Christmas Savings

Christmas Savings

Hey all,

With Christmas literally just days away, I got to thinking about how we go about saving money for Christmas and other times of the year. Here’s one thing we do.

As homesteaders, my family is always looking for ways to be frugal. One of the things we have started doing a few years back, is making the liquid laundry soap that the Duggar family makes. We’v.e found that it enables us to make large batches of soap fairly cheaply and we get more soap this way.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• 4 cups hot tap water

• 1 Fels-Naptha soap bar

• 1 cup Arm & Hammer super washing soda (not baking soda or detergent!)

• 1/2 cup borax

Preparation Instructions

1 Grate the bar of Fels-Naptha soap; place in saucepan with water over medium-high heat. Stir soap constantly until dissolved.

2 Fill half of a 5 gallon bucket (2.5 gallons) with hot tap water.

3 Add melted soap from saucepan, washing soda and borax to bucket. Stir until completely dissolved.

4 Fill remainder of bucket with hot tap water; let sit overnight.

5 (Optional: add 10-15 drops of essential oil to two gallons of concentrated soap after it has cooled.)

6 When ready to use, fill half of a clean laundry soap dispenser with the soap concentration and the other half with water. The two will form a gel.

We use 3/4ths of a cup of this to wash our clothes. It saves a lot on money. This is especially helpful in terms of all the extra things you can buy when you aren’t paying as much for laundry soap. Christmas just got easier.

Until next time,

Homestead in health ya’ll,

Emily