Laundry Soap Recipes and Recipes with Dandelions & Violets

  Good morning,
        Instead of waiting til next week's T party I thought I would share recipes now, and also some other really nice simple recipes to make with some of mother nature's gifts to us. ( I will post a link to this post on the next T post as well)

   Around 2008 when the economy crashed we were hit hard and were stuck with not being able to sell our Illinois home which had very very high taxes. So we had to really pinch pennies for several years. This is when I looked into making laundry supplies. I always thought I wanted to get into making lye soaps but I decided No- me and chemicals are an accident waiting to happen ha ha  and I also discovered for some reason my skin did not like homemade lye soaps even when they were cured properly. So, no I needed to look into another way to make laundry soap.
   Back during this time period I learned from reading on the web (this had become quite popular too). For me it was fun to make and saved me soooo much money and I also did not need to recycle those plastic bottles. We had also bought a new washing machine when we retired here and it needed a low suds soap and for me I also needed no perfumes added either-so the laundry soap was just really expensive.

   Many recipes were calling for the fels napha bars of soap to grate up into laundry soap. Do Not use this-it is way too strong for every day laundry soap and is rough on the skin as well.  Instead look for an old bar soap like Kirks. 

Laundry Soap Recipe

   I double this recipe to fill up a 5 gallon bucket to the top

1 quart boiling water
2 cup bar soap grated very fine
2 cups borox
2 cups washing soda
2 tablespoons glycerin

What I do is fill a pan that holds around a gallon or so of water and bring to a simmer or slow boil

Then gradually add in the grated soap stir slowly to melt-try not to create soap suds

In the 5 gallon bucket which is placed where I want it to stay in the laundry room-add in the borox and the washing soda-then pour in the hot water with melted soap and stir til all dissolved. Then with very hot tap water add and stir-when the bucket is half full add in the glycerin and stir and continue to add hot water and stir til you are to the top of the bucket. Keep the lid off and then let sit til the next day-You will then have a bucket of gelled soap.(then put the lid on to keep clean)  Depending on the wash load I use a half cup to a cup.
   The only "hard" part to this recipe is grating all the soap-to double the recipe you need 4 bars of the kirks bar soap

   I used to also make my own bleach but it really only works well if you are hanging clothes outside on the line in the sun.  Now when needed I add a dry bleach.

In the past I have also made my own fabric softener which works pretty well, but then I switched to just adding vinegar, sometimes I use a store bought fabric softener now.   If anyone is interested in the homemade bleach and fabric softener recipes let know and I will post them.

I do want to also share the dry soap recipe which you can make and use instead of the gelled recipe.  I use fels napha bar soap in this dry recipe to use for washing my throw rugs and or soiled laundry that needs a good soak first. This is such a strong product that my husband used it in the tanning process (there are many references online for using fels napha in tanning-so thought I would link to one) for hides  So I would not use this bar soap for your regular laundry

   Dry Laundry Soap

1 cup grated bar soap
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borox
You can also stir in a few drops of essential oils too

Stir all together and store in air tight container
I use 1 tablespoon for regular laundry or 2-3 tablespoons for very soiled.

With the Dandelions blooming I wanted to share some recipes from the Nerdy Farm Wife-she is my go to site for making my own salves, balms and more. You can find her in my blog list.

She has a wonderful collection of dandelion recipes. There are several I want to make. One of them are these dandelion lotion bars I want to make these for sure.

(photos found online)

With the wild violets coming up she has several recipes on her site for those too and I love making violet sugar-it keeps well and is so pretty to add on top of frostings or even cream cheese or yogurt.  This is one method-just layer the sugar and violets in a clean jar. Or you can blend sugar and violet flowers together in a blender  here  
These make nice gifts too.