A strange thought hit me again tonight, homemade laundry soap. My wife and I tried this a few years ago before we had any considerations for prepping. We actually did this for a year in effort to cut costs a little when she became a stay at home mom to our first child. Either way, in a long term SHTF senario I understand that clean laundry may be a luxury, but wouldn't it be nice to at least have somewhat clean clothes? The ingredients are super cheap and easy to find, we got everything from WalMart or Meijers. We made almost a years worth (a single batch lasted our family 10 months) for approx $12. Now, it didn't keep our whites as white as commercial detergent, but it did work pretty well. Recipie and directions follow
What we used:
1 bar Fels Naptha soap
2 cups Borax
2 cups Arm n Hammer Washing Soda (note, this is not baking soda)
10-20 drops of desired sented oil
1 five gallon bucket
First, grate the bar of soap using a cheese grater (or knife if thats all you've got). Next, heat a quart of water almost to boil and add grated soap, keep just below boil (boiling will produce a foam that tends to boil over the pot) until all soap is totally melted. Then pour this mixture into five gallon bucket, add other powdered ingredients, stir well. Then top off the five gallon bucket with water and stir some more. Put the lid on and let sit overnight to cool. The next day, the solution will be a gel at 2x strength. I used my hand to reach into the bucket and literally squish the gel into a more liquid form. At this stage I would then add the desired amount of the scented oil (we used a fresh linen scent but there are a wide variety of choices out there). Then I would pour (with a funnel) this into a used laundry detergent bottle to half full, fill the rest of the way with water and shake well. Boom, you've got a pretty decent laundry detergent. We used approx 1/2cup in our front load washing machine, I heard that you should use 3/4 cup in a top loader due to the fact that they use more water per load. I'm not certain what amount one would use while roughing it and washing their clothes in a makeshift basin or whatever. Another option would be to cut back on the water if needed for storage space and just to use less of the higher concentrated solution. Either way, these ingredients will keep indefinatly, store super easily and are very compact, and the only other thing thats needed is water and heat to melt the bar soap. The limiting factor for extremly long term SHTF would be the bar soap. When you purchase the ingredients, the borax and washing soda come in boxes big enough to make 8-10 batches of the stuff. If planning for longer term SHTF, I would recommend buying a few more bars of the Fels Naptha.
Note sure if anyone has ever posted this before, but I thought it may be helpful. Though we stopped using homemade detergent for our daily laundry (like I said, it's not as good as commercial detergents at keeping whites brilliant white nor at deep stain removal), I will have the ingredients in our SHTF supplies.
What we used:
1 bar Fels Naptha soap
2 cups Borax
2 cups Arm n Hammer Washing Soda (note, this is not baking soda)
10-20 drops of desired sented oil
1 five gallon bucket
First, grate the bar of soap using a cheese grater (or knife if thats all you've got). Next, heat a quart of water almost to boil and add grated soap, keep just below boil (boiling will produce a foam that tends to boil over the pot) until all soap is totally melted. Then pour this mixture into five gallon bucket, add other powdered ingredients, stir well. Then top off the five gallon bucket with water and stir some more. Put the lid on and let sit overnight to cool. The next day, the solution will be a gel at 2x strength. I used my hand to reach into the bucket and literally squish the gel into a more liquid form. At this stage I would then add the desired amount of the scented oil (we used a fresh linen scent but there are a wide variety of choices out there). Then I would pour (with a funnel) this into a used laundry detergent bottle to half full, fill the rest of the way with water and shake well. Boom, you've got a pretty decent laundry detergent. We used approx 1/2cup in our front load washing machine, I heard that you should use 3/4 cup in a top loader due to the fact that they use more water per load. I'm not certain what amount one would use while roughing it and washing their clothes in a makeshift basin or whatever. Another option would be to cut back on the water if needed for storage space and just to use less of the higher concentrated solution. Either way, these ingredients will keep indefinatly, store super easily and are very compact, and the only other thing thats needed is water and heat to melt the bar soap. The limiting factor for extremly long term SHTF would be the bar soap. When you purchase the ingredients, the borax and washing soda come in boxes big enough to make 8-10 batches of the stuff. If planning for longer term SHTF, I would recommend buying a few more bars of the Fels Naptha.
Note sure if anyone has ever posted this before, but I thought it may be helpful. Though we stopped using homemade detergent for our daily laundry (like I said, it's not as good as commercial detergents at keeping whites brilliant white nor at deep stain removal), I will have the ingredients in our SHTF supplies.
