Mom Advise Experiment: Homemade Laundry Detergent

Experiment: Can I make a powder laundry detergent that will clean well, not break out my family, and be cheaper?

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Experiment Taken From: Notebook 03.08.2007

Materials Needed: (See Instructables for their directions)

1 cup Borax

1 cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda Powder (not baking soda)

1 bar Fels Naptha soap (you can use other soaps like Zote used by instructables, but I could not find that soap, others also use Ivory, Pure & Natural etc)

Food Processor or cheese grater

Use the cheese grater on your food processor and put your soap in to grate. Then take out the grated soap and put in the chopping blade on your food processor add the grated soap and the rest of the ingredients and process until powdery. I like to put a wet dish towel on top of my processor during the chopping stage. Add to container and use 1 tablespoon for small loads and 2 tablespoons for large loads.

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Note: You can use a grater instead of a food processor and mix all the ingredients with your hands, but I find that harder to dissolve in the washer if it is not more of a powder like substance.

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I put my washing powder in a 5 gallon bucket that I got at Walmart for about $5. I also tied a long string to the bucket with my tablespoon attached, so I would never lose it. (see above picture)

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Results: I was worried about whether this powder form would dissolve as I had read others having this problem. I just turned on the hot water and swished the soap around before putting in my clothes and I have not had any problems with my powder soap dissolving. I made 10 batches of the laundry powder to save more time later and it really did not take that long to finish all of the batches. My clothes seem clean. One big difference is that this soap does not make bubbles and people worry that it will not work, but it does work fine. Nobody seemed to break out from the detergent and several in my family have broken out when I have changed detergents. I figured out that this soap cost about 5 cents a load. I was using Sun detergent and it was about 8-10 cents a load depending on where I got it from. So, while the powder detergent does not save as much as the liquid homemade laundry detergent, which is more like 1 cents a load. I am still saving money. Most tide detergents are about 20 cents a load. Personally, I was really happy with the results. I would like to mention that you really do not want to wash your food processor in the dishwasher after you have made your detergent because it will leave a soapy residue on your dishes. Instead hand wash it. Also, I have read a lot of articles saying that this type of detergent is harder on your washing machine. I read that adding some vinegar to your fabric softener dispenser every now and then will help with this problem, so I plan to do that. I also learned that vinegar works really well as a fabric softener, so I may be switching for fabric softener sheets to a homemade fabric softener soon.

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Conclusion: This homemade powder laundry detergent is easy to make, if you have a food processor, and cleans well. It also did not break anyone out in my family. So, I think it is a keeper for my house.

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For more experiments go to Mom Advise.

Naturally-Dyed Playdough

I had this perfect project picked out this week, but it has rained every single day and we needed to go outside for this project, so we made play dough! I had never made it before and it was fun. Go here to see the first play dough recipe we made. This was the second one we tried.

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Experiment: Can I make a play dough that the kids will love that is still pretty cheap?

Experiment Taken From: Notebook Entry 04.29.09

Materials Needed: See One Golden Apple for the original recipe

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Naturally-Dyed Playdough

1 cup flour
1 cup brightly colored juice (blueberry, cherry, pomengranate, grape, etc.)
1/4 cup salt
1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Put all ingredients in a pot and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the dough comes together. This only takes a few minutes. When cool enough to handle, squish and knead until smooth. Voila. Store in a container in the fridge.
Note: A lovely yellow can be made by using the recipe above, replacing the juice with water, and adding a teaspoon of ground turmeric.

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Results: The play dough was super easy to make, smelled good, and was pretty cheap to make. But best of all, it gave my kids hours of fun! I do however like the ease of the first recipe because I do not have to actually cook the play dough and the colors were so much brighter.

Conclusion: I like both recipes and will definitely use both of them again. Both are cheap and my kids love them!

For more experiments go to Mom Advise.

Mom Advise Notebook Experiment- Who Bread: White vs.Wheat

Bread 1: Bread Flour

Bread 2: All-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour

So, I decided to give the Mom Advise Notebook Experiments a try. Amy has a notebook where she list all kinds of great ideas she finds online. Many of them are projects that I really want to do. I've looked through her past notebooks and have booked marked lots of things to try. So, I'll be back for the weekly experiments. I really like how Amy makes them look like an experiment when she post them, so hopefully she won't mind if I do mine the same. I got a bread machine with our income tax refund this year and I love it. Although I still have a lot to learn! This is the first recipe we tried and really love, Low-Fat Bread Machine Italian Bread . I was really excited to try a different one.

Experiment: Can I make Who (pronounced hooo, like an owl) bread and will my kids and husband will still like it if I substitute 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the bread flour?

Experiment taken from: Notebook Entry 02.14.07

Materials needed: Here's the recipe that I used from SouleMama.

WHO Bread
(makes 1.5 lb loaf, set to 'basic' with medium crust)
1 1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons butter @ room temperature
1 tsp salt
3 cups of flour (we do 2 cups unbleached white, 1 cup whole wheat pastry)
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or, one package)
Add ingredients to pan in order listed according to bread machine instructions. Makes 1.5 lb loaf, set to medium crust and basic.



Results:
Part 1: The first loaf we made was with just the bread flour. This bread rose quite a bit in my machine and looked more like a 2 lb loaf. I was worried that my lid would come off of the top of my machine, but it did not. I thought maybe I did something wrong, but I followed the instructions exactly! So, I thought? After rereading the recipe, it called for plain flour and not the bread flour, which is probably what made it rise more. My kids ate the bread fine and said they liked it okay. I liked it.

Part 2: The second loaf I made was the one that I substituted 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the white flour. Now why would I want to do this? Well, first it is healthier for my kids and second since being on Weight Watchers, I noticed that using the whole wheat flour lowered my points sometimes and after running the recipe through the recipe builder (you have to be an e-tools subscriber to get this service) on the Weight Watchers Website, I found that it did indeed lower it by one point. If it tasted just as good, that was the one I wanted to use. The bread rose more like it was suppose too since I used the all-purpose flour. (I did not have any unbleached white.) The top fell, but the results were that my bread's crust was crispier and the bread really did taste better to me than the first one I tried. But how did my kids like it? Well, my oldest one said it's okay. I asked him what he did not like about it and he said it taste like wheat. The others are 4 years old and 2 years old and basically they will eat warm bread with butter on it.


Conclusion: Well, I guess my kids will eat the bread with the wheat in it, although they seem to like the white flour bread better. My dh and my 9 year old refuse to eat wheat bread. I don't have any other answers as to how to get them to eat healthier and to eat wheat. Personally, I liked the second one and if I make this bread again, that will be the one I choose. This however is not my first pick for my favorite bread.
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For more experiments go here.