Back to Basics: Dirty Laundry

To start, you’ll need:

Large bucket: I use a large orange bucket from Home Depot, it’s heavy duty and has a handle and lid.
½ Cup Borax: Can be found in any laundry soap aisle, and generally under $7
½ Cup Washing Soda: This is not the same as baking soda, and can also be found in the same aisle as laundry soap for under $6.
1/3 ‘Linda’ brand soap:Depending on what your needs are, you can use more, I personally use half. The glycerin based soaps are gentle and effective so they are safe for sensitive skin, and for the little ones. ‘Linda’ brand can be found in the same aisle as laundry soap.

Cheese Grater

A pot to melt the ingredients in

Essential Oils: I personally love orange oil to help with grease, and a hint of lemon oil to give it an overall light fresh scent.

Step One: Grate your soap – I have also done the lazy thing and just smashed it into small chunks, but grating it will make it melt faster

Step Two: Add six cups of water to your pot, and toss in the grated soap – heat on medium until all the soap has melted, then toss in the washing soda and borax. Stir until everything is dissolved, and remove from heat.

Step three Add four cups of warm tap water to your bucket – then mix in your soap mix and stir, stir stir. Once it’s good and mixed together, you can add in any essential oils, or you can just leave as is. Finally you are going to add in 22 cups of water, and stir it well.

Step Four: If your bucket has a lid – put the lid on, but not all the way, trust me, it makes a difference. Then leave your soapy mixture overnight (or for 12 hours, whatever comes first) to settle. The mixture will look goopy and thick when you remove the lid, and that’s a good thing. I always use a masher and give it a good beating so it’s more of a liquid texture – but you can just leave it as is also. It’s doesn’t matter what it looks like – or the consistency. Toss a half-cup in every load. This soap works great and you’re going to love it!

When mustard stains limit my favourite summer tee to the confines of a hoodie and a scarf- the stain guru comes to the rescue. The stain guru has interesting techniques and rituals that make even the most resistant stain disappear – forever. In my family, this is my mother. I am a spilly talker, drinker and let’s be honest – a spilly eater.

With directions that sometimes resemble a twelve-step breakup plan, she will remove that stain AND brighten the shirt all at the same time. Her removal techniques often involve kitchen products like lemon juice and nutmeg, and meticulous details about which hand you should be scrubbing with.

My mother’s unique stain removal process has been an interest of mine for years. The older I got – the more I found myself drawn to her unconventional stain removal skills. Her ability to take natural everyday items seemed far more appealing to me than any of those chemically created products that instantly unclog sinus’s and singe nose hairs.

Her natural, and more importantly – gentle approach to stain removal inspired me to look at the other products that I was using in my home. I began reading labels and was shocked at some of the abrasive ingredients. “What the hell is THAT?” became a common expression, and although I haven’t taken the stain guru reigns from my mother – I’ve become “that girl” who makes most of my household products myself.

Each column I will delight you with a lovely DIY version of common household products that you can feel confident about having in your home. Let’s start with:

Dirty Laundry

Summertime is hands down my favourite time of the year to do laundry. There is nothing like hanging freshly washed clothes out on the line to dry in the beautiful sunshine. That perfect scent of lined dried clothes is something that I have loved my whole life. I remember when I was little kid and my mom would hang load after load of our freshly washed clothes on the line and then once they were dry watching her delicately fold them in the sunshine. They would feel and smell like summer.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. There were also many times when getting laundry off the line became a family effort. These were the times that my mom would frantically yell “Haul ass! They’re spraying the fields! JUST RIP THEM OFF!” Leaving the laundry on the line in these cases resulted in manure-scented laundry – a downside to growing up beside a farmer.

The older I became, the more I realized that it wasn’t just the fresh scent of dung that assaulted my laundry. Have you ever really walked down the laundry soap aisle and felt overwhelmed by the copious amount of scent? When have apples and mango ever smelled like THAT? Lavender is normally supposed to calm the body.

The overpowering scent of commercial laundry soap, and the fact that the ingredients are often nature’s worst enemy, launched my journey to find a natural, eco-friendly alternative.

This soap isn’t just for the hippies either – it’s budget and time friendly, costing a mere twenty five cents per batch. It took me about a year through a lot of trial and error to come up with the perfect soap for my needs but now it takes me just 15 minutes to whip up a batch of laundry soap. One batch is good for about 56 loads of dirty laundry.

Laundry just got a bit more exciting. You’re Welcome!