Homemade laundry soap?

Hey blog peeps,

Over the weekend, I went to a seminar at the library about how to make your own laundry soap. It was for liquid soap, which is what we use. But in looking at the finished product, it's glumpy and not really something I want to use. Besides, the minimum amount made = 2.5 gallons of it. I don't want to store that much and also it'd take forever to go through it!

So I asked about powder soap. The guy didn't know anything about powder .... so I went online. And THIS RECIPE looks good to me.

Anyone have experience/words of wisdom on this? Seems pretty simple, just mix. From what I could tell on reading other sites, use 2 Tbsp/full load. Seems pretty easy to me. Anything I should know before I give it a whirl?

Laundry line fail

*sigh* ... I'm on vacation from blogging right now, but I need a means to procrastinate. So here I am.

I (read: Erik) put some of our jeans on the laundry line yesterday afternoon. He's very good at it, but they needed to shift around a bit, and dry longer.

I've been feeling cruddy, so I just decided to leave them over night.

And I was greeted this morning with rain.

Ugh. Now, in come the jeans to the house to dry in here.

TOTAL FAIL. Oh well, now I'll know to check the overnight weather.

Indoor Laundry Line!

Oh Goody Gumdrops!

I have a serious lack of indoor drying space, yet I hang dry most of my dress clothes, so where to put them?

Well, here's a "before and after" photo. The left was my before ... it was rickety and off kilter, plus it couldn't hold many clothes.


The after on the right is great! Tons more space to hang things. It's a bit shaky, but way less rickety than the previous one. :)


I screwed these hooks into the under side of the stair ... they were more of a closed loop than a hook. I tied a laundry line to them, and then stretched it across. I probably need to tighten the line some.


On the other end, I used some PVC pipe I was using from the original drier, and it worked well! The struggle was I intended for it to hang straight down. Well, when I put clothes on it, it started to draw the PVC pipe toward the middle. So we had to use some of those temporary hooks to anchor the chain in a bit more stable manner. It works pretty darn good. And uses previously awkward and unused space.


I had these hooks from last year when I was hanging a light down to grow my baby tomato plants. I have a different arrangement worked out this year, so the hooks were available for use!

Laundry line = $$$$ savings?

Last year, our July energy consumption was 31.6 KWH/day.

This year, it was 23.1 KWH/day.


Could our laundry line have something to do with it? I don't see why not! Although Erik is quick to point out it's cooler this year than it was last year .... so I concede that point, but to reduce our energy use by about 25% is fantastic!

I was reading in Real Simple magazine that a laundry line can save an average of $10 a month. Now, this is based on a family doing 7 loads of laundry/week. I'd bet we do about half of that .... so our savings is less. I'm guessing it will take us 2.5 years to break even with this laundry line, but I have to admit I'm happy to live in a house with one of these (again).

Laundry Line Update!

Look what's up in our backyard! :)

Erik and a buddy notched out a portion of our tree to allow us to attach one end to the tree. At the other end, we had to make space for a pole.


Erik dug the hole ... I had just given blood, so I couldn't dig. But Erik was a spectacular sport. :)


Then, had to fill it with rocks to allow for draining.


Then, we were supposed to fill it partially with water ....


Then add the concrete mixture.


NOTE: we were using a quick dry one ... I *wish* we'd done it a bit differently. Even thought it's quick dry, I wish we'd mixed it in something else, then poured it into the hole. The laundry line is designed so you can remove the pole entirely from the ground. But since there was water creeping up, it wasn't possible. :(


This is the pole ... we'll always have a few feet sticking out of the ground. Not a big deal, but if we have friends w/ little kids over more frequently, we'll have to figure out a way to cover it so little people don't run into it inadvertently.

Absentee blogger returns!

Check out what my awesome husband got me for my birthday!!!!! Yes, it's a RETRACTABLE clothesline from Target. :)

HERE and HERE.

One end will attach to something in our yard (currently, we think it's the tree trunk). Anyone who wants to come and help me dig the hole for the end that retracts, DO let me know! ;) Oh, and yes, we had the dig safe people come out, so we won't run into anything we shouldn't.

Let me also add I'm excited b/c there will be 170 stinkin' feet worth of hanging space. I picked up some clothespins at Target for about $1.50 last week. But I only got 150, so I might need to score a few more ....