Lincoln Thumbs and Laundry Soap

Part of “Re-Purposing Linda,” my year-long quest for better health and fitness, was getting Phil to agree that we should join Lifetime Fitness. This wasn’t easy, because Phil is the only one bringing home the bacon these days. But just because I don’t make money doesn’t mean I can’t give a real effort toward saving money. I’m trying to cut out conveniences and luxuries, and go back to when we had 4 little kids at home and HAD to scrimp. So my re-purposing has taken on a new angle: turning myself back into a cheapskate.

Here’s the original Contract With Phil, written before we joined LF, to help ease his mind about the financial commitment. Following The Contract is another of the ideas I’m putting into action: making my own laundry soap!! I shall pinch those pennies until a permanent picture of Lincoln is embedded in my thumbs.

Contract With Phil:

For as long as we are members at Lifetime Fitness,

Ø  I will not purchase fast food (quarter pounder with cheese, I miss you)

Ø  I will not go to Starbucks

Ø  I will not get cash back at the grocery store

Ø  I will limit my lunch out with friends to once a month

Ø  I will place a complete moratorium on all Vera Bradley purchases (that was painful)

Ø  I will not buy anything over $50 without consulting you (exception: groceries)

Ø  I will not buy new clothes or shoes for myself until I have to because of weight loss and/or wear and tear (can’t be looking shabby!)

Ø  Wherever it’s feasible, I will alter clothing I already have, instead of buying new

Ø  I will go to Lifetime Fitness a minimum of 3 times a week

Ø  I will give up our Saturday breakfasts out

Ø  I will not ask to eat dinner out (but you can still suggest it, and then it’s okay)

Ø  I will not ask for Chinese food or carry-out pizza (unless I’m really exhausted)

Ø  I will not buy any more kitchen gadgets (but as gifts? Yes, I accept.)

Ø  I will not buy any more pay-per-view movies when I’m at home by myself

Ø  I will not buy any more magazines

Ø  I will not spend any more money on the kids’ apartments (but I still WANT to…)

Ø  I will never buy another vacuum cleaner

Ø  I will not buy one more stick of furniture (unless you agree it’s necessary)

Ø  I will have a yard sale in the spring (even though I hate doing yard sales)

Ø  I will not buy any new sewing gadgets even if I love them (yes, now I’m starting to whine a little)

Ø  I will not buy any new camping gear of any kind

Ø  I will continue to go to Firefly, year after year after year <sigh>

Ø  I will not buy you a Father’s Day gift, and you will not buy me a Mother’s Day gift

Ø  We will go small for birthday gifts for each other this year (unless you finally want to rip up the carpet in my sewing room and replace it with something hard and sweepable, like wood or tile)

Ø  I will not buy any home décor items or Christmas decorations

And that was just for starters. The original Contract was emailed to Phil at work so he could peruse it and mull it over before he came home. He agreed, and I’ve held to the bargain, To The Letter.

When I got involved in Pinterest, thanks to my daughters Leah and Emily, I found (or re-discovered) many ways to save money in addition to The Contract. When my kids were small, I came across Amy Dacyzn’s awesome books, The Tightwad Gazette I, II and III (sold now on Amazon in one large volume, highly recommended by ME). These books were compilations of her popular newsletters by the same name. Amy and her contributors taught me to make my own salad dressings and soups, wash out Ziploc bags and re-use them, make my own muffins and cakes from scratch rather than pay for a mix, make potato bread dough and keep it in the fridge, shop at yard sales and thrift stores, and SO much more.

Now, on Pinterest, I have a board called CheapskateMe (a double entendre, meaning both “I am a cheapskate” and “please help me be a cheapskate”). One of the “pins” I added is for making my own laundry detergent. I started there for two reasons; I hate spending all that money for laundry soap, and I hate wasting the packaging (because even if we re-cycle it, We Paid For It). I found that my pin originated with a blog called “Frugally Green,” at frugallygreen.blogspot.com. Here’s what I did, with a little help from my assistant Phil.

First, we bought a Fells Naptha laundry bar, 20 Mule Team Borax, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda and a 2.5-gallon water/drink dispenser at Walmart. From Ikea, a funnel and a small plastic trash can to mix it all in.

