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

Do Not Recommend: Sassy Earth Smart Diaper Sack Dispenser

Price: $5.49

I often wondered what I would do with poopy diapers while I was out and about...namely, at a person's house.

While at BRU (Babies R Us) one day, this cute little accessory caught my eye. I thought it'd be perfect for us. It's only a couple inches big, so it'd fit right into the bottom of my diaper bag and be super convenient for those stinky diapers I was so concerned about.

Well, I've used maybe a dozen or so of the bags and I can honestly say this item is not worth the $5.49. It's not so much the container that I don't like, its the actual bags that are a waste - and the bags make up half the product. Every other bag I use rips before I even get it open! Because of this I do not recommend the product.

Since Trent's poops weren't super poopy-smelling for a while (until recently) I found myself simply putting the diaper right in the kitchen trash. If you don't feel comfortable doing that (understandably) I'd recommend putting the diaper in a grocery bag and tying it together and/or putting the diaper in the outdoor trash can.

Pros:

-snazzy colors/designs

-case has a hook for easy access

-refill bags are seemingly easy to come by at BRU

-the scent of the bags is very mild

-case comes with 25 bags to begin with

-biodegradable

Cons:

-bags are terrible quality

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.