My Baby Sister, Kristen and Her New Baby, Addison

My baby sister, Kristen had a beautiful baby girl on August 3rd. Her name is Addison Kenedy and she is precious. I can't wait to watch her grow up! She's got awesome parents. Here are some pictures that I've taken of them.

Homemade Laundry Soap

Today I made some laundry soap! The ingredients for homemade laundry soap are simple-grated soap, Borax and Washing Soda (not baking soda-they are different things chemically).

The grated soap is not something that you buy, but rather something you make. You take a regular bar of soap and grate or grind it. “Laundry Soap” such as Fels Naptha, Octagon etc are the preference, but you can use any soap. I used a commonly found soap called Zote.  I’ve read stories (although I haven’t tried it myself) of folks using Ivory, or even grinding up all those little hotel soaps that they have collected.

I found all ingredients that I needed at my local grocery store. 

Here are the steps:

1. Grate the bar of soap. I used my food processor, but you can use a box grater.

 2. Measure 1 cup of washing soda and 1 cup of Borax. Add the bar soap to this mixture and stir well.

 3. Use 1 Tablespoon for small loads, 2 Tablespoons for medium to large loads, and 3 Tablespoons for heavily soiled/extra large loads.

I figure that the detergent that I was using (Tide Ultra) cost 23 cents per load. ( It probably costs more than that because we never got the 110 loads we were supposed to because of using too much) This homemade detergent cost 3 cents per tablespoon! So even if you use 3 T because of an extra large or heavily soiled load, you are still saving more than half! That's awesome!!