Kate Makes Frugal Cleaning for Clothes and Bodies

For some time now I've been looking at what I spend on washing clothes, the house and us. We seem to go through a lot of hand wash, shower gel and washing powder.

Wind and sunshine cleaning power

Then there's shampoo, conditioner, bubble bath and the enormous range of cleaning products available for the every surface and event in the home.  You can see how this all adds up, taking up cupboard space and creating a lot of recycling material.

Line drying tea towels

I'm not going to go into...well, what's in these products by way of ingredients as I don't know enough about this - but I do wonder why some of these products cause a rash, smell over powering, have serious warnings on the package and cost such a lot of money for what essentially gets washed down the drain.

Supermarket shelves heave with the range of products available to us, there must be 100s! Sadly I will admit I have in the past spent ages deciding which ones to buy in the best chic designer bottle. Idiot that I am...

Homemade laundry gloop - 1 scoop

Simplifying Cleaning

Through thrifty need I started off by using vinegar in place of fabric conditioner in my automatic washing machine. This worked out amazingly well and made my washing squeaky clean and fresh.

Then I moved onto mixing washing powder half and half with soda crystals. Again, my laundry was clean and smelt good. The only difference was the lower costs.

Then I discovered you could make bucket loads of laundry "gloop" at home for buttons. That it had 3 basic ingredients, would take half an hour out of your like to make and last ages. I read it worked great, better than many commercial products. Yeh right...

Homemade Laundry Gloop

• 250g soda crystals
• 1 bar of soap - unscented vegetable oil or household soap
• 250g borax substitute
• Hot water
• Your favourite essential oil - I use lemon.

Grate the soap using a cheese grater. Heat up a couple of litres of water, no need to boil. Add grated soap, washing soda and borax and stir well until thoroughly dissolved.

Add further hot water to make 4 or 5 litres total - the amount is not crucial. Whisk all together and add a few drops of essential oil. 

Seamus likes to help out

Pour this liquid into plastic storage containers. These can be anything such as a bucket with lid or an old gallon milk cartons.  The mixture turns to jelly as it cools, so make sure you transfer it while its still warm.

To use: put half to one cup in the washing machine DRUM (not the drawer) on top of the washing. I use 2-3 scoops as shown in the pic above.

There's a lot more discussion about homemade "gloops" over in this thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=35756

Homemade Hand & Body Wash

• 1 cup boiling water
• 2 tablespoons grated pure vegetable soap
• 2 teaspoons glycerin
• 2 teaspoons rose water
• Few drops of essential oil ie: lavender

Melt the grated soap into the boiling water until dissolved. Then stir in the glycerin and rose water. Pour into dispensers or jar with lid while still warm. It'll start to solidify and separate - thin down with additional boiling water if required and shake to mix.

The Homemade Hand & Body Wash is light fluffy and gel like.

This works well from a soap pump dispenser or scooped out by hand or by cloth etc. It doesn't create a lot of bubbles or foam. It rinses well and because of the glycerin it leaves your skin soft and clean.