Category Archives: Tutorials

Making Liquid Hand Soap From Hotel Bar Soap {Welcome Home Link Up}

soapA couple of years ago, I wrote a post about how we made liquid hand soap.  We were using our homemade castille soap at the time and even with the gylcerin added, it wasn’t particularly thick.  So, I was a little surprised when I had someone comment about how thick and unusable the soap was when they used a traditional bar of soap like Ivory.

Since then, it has plagued me as to how I could make that recipe work for regular soap, especially considering my husband goes on a lot of business trips and comes home with all these little bars of soap that never get used (mainly because I don’t like the mess bar soap creates on a counter).

Last week, necessity became the mother of invention.  We were out of soap refill, I was tired of paying for it (we go through a lot of soap!), and I had some extra time to figure out how to make the 4 bars of hotel soap I had on hand into liquid hand soap.

I started by grating all the soap.  They were all different kinds from different hotels.  The 4 bars together equaled 2 cups of soap shreds.

I put those shreds in a large pot on the stove and began adding water and more water and more water.  Several times I had to let the soap cool so I could test the consistency and then yes, add more water!  Finally, at 20 cups of water, I had a usable soap!

So, here’s the recipe at its lowest ratio:

Bar Soap to Liquid Hand Soap

1 cup of shredded bar soap (hotel or not)
10 cups water

Melt soap in water in a large pot on the stove.  Let cool slightly and poor into containers.  Soap will thicken as it cools.

I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to this week!

I also want to take a moment to tell you that all this month on the Welcome Home Link Up I’ll be featuring my friend Renee’s Norwex business! That’s right! You told me about Norwex on my one-day cleaning post, Renee emailed without even knowing I had written that post, and I am now the proud owner of Norwex products! I’ll be telling you more about this adventure next week! But, in the meantime, look through her site, and if you would like to order anything, please contact her at DrPoschen at cox dot net so I get hostess credit (so I can get more of these great products!)

{and check out the Spring Sale from A Slob Comes Clean – coupon code: SPRING gets you her ebook on taking back your house for only $3!)


Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent Gets an Upgrade

My homemade laundry detergent

Two years ago, I posted about making my own laundry detergent.  I mentioned how I had left behind the liquid in favor of the dry.

Fast forward through time and you will find me not using either.  Until recently.

I decided I was going to try again after reading this post from Mooberry Farm.  She had a little different configuration of the same ingredients I was using.  But, the real difference was I no longer had any of our homemade castille soap, so I had to purchase some Fels-Naptha.

For those of you who don’t know what Fels-Naptha is, it is a heavy-duty laundry soap in a bar (often used for stain treatment) that costs about $1.15 per bar.  You can buy it in just about any supermarket in the detergent aisle.

Let me give you the new measurements and directions and then explain a little more (I tweaked the directions a bit from what was on the Mooberry site):

Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent
1/2 bar of Fels-Naptha
1 cup borax
1 cup washing soda
2 gallons of water, divided

Also need:
a grater
a large saucepan (8 cups or larger)
large bucket or container with lid
liquid storage containers for finished product

1. Grate 1/2 a bar of Fels-Naptha into a saucepan (I still use my Bosch grater).

2. Cover shavings with 4 cups of water and heat on low, stirring often, until soap has melted.

3. Remove from heat.  Add the borax and washing soda and stir in another 4 cups of water.  Mixture will resemble pudding.

4. Pour mixture into a bucket or other container with a lid (I used a cooler–see photo below), add another 24 cups (or 1 gallon + 8 cups) and stir well.  In fact, you may want to use a whisk.

5. Let mixture set overnight.

6. The next day, the congealed soap will have settled to the top.  Stir it back in and pour into storage containers if you’d rather not dip your hand into a bucket every time you do the laundry.  I used old laundry detergent bottles.

Use 1/3 – 1/2 cup of detergent per load of laundry.

And yes, you can use it on your cloth diapers too!

A few notes of interest:

*I didn’t have enough old detergent bottles to pour into, so I keep a very hard to open cooler with the remaining amount in my laundry room.  This has proven to be a very good method.

*I don’t add essential oil.  It would take way too much to make a difference in the smell, so if I ever add any, it will be tea tree oil for it’s anti-bacterial properties.  I’d rather use my yummy-smelling essential oils in other ways.

