Making, yes MAKING, your own laundry detergent.

Damn the man.

Yes, damn him. I will not be a slave to you or your oppression via highway robbery... I will no longer let you bleed me dry one mega-jug of detergent at a time.

Well, it'd be a slow road to robbery, but still. As a stay-at-home mom, I feel my job (amongst the 1,000 other facets of my career) is to save us money. Save. Money. save... I'm always looking for little ways to curb spending so I can save up for...more spending? Anyway, the fact that this is natural and tingles the little green bits of my heart is simply an added bonus. It is so simple, so cheap, and so a way to kill a day when I want to sell my kids to the gypsies but opt to put them to work in my kitchen sweatshop instead.

Here is what you'll need... though I must first preface this by saying, in my long-winded fashion, that I have two kids. Both must be engaged in some safe activity before I attempt to do anything. Desperation is the mother of invention, so I'll throw in mini tip. A tiplet, if you will. I took yogurt, yes yogurt, put it in a ziploc, and let the baby go ape. Random and worthless, but he enjoyed it.

What you need:

Borax (again, can you hear the angels singing?)

Washing Powder

2 bars of Fels Naptha. This is a bar soap-thing that can be found in the laundry aisle.

Measuring cups (uh, duh)

A grater/processor of some sort.

Here is the recipe, if you can call it that, and it is as easy as can be:

1. Grate the Fels Naptha into fine bits.

2. Measure out 2 Cups out.

3. Add 1 cup each of borax and washing powder.

4. Combine! Et Voila!

You'll use about 2 Tablespoons per load, 1 in an HE machine. It makes a TON, rinses clean, and is safe to use on cloth diapers. Oh, and did I mention it is CHEAP? And up in the pictures... the baggie full of soap bits? Pop those left over bits, the ones you can't grate down unless you aren't afraid of grinding your fingers to bloody stumps, in a clean jar with hot water, and when it "melts" down, you have a killer stain remover. See? You just got 3 tips for the price of one! Enjoy! You'll feel like Martha, Laura Ingalls, and the Planet Green channel all into one.