I cut the Fells Naptha into 3 equal pieces, and Phil shredded one of the pieces with a box grater, like you would use for shredding cheese. I put the grated soap into a pan on the stovetop with 6 cups of hot water, stirred often, and heated it on low until the soap was melted (if you try this, don’t let it boil!). Once the soap was all dissolved, I added a half cup each of the Borax and the A&H, and Phil cooked and stirred it till it was all dissolved and thickened to almost the consistency of honey, as directed.

I poured it into a plastic trash can already holding 6 cups of hot tap water, and stirred it up. Then I added a gallon plus 6 more cups of hot tap water, stirred again, and left it set out overnight. All of this took around 12 minutes.

In the morning, as warned on the Frugally Green blog, I found a gloppy mess of glop floating on top of water. I stirred it up, and used my immersion blender to re-incorporate the glop and the water. Presto! Laundry soap! I ladled it into a funnel resting in the opening of my Walmart drink dispenser, replaced the cap and put it in the laundry room next to a little canning jar with measurements on the side. One half cup per load (or 4 liquid ounces).

Now to figure how much money we’ve saved. Hoo Boy. This took lots longer than making the soap, but I needed to convince myself it was worth the trouble (what little trouble it was).

So…

If we do 5 loads of laundry per week, and we live for another 35 years (making us 88, not unrealistic), we will have done 9100 laundry loads between now and Heaven. Holy Smokes. If we live past 88, maybe our grandkids will make our laundry soap for us. Heck, maybe they’ll do our laundry, too!

Here’s my Laundry Soap Cost Analysis:

1 bar of Fells Naptha soap was $.97 and makes 3 batches

1 box of Borax was $3.38 and makes 11 batches

1 box of A&H Superwash Soda was $3.24 and makes 19 batches

We do 4 or 5 loads of laundry a week. So in the next 35 years, that comes to 9100 loads of laundry. That’s 142 batches of laundry soap. But the math is easier if I figure on making 100 batches.

100 batches:

33.34 bars Fells Naptha = $32.34

9.1 boxes borax = $30.76

5.26 boxes A&H = $17.04

Dispenser, trash can, funnel $10

100 batches totals $90.14

1 batch $.90

1 batch = 2 gallons or so

2 gallons = 32 cups * .5 cups per load = 64 loads

.90 / 64 = 0.014, or less than a penny and a half per load.

(Without counting the $10 we spent for the re-usable items, it’s $.80 per load, and that makes it 1 ¼ pennies per load.)

So according to my superior math skills (kidding – I hate math and it hates me back, so Phil had to check my work), I finally determined that after making 100 batches, the real cost will have been less than a penny and a half per load, inflation notwithstanding.

I first used it yesterday, and I liked it! No dyes or perfumes (which make me break out in a rash, and don’t get the clothes any cleaner), no phosphates, no expensive packaging, and best of all it did a great job cleaning our laundry. I first tried it on whites, and they not only look and smell nice and clean, they might even look a little bit whiter than before!

This morning I spent some time on the Sam’s Club website, looking for a good deal on commercial laundry detergent. The best value I could find was a brand I had never heard of, called ECOS. They have 3 types, all of which come in bulky plastic bottles, are okay for High Efficiency washers and are phosphate-free. One of the ECOS types was free of dyes and perfumes: ECOS Free & Clear. An okay option price-wise, though not having used it I have no idea if it gets your clothes clean. It came in at 6 cents per load, which is still more than 4 times my home-made detergent, but far less than other commercial brands. The contest for the biggest money-guzzler seems to be a tie between “Tide with Downy” and “Drops,” each weighing in at a hefty 37 cents per load! Oh. My. Gosh.

One small aside: don’t be fooled by often meaningless claims, like “organic.” Hemlock is organic, and also lethal. Same for arsenic. Poison ivy is organic, but do you want it in your laundry detergent?

So I am now officially a double-re-purposer, and about to be a triple (see future blogs!). First Re-Purposing experiment in ultra-frugality, a big winner in my book (and on my blog). To anyone who read this far, thank you, and I mean it!! Please leave me a little comment if you will, it would make my day.