*Speaking of smells, Fels-Naptha does have a distinct, yet not unpleasant, odor.  However, that smell does not transfer to your clothing.

*The reason I think this is doing so much better than my homemade castille soap did, is because Fels-Naptha is intended for laundry.  Additionally, upping the amount of borax and washing soda helped the consistency greatly.

*This does not suds.  It’s ok.

*The mixture ends up looking a bit curdled.  It’s ok.

Now, for the question that will determine if I continue to make my own laundry detergent…

Is it cost effective enough to be worth my time?

First off, the time required to make this is nominal.  It’s easy, folks!

Secondly, I am going to use very general numbers since prices vary regionally.  If you want it exact, use your own region’s prices.

Cost Breakdown:
Fels-Naptha – 1/2 bar = 58¢
Borax – 1 cup =  53¢
Washing Soda – 1 cup = 44¢
Water – 2 gallons from tap = 20¢
Total per batch = $1.75
Total per load = 3¢

For me, each batch fills around 3 of the containers I had on hand.  We only use one kind of detergent and for that size it costs around $3.00 a bottle when on sale (and it goes on sale often).  I do have to use a bit more of the homemade detergent than the store detergent, but not much.  So without factoring that in…

Cost difference = $7.25 in favor of the homemade detergent

And since we taken it this far, let’s figure my savings for a year if I only used homemade detergent…

Let’s say it takes me 2 weeks to go through each 50 fl oz bottle of detergent.  That means every 6 weeks, I am making more at $1.75 or buying more at $9 for 3 bottles.  That’s $15.17 a year for the homemade and $78 a year for the store bought, which equals…

Yearly savings = $62.83

Is the trouble it takes to make my own laundry detergent (again, nominal) worth $62.83?  In some seasons, I’d have to say no, but right now this feels like a significant savings for very little work.

What do you think?

How to Diaper a Baby Using Prefolds

I’ve had this video sitting on my computer for a very long time. In fact, the baby in the video is not Garin…it’s Micah!

I’ve talked to you before about how to use prefolds, but for me it took actually seeing someone use a prefold before I really got it.

In this video you will see Baby Micah covered for modesty-sake with another prefold; however, you can use an extra liner in prefolds to offer more absorbancy in the exact same way I am using one for modesty.

If you cannot see this video, click on the link here: How to Diaper a Baby using Prefolds

Learn the Days of Creation

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As I gear up to release the Creation Through The Flood unit this Wednesday {FREE for all email and RSS subscribers! No longer available},  I wanted to show you a couple of ways we teach our children the days of Creation.

Every child in our household over the age of 2 has made a Creation Book.   These are very simple to put together because the only skills you need are the ability to tear paper and slap on glue!

Supplies needed:

4 pieces of card stock
assorted colors of construction paper
(I buy mine from Discount School Supply)
glue
some sort of writing utensil
(I used colored pencils because that is what I had on hand)
yarn or ribbon
3-hole punch
(not shown)

Starting with the front cover:

Tear a blue globe, add green land, and write the title of your book along with your child’s name.

On the backside of the front cover will be Day 1:

Tear a black piece of construction paper and glue it onto the white card stock.  You can write Day 1 somewhere on the page as well.

Take your second piece of card stock and make Day 2:

This is made from 2 pieces of blue construction paper, torn with a little bit of white peeking out in between.

On the backside of this page is Day 3:

Day 3 is brown paper land and green plants.

Next page – Day 4:

Black construction paper background with bits of yellow for the stars, a yellow crescent moon, and a torn circle sun.

Turn the page over for Day 5:

Torn bits of fish on a blue background and blackbirds in the sky.  {I was making fish alongside my children and my 6 year old said, “Mommy, what is that?”  Yeah, it was that bad!}

Get your last page of card stock out and make Day 5:

My daughter’s rendition of Eve and my gingerbread-looking Adam along with a smattering of animals courtesy of the 5 year old.

And lastly, Day 7:

Yellow rays of Holiness to represent God resting.

We 3-hold punched all the pages and tied them up with string and read them all day long!

I used to type up the Scripture references that went with each day, but that took a tremendous amount of room and usually the child making the book wasn’t literate.  Then, we learned this wonderful little fingerplay for the Days of Creation and they can now “read” their book with ease!  Here are my children demonstrating how we teach the Days of Creation.

