Little House-Laundry EMERGENCY!

I'm not a laundry fan. And I'm not too picky about the process either...though I do hate wrinkled sheets. Anyway, I ran out of detergent one night 6 weeks or so ago and didn't want to run to the store (this is not the emergency btw). My friend Sara and I had recently been talking about experimenting with homemade recipes...I had bought some of the ingreds so I tried out making my own! I think it worked great and was cheap as all get out so on round two I took some pictures for blogging :) ! Here are the ingredients:

The first time around, I used Zote bar-soap instead of Fels-Naptha, but it made me cough and sneeze when I grated it and every time I opened the tub to use it...that can't be good! The Fels-Naptha is MUCH better!

I used my food processor to first grate the bar soap, then switched blades and minced it until it was fine and grainy. Mixed with the Borax and Washing Soda (NOT baking soda) it looks just like your typical powdered detergent.

Each load takes just two tablespoons...just the size of a recycled Oxy-Clean scoop. So far, I've been happy with it though I'd like to try adding some essential oils for fragrance. Maybe I'll get a round tuit sometime.



Now for the emergency! I opened the dryer yesterday afternoon to get Kai's T-Ball uniform out for his last game. First I pulled out his pillowcase and thought, "huh? that's weird. where'd all these stains come from?" Then I pulled out a shirt smeared with brown and purple streaks, then his baseball pants, COVERED with multi-colored mushy marks. "Oh, dear! A wacky crayon!!!" Yes, the wacky crayons have come back to bite me in the butt. Kai's been coloring with them and must have had one in a pocket. The entire load of all his laundry was marred by melted, multi-colored, non-washable crayons. Of course this happens when we need to be out the door in 18 minutes...so...

I googled the issue and found a method that worked for some others. I didn't have all the right detergents etc. (because of my homemade experiment above :) ). So I threw it all in (except the uniform of course) to soak with some detergent, all the Oxy-Clean I had left and some Grandma's spot remover. All the marks were still there at 10 p.m. when I got back from a Target run with the correct ingredients:

• Tide Powder


• Spray'n'Wash (now Resolve)


• Oxy Clean


• Borax

I mixed about a Tide scoop amount of each into the washer filled with hot water and ran it on the Heavy-Duty cycle. Double rinsed. And....drum roll....I'd say 85% of it came out!! Woot! The casualties were the 100% cotton items like the pillow case and a couple t-shirts. Most of Kai's clothes are in the "comfort" line of things...athletic shorts/pants/shirts etc. and the marks are completely gone from that kind of fabric. I really thought they whole load was toast, so cheers to whoever it was (I'm not sure now) who figured this formula out!