Laura Ingalls and the Great Battle of the Maytag Washer

And, after my most recent tragedy in Accidental Homesteading, the score is:

Modern Technology: 1
Toxic Housewife: 0

Here's the story:


I -- for reasons of which I am still not entirely sure -- suddenly decided to make my own laundry soap.  Had this been a burning desire of mine?  No.  Was our current soap causing allergies or breaking our fragile budget?  No and No.

I think I can blame my dear friend J. (whose suggestion is also responsible for the "How To Humiliate A Toddler" debacle) for putting the idea in my head, and then cementing it in place by providing a link to a do-it-yourself laundry detergent site.  Making laundry soap suddenly sounded fun, and -- what the heck! -- I wasn't hick-sounding enough with just chickens, beehives, jelly-making, and homemade whole-wheat bread in my arsenal!  So -- since I'm not up to grinding my own wheat yet -- soap-making it is!

I used Recipe #5 on the website, which called simply for hot water and two items easily-found in my local grocery store's detergent aisle:

 Yeah; I'd never heard of them, either.

The really fun part was that I got to grate the soap on our cheese greater:

which, besides permeating the kitchen with the wonderfully-clean scent of the bar, had the added advantage of getting the grater super extra shiney-clean.


After grating, I boiled the soap shavings in hot water (which really made the kitchen smell good; I highly-recommend this Fels-Naptha stuff), then added some of the Washing Soda and some more water.  And here is my resulting detergent:

A little watery, but it was supposed to set up once it cooled.  In fact, the website instructed me not to alarmed because the detergent might 'gel'.

Well, it 'did':

I was not expecting a solid mass like that.  Still, I'd been forewarned, so I just used an old wooden spoon (we have a few of those around) to stir up the mass, and the laundry was on!

Load Number One: mixed New Detergent with the last bit of Old Detergent.  Clothes seemed just as clean, but they also smelled great because of my new favorite Fels-Naptha.

Load Number Two (first solo-outing of New Detergent): machine clogged; water poured out of the soap dispenser; laundry room floor became covered in water (yay for the nearby floor drain!).

Which saw:
1) Bee lobotomizing our washing machine so he could pour boiling water through it, which -- happily -- flushed out a chunk of New Detergent; and
2) me using yet-another kitchen appliance for an unintended purpose:

soap soup!

I am thrilled to report that beating the crap out of the New Detergent worked: it is now more store-bought in consistency. 

I am also thrilled to report that I have since washed three loads with no clogging!  (That's right: I continued to use New Detergent, despite its shaky history.  What can I say?  I live on the edge.)

So, that's that.  My first foray into homemade detergent-making wasn't completely smooth.  However, as I now recall, my first attempts at jelly-making and pie crusts kind of sucked, too.