Enjoy!

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Old Storybooks, New Placemats

I have a love/hate relationship with children’s books.

I love books.

I hate books that are on their last leg with torn pages, marked up illustrations (courtesy of the current toddler) and broken spines.

But, it is so hard to pitch books.  Especially books with memories attached.  And we all know how easily we {and our children} attach memories to their books.

Well, I ran across a great idea over at The Homeschool Chick the other day and had to try it!

Storybook Placemats!

So, while I had my handy-dandy contact paper out from the assignment card project, I decided to make these!

It was not hard to choose which book needed to be upcycled.


{Look at that price! We might just have to get another one!}

Bear’s Curiosity Book has been with us a long time.  When my oldest son was a tiny little guy, he would pour over that book and pretend he lived within the book’s pages.  Every child after him has done likewise.

And the book had begun to show it’s age.

It was coming apart at the binding.  Pages were torn.  Purposeful toddler hands armed with permanent marker had decorated it’s cover.  It was a sad, sad book, yet we loved it.

When the children were busy in another room, I quickly went to work.  {Yes, dismemberment of favorite books is sometimes best left for a mother to do alone}

This is a large book, so it took a lot of contact paper to do 5 placemats (poor Garin didn’t get one because this was all I could salvage from the book).  The best way to do this is to

1.  Cut a piece of contact paper for both the front and the back.

2.  Peel off the back of one of the pieces of contact paper and lay the pages you want to preserve FACE DOWN. If you are not very, super, extra careful with contact paper, you will end up with bubbles and ridges, so laying the front side out first keeps you from having any of these issues with the side that matters most.  Also, don’t forget to place the books pages in the correct order.  The one in the picture is NOT in the correct order.  The kids noticed right away, but thankfully, it is a section that doesn’t require you to read from left to right and they quickly forgave my faux pas. ;)

3.  Peel backing off the second layer of contact paper and be VERY, EXTRA, SUPER CAREFUL to lay it just right on the back side of the pages. Start in the middle if you can and work your way out, gently pressing out bubbles as you go.  And word of caution, contact paper has static cling, so if you get anywhere near the other piece of contact paper, they will suck together!  There is a little window of opportunity where you can unstick and restick, but not much, so be very, extra, super…well, you get the idea!

4.  Trim edges and enjoy!

It warmed my heart to watch my children sitting at the dining room table tracing the pages of the book, talking about their memories, and laughing over new memories.

All this has me wondering how many placemats a family might need…..

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Do It Yourself Markable Assignment Cards

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This past year our method of assigning school lessons changed a bit.  For one thing, we couldn’t find the assignment folders we used to use in stores anymore and secondly, we have less worksheets which made these folders less of a necessity. {In my opinion, less worksheets are a good thing!}

So, we took the index card method I was using right after our 7th child was born {and while we were dealing with his colic} and made it more of a permanent thing that could be used over and over.

Making these markable assignment cards are very simple.  All you need is:

index cards
clear contact paper
sharpie marker
wet erase marker
hole punch
metal book rings

1.  Use your sharpie to write one subject at the top of each index card.

2.  Cover each index card with clear contact paper (I love this stuff, but you can get them laminated if you like).

{See the scissors?  These are my non-stick scissors from Discount School Supply.  I use them for any project that requires me to cut through something that might end up stuck on my scissors.}

3.  Cut out each card and hole punch one corner.  Thread each child’s set of cards onto one metal book ring. {I used the largest size I could find at WalMart)

4.  Use a Vis-A-Vis wet erase marker to write out each child’s assignments for the week.

{Not every assignment card has lessons written on it for the week and not every card is separated out M-F.  Some have a weekly goal written on them like: Finish chapter 6 by Friday and some are blank so that the child can set his or her own goals or just to serve as a reminder that that subject needs to be done – ie. our Piano card.}

5.  Decide where you will put the assignment cards.  Ours are attached to each child’s crate where they can easily be seen by both the child and the mommy.

assignment cards on crate

Every weekend during my planning time, I simply redo these cards and hang them back up for the next week.  I like that there is less paper being thrown away and less stuff lying around.

I’d love to hear how you handle assigning lessons and if you’ve found something that works for your family’s particular needs!

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