Today I read yet another blog post about making your own laundry detergent to save money. I always find it interesting that laundry soap is one of the more popular money saving obsessions around. When we feel money is tight, many of us start grating bars of soap to compensate. Laundry is our economic scapegoat.
Before you spend hours Googling the cheapest laundry soap recipes, hunting down the ingredients and then mixing it all up try attacking your laundry costs at the source. You may find that the cents per suds are the least of your washing worries.
Too many clothes: Have you ever wondered why you always wear the same clothes each week but wind up washing so many more loads? A phenomenon I noticed with our own laundry is that clothes often get tossed in the wash bin rather than being properly dealt with.
Outgrown, damaged and otherwise unwanted clothes get tossed back in the wash instead of being repaired or tossed. Look at your laundry piles with a hard eye. When I sorted our clothes recently we wound up getting rid of over half of them. This cut my washing down heaps as now I’m no longer repeatedly laundering the cast offs.
Too much soap: A common misconception is that soap cleans your clothes. It’s actually the friction of the washer agitation that gets the dirt out. The soap just assists, makes it have a scent and psychologically makes us feel like it’s cleaner.
Going heavy on the soap actually hurts your clothes making them wear out faster. See all that lint in your dryer? That’s your clothes being eroded. Soap residue also makes your air dried laundry stiff and can cause skin allergies. Some soap ingredients are even under suspicion for contributing to health issues like birth defects, asthma and cancers.
Knowing that it’s the washing machine and water that does the work, I often toss a load in and soak it overnight before I start it up. I use less than half of what my store brand detergent recommends and often skip it altogether for lightly soiled loads. Everything always come out clean and fresh.
Too much hot air: Probably the best way to save on your laundry costs is to simply take advantage of the sun. In my year of living in Australia I didn’t use a dryer once. An electric dryer is the second largest energy consumer in your house and costs about $100 a year . That’s a lot more than you’ll save grating up barsoap. Run a line in your yard or invest in a solar dryer. Not only will your electric bill drop, but your clothes will last longer.
Living without a clothes dryer was much easier than I expected. Why pay high electric costs to roast and pummel the life out of your clothes? A little planning ahead will save you a lot. An added bonus is that you can cut down on the bleach as the sun naturally brightens your whites.
Now that you have less to wash, are using less soap and no dryer you’ll notice that your laundry soap costs are pretty insignificant. If you still find the need to whip up a batch of homemade detergent here’s a common recipe:
Homemade Laundry Detergent
1 bar bath soap
1 cup washing soda
1 cup baking soda
1 cup 20 Mule
Team Borax
Grind together in your food processor. Use 2 Tablespoons for a full load.
Related reading:
I can’t take advantage of the sun where I live. It hides behind clouds all winter long. Plus I live in an apartment.