Word to the wise...

Homemade wipes

This is a quick one. I tried to make homemade baby wipes this weekend and am not impressed!

The recipe I used was super easy- 2 tbs of baby wash, 1 tbs of baby oil, 2 cups of warm water and a roll of Bounty paper towels cut in half. Mix the wet ingredients, pour it over the roll of towels and let it absorb overnight, then pull out the center 'core' of the roll and they are supposed to pull up easy from there.

The author of the original recipe made a big point that you needed to use Bounty brand, but I'm wondering if there are different quality levels of Bounty. The ones we used fall apart when you try to pull one out. Plus they leave a foamy residue and are way too wet for my liking. On the plus side they do smell great and if you can get rid of the bubbles your skin feels nice afterwards... But half the time I've ended up rewashing my hands anyway!

We haven't actually used them on L's bum yet. So far I've just used them to wipe off his hands and face. They are so thin and shred so easily that I'm not willing to risk wiping up anything too messy with them.

I'm going to experiment with different brand towels, and less baby wash/water in the next batch and see how that feels, but for now I think this experiment was a flop!

First Attempt

I've been wanting to try making my own laundry soap ever since I caught a 45 second snippet of 473 Kids and Counting several years ago. The mom mentioned that she only paid a couple dollars a year for laundry soap for her entire family and that it was good enough to handle even their cloth diapers.

My interest was renewed when I was pregnant with L and purchased some fabulous detergent online that was designed specially for sensitive skin and babies. It worked great and only took 1 tbs per load, but with a new baby it's hard to remember to re-order online, so I ended up buying the mega-Costco box again.

The main things holding me back were that all the recipes seemed pretty labor intensive (grate, melt, boil, set, mix) and I was concerned about having a 5 gallon bucket of slime in the laundry room with a curious toddler in the house. So I was thrilled when my friend Andrea posted a link to a recipe for homemade laundry powder that seemed pretty easy to make.

The recipe she used can be found here- http://www.diynatural.com/simple-easy-fast-effective-jabs-homemade-laundry-detergent/ I made a few adjustments based on the comments found under the original recipe and some trial and error, then took pictures of each step.

So first you need to find these ingredients- 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Washing Soda and 1 bar of soap.

I purchased mine from Walmart. The Borax, Washing Soda, three pack of Ivory and a bar of Fels Naptha were under $9 total, and I used two bars of soap and about a quarter of the boxed ingredients. The double batch I made will end up doing about 64 loads of wash, so with the addition of an extra three pack of soap I will be able to do about 256 loads of laundry for around $10. (For future batches I will totally skip the Fels Naptha soap and just use the Ivory)

To start, chop the soap into smaller chunks, put them in a bowl that you don't care about and microwave for one to two minutes.

The Ivory was nuked for one minute and overflowed the large paper bowl it was in. Within about five minutes it was fully cooled and ready to shred. At the bottom of the bowl were several unmelted chunks that took about 30 seconds more to melt.

The Fels Naptha went two minutes and never foamed up like the Ivory did. After 20 minutes it was still uncomfortably hot in the middle, and when I tried to melt the chunks that were left in it, it never foamed and actually scorched by 30 seconds.

The Ivory shredded very easily but the Fels Naptha left quite a few chunks. Below you can see the two soaps shredded and mixed, adding the Borax and Soda, and all the ingredients mixed together.

Several of the comments on the original recipe mentioned that they put all the ingredients into their food processor and mixed the ingredients that way. I only have a mini-chopper and didn't want to mess with cleaning it, so I tried to mix it with a pastry blender. It got a ton of the clumps out but there were still quite a few. I tried to get some out by hand, but the dust is extremely fine and makes it uncomfortable to breathe. After sneezing a few times I finally broke down and pulled out the mini-chopper. I lightly shook the bowl a few times and all the clumps rose to the top, skimmed them off and put them into the chopper in a couple batches. Sure enough, three quick pulses and all the clumps were mixed in smoothly.

When everything was mixed the soap resembled a very fine corn meal, and smelled very light and clean.

Each load of wash only uses 1 tbs, which looks like a minuscule amount compared to the 1/2 cup that I needed of my old detergent. The first load came out of the wash smelling great- clean, but not perfumed, and the clothes were not nearly as stiff as usual. I didn't have any issues with the soap not dissolving all the way like some of the comments did, but I think that is because I didn't grate the soap, but shredded it. The load is still in the dryer, but so far it seems to be a success.

Bottom line-

Ingredients: $10

Time: about a 1/2 hour, but future batches will be much quicker

Total output: about 256 loads

Cost per load: .04 cents

The beginning...

We are not one of those granola-y families.

My son wears disposable diapers.

I don't think anything we eat is local... other than maybe the salt!

We use our swap cooler and a clothes dryer and commercial cleaners and... Well you get the picture. We are not your typical cool, trendy, going-green kind of family.

Except we kinda are.

More and more I'm hearing from my friends that they are trying to be more ecologically friendly, more organic and more budget conscious. These are ideals that everyone can get behind, regardless of how much of a hippy you are!

So this is the start. I will try to document our successes and our challenges while being as honest as I can. Because I don't care how local and healthy and amazing celery is- it still tastes like a weed dipped in dirt!