#297 - Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

This weekend a friend of mine gave me the recipe for homemade dishwasher detergent! I was so excited that I had all of the ingredients except one. I bought the Lemi Shine at Wal-Mart for $2.96 (it was right beside the dishwashing soap.)

Here are the ingredients. 1 cup of Kosher Salt (I think you can use regular salt too.)2 cups Washing Soda

2 cups of Borax

The entire bottle of Lemi Shine.

Mix all of this together and voila ~ ready to use!

I poured some back into the Lemi Shine bottle to make it easier to pour into the dishwasher.

Another tip is to use vinegar in the rinse container in your dishwasher! I tried this last night and it works great and helps to clean your dishwasher also!

After making my laundry detergent and loving it, I'm going to try all kinds of homemade recipes now!

Here is the recipe again:
2 cups Washing Soda
2 cups Borax
1 cup Kosher salt
1 bottle of Lemi Shine

Jeremiah 2:22
"For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap,
Yet your iniquity is marked before Me,” says the Lord GOD."

#265 - I Finally Made Laundry Detergent

I'm not sure why I've been so intimidated by making this homemade laundry soap that everyone has been making since the Duggars' first introduced it. But today I finally did it! And guess what?! - It is super easy! :)

The recipe I got from a dear friend on Facebook:

1 Fels Naptha Bar

1 cup Borax

1 cup WASHING Soda

Grade the Fels Naptha bar up with a cheese grader or food processor like above^.

Fill a medium saucepan with hot tap water and add the shaved soap and heat on medium until it starts to dissolve.

I just kept stirring it and making sure the small pieces were dissolving.

When it is dissolved take a clean 5 gallon bucket and fill it halfway with hot tap water.

Then add the melted soap and stir.

Next add the cup of Borax and the cup of WASHING Soda:

And stir!
Then fill the rest of the bucket up with hot tap water.
And stir some more!
Her instructions said to put the lid on the bucket and let it sit overnight. That it would be a little gooey and lumpy. You just need to stir it again and break up the clumps. I've been saving my ALL detergent bottles so I'm going to fill a bottle with about 1/4 water and then add the detergent mixture to it and shake away! I also got some fragrant oils to add to the individual bottles in case I want to make it smell a little better. I can't completely quit cold turkey with the scent thing. So in the next few days I'll add some pictures of my finished product and give a review of how well we like using this new and cheap laundry detergent!

I had the girls help me do the math (school work!) on how much it costs to make a batch and here is what we come up with:

Borax = 8 ounces $.42

Washing Soda = 8 ounces $.57

Fels Naptha = $1.03 (w/tax)

Total for 5 gallons (640 oz.) = $2.02

1 Peter 4:10
"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms."

#88 - Crayon Melting

Today the girls and I did something that we've been meaning to do for a long time :)

Ever have any of those things?!

The girls did a lot of this ^ after school today!

I've had this red silicone mini-muffin pan for a few years and never use it.

Because I dislike it very much:) So I thought we'd put it to some use other than scraping muffin bottoms out of it.

After the girls unwrapped many broken/bad crayons, they broke them into pieces and arranged them in the muffin cups.

I liked this color combination!

Then we set them in the oven that was heated to 175 degrees for about 15-20 minutes. You want them to melt slowly or else it'll be very stinky! You're just meltin' - not cookin' em!

Here is the one I liked.

After they cool for about an hour or so you can pop them out of the pan and voila - they look like this when you turn them over!

The girls thought they were fun and we plan on making some more soon! Next time we're gonna break the crayon pieces up a little smaller so we'll get more of a rainbow effect when they color with them. But these turned out just fine for now. :)

2 Corinthians 5:21
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."