Homemade: Laundry Detergent

This is a homemade laundry detergent recipe I got from the Duggar Family website
How Much Does it Make: 10 gallons
Cost: Approximately $10 to get you started but breaks down to approximately $2 for every 10 gallons of detergent

Ingredients Needed:
4 Cups hot tap water
1 Fels-Naptha soap bar
1 Cup Washing Soda
½ Cup Borax

(I found these items in the laundry aisle of my local grocer)

Recipe:

• Grate bar of soap and add to saucepan with water. Stir continually over medium-low heat until soap dissolves and is melted.


• Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full of hot tap water. Add melted soap, washing soda and Borax. Stir well until all powder is dissolved. Fill bucket to top with more hot water. Stir, cover and let sit overnight to thicken.


• Stir and fill a used, clean, laundry soap dispenser half full with soap and then fill rest of way with water. Shake before each use. (will gel)


• Optional: You can add 10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons. Add once soap has cooled. Ideas: lavender, rosemary, tea tree oil.
  


• Yield: Liquid soap recipe makes 10 gallons.


• Top Load Machine- 5/8 Cup per load (Approx. 180 loads)


• Front Load Machines- ¼ Cup per load (Approx. 640 loads)

(you can use Ivory, Sunlight, Kirk's Hardwater Castile or Zote bars in place of the Fels-Naptha. Don't use heavily perfumed soaps. Alicia and Barbie used only the main 4 ingredients)

Alicia's Take: I have been pleased with it! It's so cheap and easy to make! When we first made it, I had a bunch of my previous detergent to finish up, so never got around to using it for awhile. It's not very appealing to the eye if it's been sitting awhile (can be a little clumping and starts to separate) so when I ran out of my old detergent, I was hesitant to give it it's first go. But since then I've been using it exclusively. With a baby in cloth diapers (and with a baby in general) you go through more detergent than ever and it's been fine to use on his clothing and linens as well.

Barbie's Take: I have been very pleased with our homemade detergent. It was quick and easy to make, and easy to store. We keep the main 10 gallon bucket in our garage and we simply fill up an old laundry detergent container whenever we need to. I love that it has only a mild scent to it....nothing overwhelming (by any means!!). It definitely get our clothes clean and it saves us so much money. I will continue to make this detergent in the future.

Pros:
-very inexpensive
-fairly easy to make
-it works
-good for the environment

Cons:
-could potentially be a pain to store the left-over detergent

Recommend: Mom to Mom Baby Wipes

Price: about ~$9.99 for 1 box (6 individual packs)

When standing in the baby section of the grocery store I was immediately overwhelmed. We've all heard of your standard Pampers, Huggies and Luvs diaper brands, and I'm pretty certain they all also have their own line of baby wipes. Knowing me, I would have just picked up the wipes that matched my choice in diapers, but since I don't use disposables (and wasn't about to use cloth wipes as well) I needed to start my series of trial and error with disposable wipes. 

I'm an on and off Safeway shopper/ACME shopper and by chance the day I ran out of the wipes I got at my baby shower and needed to buy wipes, I was at Safeway. I browsed through their selection and came across a brand called "mom to mom". I was looking for the best value and when comparing numbers, mom-to-mom was the best bet. 

Pros:

- come in value size boxes - 6 individual travel/refill packs (the hard plastic pop-top on top of each refill pack). 

- made of a heavy material to clean up big diaper messes. 

- unscented means unscented!

- Cheaper than or the same price as the value box of pampers (the box of pampers i compared them to comes with 5 refill packs, mom-to-mom comes with 6 travel/refill packs)

Cons:

- Only available at Safeway stores.

- If you're trying to environmentally friendly, I suppose the travel pop-top is not land-fill friendly and ultimately creates more waste.

Would I Recommend:

With out a doubt. Recently we were running low on wipes and I sent Ryan to ACME to pick some up. He got a large box of the unscented Pampers brand and I am not nearly as pleased! I'm anxious to finish the box of wipes he bought so I can go back to the mom-to-mom's. 

I've also read very good reviews on their diaper brand and although I have not priced them personally, they are said to be considerably cheaper as well. 

Recommend: Bum Genius 3.0 Cloth Diapers

Price: 17.99 each - If purchased in a package, the price may drop slightly
Recommended Quantity: about 15

When deciding which cloth diapers to use, I did a lot of research. To get started on them, there is a significant cost up front, so I didn't want to invest in something that wouldn't work for or wouldn't get us through at least the first year.

On almost every chat board I scanned at least one person would rave about the BG 3.0, so I started there. They seemed to be a great option. They were easy to use and didn't require pins, special covers or a special skill to put them on the baby's bottom and they grew with baby up to about 35 pounds. I still browsed around more and find a few other brands that offered similar features, but because of the great reviews, I went with the BG 3.0's.

I fell in love when I got them! They were the sweetest colors and just adorable. Unfortunately it took a few weeks for Jude to grow into them as they didn't quite fit a 7.8 lb baby very well. But, by the time he was approaching 10 pounds (probably somewhere around 8.5-9) he was fitting in them just fine. Being that Ryan and I had been using disposables up to this point, we were both uncertain how we would transition to the cloth diapers, but it was a breeze. They are easy to clean, and other than washing them, they go on no different than a disposable. The short period of time we were in day care, the infant teacher agreed that they were simple.

Pros:
- Save money in the long run
- Adorable colors
- Easy to use (especially in situations where you may need to leave your child with someone who's not familiar with cloth diapering)
- Growth with baby (one size fits 8-35lbs)
- Seemingly comfortable

Cons:
- We noticed a jump in his clothing size due to the bulk of the diaper
- Need to be washed every 1-2 days
- If you're running low, it'll take about 2 hours for clean diapers - no more quick trips to the store
- If not washed properly/frequently can get an amonia odor - but can be resolved with proper care.
- Will probably be more 'interesting' as he gets into solid foods
- More difficult to tell when he has a wet diaper, need to change baby on more of a schedule as opposed to just feeling for a wet diaper.