What I Did On My Wild and Wacky Friday Night

As I transferred a load of clean whites from the washing machine to dryer this morning, I exclaimed "Holy (bleep)!"

That is not a typical reaction from me about laundry. I've never gone farther than saying "(Bleep)!" when a persistent stain has once again defeated me. This wasn't that. But let me back up and tell you the whole story.

I read about an ambitious Momma D who decided to make her own laundry detergent with excellent results. I thought, "Hey! Why not?!" and checked out the details. Momma D in turn had gotten the idea from Homemade Mothering (and I'm not sure where she got it from, but that's mere detail, people). The most important thing about the second blog-site is that it contains the complete recipe. After immediately jumping on that bandwagon... and then dithering about it for 7 weeks... I made it up last night.

Yes, people, my Friday night is not complete unless I'm doing something crazy... like making homemade laundry detergent. Okay, that's not entirely true. Usually I'm falling into bed exhausted at midnight like every other night, like every other mother of an energetic preschooler after the 2 to 3 hour struggle of putting him to bed. But last night, after almost a week of not seeing him at all, the nannie and apma just had to have him stay overnight. I could literally hear her crossing her fingers when she called me up to ask for this very special request. Normally I would say no, because I'm selfish that way, and I can't sleep without my very own night monster under my very own leaky roof. But no babysitter for a week left me jumping through the phone lines to hug her in glee when she called.

So, no little man, nothing to do for the night. And yes, I actually paced anxiously through the house for a few minutes after this, feeling completely sad and bereft without him, missing him and wondering what the heck I was going to do all evening. A movie? Nothing out I wanted to see, and I didn't want to go alone. Chores? Ha! Even I'm not that crazy. Making homemade laundry detergent? Hmmm.... an experiment that risked blowing the house up? Bingo!!! That's it! So after checking the house insurance paperwork for soap induced catastrophes, I got started. I had already purchased the required ingredients during my weeks of dithering, so I was ready.

I followed the directions outlined in Homemade Mothering, and you'll need to go there to see for yourself. I just have to say I was pleasantly surprised how easy it is to chop up Ivory soap. It cuts like warm butter, and I had it minced in no time at all. And because I'm impatient and don't like to stand in one spot and stir and stir and stir and wait for soap to dissolve, I had to put on my Enrique Iglesias videos to get me through that. Not required for this experiment, by the way.

I finished up with rather disappointing results. I mean, the only exciting thing that happened was getting distracted by Enrique and then turning to the stove only to find bubbles about to pour over the side. That was fun.

Intended results outline that it's a very liquidy gel, and it was: it looked like... water. I didn't see much indication that it would clean laundry, but I still thought I would give it a go. After it cooled down, I was very surprised to see such a thick gel. I left the stirring spoon in the bucket to break it up so that I could put some in the tiny dish in my energy-star front loading washer.

To add dimension to the experiment, I put that load of whites in last night, and left them to sit overnight. This is when any smells left in the clothes intensify, and I'd be able to see just how clean the clothes would get. For fun, I threw in one of my favorite white t-shirts that I haven't been able to wear since I washed it in another oxygen-powered super-cleaner, which to my distress causes some kind of chemical reaction with my spray-on sunscreen and strips of neon yellow to appear. As well, due to my own delightful body chemistry, the armpits of light-colored clothes turn grey. No smell, just discoloration. Years of experimenting with different deodorants and laundry soaps led me to conclude that it's all me. (It's so much fun being me sometimes!) Added to that, my laundry room had been dismantled for a week due to an unfortunate bird incident so the dirty smelly clothes were piling up. Including the ones from the pee and poop accidents that occurred (not mine).

I need to point out: I don't pretreat clothes. I'm the chronic-fatigued mom of a super-charged preschool boy. It's just not going to happen. Period.

So the reaction of "Holy (bleep!)" this morning was due entirely to the fact that the wet laundry left overnight came out smelling fresh with all stains gone--including the neon stripes. Yay! I can't tell you enough how happy this makes me. I prefer things all low-maintenance, and this definitely fits in with my life.

I'm so pleased by this that I plan on forcing everyone around me to try it, so watch out Sister-of-mine... when I come to visit in September, we're making laundry soap!

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