After my last post, I was asked about trying to put up some pictures of our laundry soap making process. As some of you know, I am not the most tech savvy person in my household nor am I the best photographer so it took longer than I really would like to admit to make this cooperate. Please forgive my shortcomings as I attempt to show how we mix up our dry laundry soap batches. As mentioned before, I take a fairly young soap and shred it. It sits overnight (sometimes up to 2 days) to dry a little on the rack and then I take over a kitchen counter.
The bowl in front has shredded soap and behind it to the left is the washing soda and borax that we add to ours. (Like our recycled washing soda container there- reduce, reuse, recycle, right?) That food processor was a great buy that is still kicking after all the abuse it has received. To the right is my favorite soaping pot with a plastic storage tub behind it. I prefer towels under my workspace for something like this because it is so easy to clean up after!
Into the mixer goes one cup each of the soap shreds, washing soda, and borax. I give it a few spins to mix and add in any fragrances we might want at that time. Sometimes we use none at all, but our favorite is a clean laundry scent. Go figure, huh? If you are creating this at home, I will pass the same warning to you as my teacher gave me: let the bowl sit for a minute before you pop open the top! As you mix these in the mixer, they will give off some powdery residue that you really, really don’t want to breathe or spread around your workspace. Once the dust settles, the mix is ready to go into the big soap pot.
After all of the shredded soap has been mixed up and everything has been poured into the big soap pot, I usually will give one or two more stirs in the pot just to make sure all is combined. We will also adjust the scent as needed. After it passes inspection all that is left is to place it into buckets for storage. In this run, I made about three buckets full and we should be set on laundry soap for awhile. It really does only take about one scoop for our laundry.
The scoop in the picture below is just a regular coffe scooper- you might find them in your local dollar stores. I got mine there over two years ago. My soap teacher found these buckets in Home Depot and they have been the best for laundry soaps! (Anna, have I told you lately you rock?) That faded green thing in the pictures? I confess that I still prefer to hand shred my soaps and I wear my old gardening glove while doing it so I don’t take off any more chucks of my thumb while I’m rocking out. Shredding soap is great for thinking time but can be hazardous if you’re not careful or dancing around too much. Time involved? Not counting the shredding soap part, you can whip this up and clean the room back within an hour for a batch like this. Want to try but don’t want to worry about shredding the soap? We regularly make the laundry soap bases and sell it shredded for you. You only have to decide which soap base to play with in your kitchen.
Hope you enjoyed my little attempt at pictures here and that it might make you realize just how easy it can be. Feel free to shoot me any questions you have and I’ll try to answer here on the blog or to your email directly. Don’t forget you can find our little Facebook page too and catch us there!
Happy Washing!
Dorothy