The Never-ending Menace of a Mother

Or anyone for that matter: laundry. It has to be done, and you need a cleaning agent to do it.

Some time last year, my MIL and I were talking about the prices of laundry detergent, and the strong perfumes and dyes in the detergents. We both have to pay close attention to perfumes and dyes in detergents. My FIL has very sensitive skin, so there are only a handful of detergents that can be used for him. I use cloth diapers, and perfumes and dyes can clog up the fabric, irritating the baby's skin as well as making the diapers less absorbent.

In an effort to save money and use less chemicals on our clothes (and consequently, our skin), I began looking into home-made detergent options. I found this website. Not only are there several detergent recipes to choose from, but there is a pretty exhaustive FAQ's section that was complied in response to the questions generated by the detergent recipes.

I went with Recipe #1:

1 quart boiling water

2 cups or 1 bar grated bar soap (A regular cheese grater works great. No pun intended!)

2 cups Borax

2 cups Washing soda

Add the grated soap to the boiling water and stir over low heat until dissolved.

In a large bucket (with lid) combine water/soap mixture with the Borax and Washing Soda, stirring until dissolved.

Add 2 gallons of water and mix well.

Keep covered, stir before each use (it will gel). Use about a 1/4 cup per load.

I chose to use Ivory soap rather then Fels Naptha (which is what a lot of people use) for the grated bar soap because that is what I had on hand the first time. I am glad I did, for one thing Ivory does have a slight scent, which is nice, but not heavy, and for the other thing it is very gentle on the skin, more so than Fels Naptha, I believe.

I am currently on my second bucket of this detergent and we have been very happy with it. Our laundry comes out clean and fresh smelling. Once in awhile I do still use a little bleach, particularly with the whites. I also use white vinegar in the rinse cycle for the diapers to help break up any soap residue.

I have been asked by a few different people about the price difference. I knew before starting this venture that the home-made detergent would be cheaper, but I never ran any numbers until now. It seemed a good thing to include in this post. :)

Here are the three main detergents I previously used:

Dreft 100 oz. (64 loads) $15.97

Tide 150 oz. (96 loads) $17.50

All Free and Clear 150 oz. (96 loads) $10.97

(Prices and images from Walmart.com)

For the home-made detergent:

One box each of Borax and Washing Soda totaled $7.50. I will get four or five batches of detergent out of each box. Let's say four batches, that's $1.87.

The Ivory soap is about $0.38/bar ($3.76 for a pack of ten).

That puts one batch of detergent at approximately 144 loads and costs around $2.25 (+a little time and water). That looks like a savings to me!

Of course, laundry still can be a menace even when you have cheap detergent.

I have finally found a system that seems to work for me. Instead of doing laundry when it gets piled up, I stick to a weekly rotation: colors on Monday, darks on Wednesday, and whites on Friday. Diapers get washed whenever we run low. This means that I have a load or two that I do each of those days, but it ensures that each pile gets done once a week, so we don't run out of anything. It also makes laundry folding a more manageable job.

Once the laundry is folded I have the boys put away most of it, their own laundry, as well as all the linens. They love it, so it isn't really even viewed as a "chore."

Games for the Boys

As we buy toys for our boys we try to choose things they are interested in, such as trains and animals, but we also look for things that will teach at the same time as being fun. We avoid the commercialized, TV themed toys and games, and always enjoy finding things that we remember playing as children.

Books are one thing that both boys love. They read a lot, both by themselves and with us. It is not uncommon to have one or the other coming up with a stack of books wanting to be read to.

We have Chutes and Ladders; this game gives us a chance to count with Edmund and he really likes making his person go up and down the ladders and slides (as he calls them). If you are not familiar with this game, it involves the very simple use of the spinner to determine the number of spaces to move. Then there are good deeds, that allow you to go up a ladder, or bad deeds, that make you go down a chute. Edmund doesn't understand that going down is bad and going up is good, but we do talk about the pictures and the results of the good or bad deeds.Sometimes, instead of buying something we make it ourselves. Jaired is especially a game lover, and some day would like to make a "real" game, that is one for adults. For now he is starting on children's games. Jaired draws a lot and when we make games he gravitates toward the initial artwork, while I cut out the cards and color in the pictures.

We took one of the boys' favorite books and created a game which is played similar to Candy Land.

Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman is a fun little book about dogs, though really not so much about dogs as about colors, opposites, and a little bit of counting.


The playing pieces are, of course, dogs.

The players draw cards to determine their move. The main cards are the colored squares, indicating where to go. There are special cards that one gets to keep for the dog party at the end of the game, and there are other special cards that make you skip a turn, go forward, or back, etc.

Two shortcuts allow some variations in the game. In this game there is no one person who is the winner. Everyone keeps drawing cards until all are at the Party Tree.

This game helps with colors of course, but it is also fun for Edmund to see the different things that he is familiar with from the book. And he really likes the end of the game when we can "put on" the party hats, "eat" the birthday cake and ice cream, and "open" the birthday presents.

The second game we have made is Memory.

This is a very simple game to make and play. If you aren't an artist you could even print off pictures from your computer. You just need two of each picture. We currently have eleven pairs of cards (above are just my favorites), which is perfect for Edmund's attention span and playing level, but we may make more cards as he improves. Little children tend to turn over the same cards again and again, which means they never win. When we play, I encourage Edmund to look at cards he hasn't seen yet. I also will occasionally throughout the game go back over the cards we have looked at (without turning them over) and remember aloud what they are, to help Edmund grasp the concept of the game.

In addition to games, Jaired had made toys for the boys out of wood. Again, our woodworking tools are limited, but someday we hope to have the means to make really nice, durable toys.

These wooden blocks were made with a table saw out of regular 1"x2" boards. They work on a similar concept to Legos, starting with a small square, "one-size," and moving up by increments. Some of the ones pictured above were made by Jaired and some by his dad and brother.

Jaired also makes wooden swords, shields, and battleaxes. All three of them like to spar together, though Nathaniel often finds the action to be a bit too much for him. These wooden toys are all works in progress, as Jaired improves the design every time he makes another weapon or block.