Whether it’s raising our vegetable garden from seed, keeping chickens, sewing, knitting, cooking, pulling apart a computer, keeping this blog…well, I really like to do things for myself.

So I was intrigued by the idea of making laundry soap. It turns out it’s incredibly easy to do and easy on the environment. It’s also fun and cheap.

Want to try? Here goes:

Put a pot with with one quart of water on the stove. Crank up the heat. While it’s coming to a boil, grate a bar of soap into it. (I used a microplane grater, but a box grater works just as well. It apparently doesn’t make any difference what kind of soap you use. I picked up a bar of Zote only because it was next to the next two ingredients. (This step is the picture on the left up above. Stir well and turn off the stove just as it starts to boil.

Take a large container (5 gallons will do) with a cover and put in it 1 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax. Add 3 gallons of hot water, stir well and then add the hot soapy water from the stove. Stir well. (Middle picture above.) Put the cover on and leave it overnight.

The next morning, it will have gelatinized somewhat into a thick slime (young boys will enjoy this part - right picture above) My batch is pourable, a good consistency. If yours isn’t , just stir in more water for the consistency you want (you’ll probably need to use more than a cup then). Use about a cup for a top loading washer, 1/2 cup for a front-loading high efficiency one.

About the ingredients: I bought them all at my local FoodMax. The washing soda was impossible to find anywhere else. (FoodMax is a slightly downmarket kind of grocery store that does great at ethnic ingredients, fresh produce and has good meat. It’s my favorite chain grocery next to TJs.) Washing soda is made by Arm & Hammer and it is sodium carbonate. Not the same as baking soda, which is sodium bicarbonate. Borax is a mineral and is a little easier to find. I’m not quite sure if the soap does anything except contribute to the consistency. For the first batch, I used Zote which is a bar laundry soap. It’s pink and has a slight fragrance. Next time I think I’ll try Ivory. That won’t be for a while considering how much laundry soap we wound up with! For the container, Tom cleaned out the bucket that the pool chlorine tablets (yuck!) came in. Or you could pick up a paint bucket and lid at Home Depot.

About the greenness: very simple ingredient list, no added junk, less fossil fuels are used to transport them compared to jugs of the other stuff.

About the cheapness: Simple Dollar (link below) says it works out to about 3 cents per load at a cup per load. So for our front loading machine, it’s about 1.5 cents per load. When I checked out the price per load signs at Costco the other day it does pretty good. Kirkland powdered detergent (which we don’t like in our front-loader) is a little more expensive at around 7 cents per load. The liquid detergents start out at about 13 cents per load and go up to around 21 cents for the Kirkland stuff that Consumer Reports says is good.

Effectiveness: I have a bad habit of walking around in my socks at home, in the driveway getting the mail, going out back to gather eggs. The bottoms get pretty dirty. This stuff made ‘em white and bright. The old stuff, not so much. Clothes smell good too.

The Simple Dollar: How to Make Your Own Laundry Detergent

For Tom’s birthday last week, I made him this cool cell-phone holder out of LEGO bricks.

It’s designed for a Palm Centro with a charger plug at the bottom of the phone slot. The phone simply drops straight in with no fiddling. (There’s no hotsync cable.) Tom’s high school mug/pencil cup is locked into place with Legos and anchors the platform so it doesn’t slide around. Those are extra stylii in the figurines hands and girl on the right is on a twirling platform.

Not as fanciful as the creations of some, but brightens up something that usually a bit humdrum.

Below are closer views of the stand with and without the phone.

After using activated carbon water filters (Brita & Pur) for years, Tom and I recently switched to a four-stage under-sink system. Still, this seems like such a interesting idea, I’m tempted to go out and buy a Brita pitcher just to see if it works.

Basically, you drill a hole in an old filter, dump out the old activated carbon, refill it with carbon you can buy at an aquarium supply store (or ebay), plug it back up, and then proceed as if it were a new filter. How hard is that?

Any check out the Instructable. If you haven’t been around that sight before, wander around for a bit. I’m always impressed with how clever people can be there.

Of course, if you don’t use water filtration (you San Franciscans know who you are), take a pass on this.

Instructables

Sad news from the suburban homestead today: Donnelle, one of my very first chickens passed away during the night. A Black Australorp, I had gotten her as a day-old chick three years ago.

Perhaps because she was hand-raised, Donnelle had a real, identifiable personality. She was sweet, very calm. She was always the first to come running to say hello when I returned home. In the yard, when the girls were out roaming, she would follow me around, like a faithful puppy.

She grew to be a noble bird. Sleek black, with feathers that were iridescent with green, she was a graceful adornment to our garden. Of course, the original reason we started keeping chickens was to have fresh eggs and she was no slouch on that front, either, giving us lovely medium-sized brown ones.

I’m guessing it was simply old age that did her in: she had pretty much stopped laying a month or two ago. Like our dog, Dennis, I think she held on until we were home again after a long trip. She did seem relieved to see us again when we came back this week.

I suppose it’s just a little ridiculous to mourn a chicken. Well, then, I guess that makes me a little ridiculous. I’ll miss you, Donnelle.