank and my dad insisted.

This is a great idea - we are on a septic tank, and I never thought about it until I read your post