Clean Clothes

Up until about a year ago my 2 biggest expenses at the grocery store (besides diapers) were paper towels and laundry soap. Well I reduced our paper towel consumption significantly by just being aware of how often I was using them. Instead of reaching for a paper towel to wipe a babes face, I use a baby washcloth that I keep in the kitchen now. And for spills I use bar towels and wash rags for the counters. I go thru a lot of them in a day, because I don't want them to get germy and spread icky all over my kitchen. So while I decreased how often I was buying paper towels (I went from spending $40+ a month to less than $10 a month, probably closer to $5) I increased my laundry load with all the towels. Laundry soap is expensive! That's dumb (in my opinion).
I have a few girlfriends who make their own laundry soap and I have used it before. They do a liquid soap that they store in a 5 gallon bucket. I live in a pretty small house and don't have room in my kitchen (that's where my laundry is) for a big 5 gallon bucket. So I was excited to find this recipe on my favorite blog. This morning I finally ran out of laundry soap and had to make time to grate the castille soap. I chose to use the citrus scented bar and it smells great. I realized though that I didn't read the directions very well, because I bought one bar of each scent and had to do a smaller batch. One bar of castille soap made 1 1/2 cups so I used 3/4 of a cup of everything else.

Just so you know... a gallon jar is too big.

and a pint jar is too small.