All for Him

Can you guess what we did last night at my house? Yep, I have officially jumped on the 'make my own detergent' bandwagon! Sorry the picture is a bit blurry, but you get the idea. Anyways, you know I am all about saving some money, but I had never tried this before. I have been trying to coupon and stockpile more lately, as we are desperate to pinch some pennies! We caught a break on a One Day Sale with our local paper, and they slashed the prices to about 30% off for 'new' subscribers (meaning you haven't had a subscription recently).

I started to get dangerously low on detergent, and was trying to figure out what I should do. The kind we buy, (Xtra, just the cheap stuff) is not on sale right now. And I just wasn't finding deals like I did last winter. See, last Winter I scored 6 huge (119 load size) bottles of Xtra for around $25. That was in February. I haven't bought detergent since February!!! I scored an amazing deal back then and stocked up on a large supply, and have just now gotten down to the bottom of that last container. And we do LOTS of laundry in this house! So, if you do the math it did last me 6 months, we go through 1 bottle of that stuff a month (one very large bottle).

So I guess here was my concern, I wanted to make sure it was really going to save me, a thrifty mama, money. Not just the mom who buys the $15 box of Tide every month. I also knew it was going to require me to venture out into the madhouse that is Walmart, which I despise. Let me be clear, it's not Walmart persay that I don't like. I just don't like the insane crowds and never being able to find anything. Little did I realize...it was the first day of back to school. CRAZY BUSY!!!! That being said, here's how it breaks down.


Oxy clean (generic is fine, yay!) $2.75--optional, but I have 3 messy kids so this was a given!
Borax $4
Purex Crystals $5-also optional. You could use none, or up it to two bottles. Next time I may get a 2nd bottle for more smell.
Arm and Hammer Washing Soda $3.50
Baking Soda $3
2 Fels Naptha Bars $2
Bucket to mix it all in $2
Total Cost: $23.25 plus tax

So after that, it was pretty simple. You have to grate the Fels Naptha bars (you can also use pink zote or ivory, I believe) with the fine end of the cheese grater. It smells really good. Then you just kind of pour everything in and mix together. Be careful when pouring the baking soda and borax, as they tend to have dust fumes. You don't have to wear goggles or anything, just keep your face out of the bucket, and don't dump it in sitting in front of an air conditioner or anything like that. I would think that would go without saying, but you never know.... Also, pour SLOWLY and that will help. I did try to use a spoon to mix it, but eventually I knew the bottom wasn't mixing through so I just used my hands. The neat thing is that if you do use the purex, you can scoop some of the mix up and put it in the Purex bottle since it will be empty. The top has a little round scoop too, that you can pour into, and also, the Sun OXYgen stuff I bought had about a 2 tbsp size scoop. And that's it. That's all there is too it. Supposedly it's HE safe (several of the ingredients specifically say that too) and even though I don't have an HE washer, it's new so I wanted to be super careful.

That's all there is to it! It's supposed to be equivalent to a 6 month supply, so we will see. Each load takes 1-2 tbsp instead of a whole cup of liquid.


Some things to remember:
1) I had a $1 off the coupon for Purex, did not include it in the price, but if you coupon, look for it in your stash! It's a very recent one (think last 2 weeks) so if you haven't clipped lately look there first.
2) I am rounding here. I figured I would have to go to Walmart to buy all the items, and they had them all, right next to each other. I don't remember the exact price to the penny, but I rounded up to the nearest dollar to what I paid. So you'll actually spend less than that probably.
3) The generic version of Oxyclean was in a container twice the size of what I needed, so I cut that price in half for the purpose of pricing this project. I do still have half left in the container, so I won't buy the $5.50 tub of Oxy stuff again till NEXT year!
4)I got a mop bucket, because that was all I could find. I highly reccomend using a 5 gallon bucket if you have one on hand. You will not be able to reuse the bucket though, you'll need to store the remainder of the detergent in the bucket. I had enough room, but a 5 gallon bucket would have made it easier to mix.