Epic Win!!

[CheerioLounge]

C'mon guys. We all know the style and tone of ~gd's posts. Just let him post his opinion and if you care what he says read it. If you don't , skip it and move on to the next post. There is absolutely no point in egging him on. It serves no good purpose.

IMHO,

Mike

 

[rebecca100]

Ok you guys off the topic I was wondering what you all pay for the ingredients and what total cost is. I noticed that the borax box I am getting now is half the size and more expensive. I pay about 8 dollars for enough for about 2 gallons laundry soap.

 

[dma1974]

Farmer Jaime, price per load is figured into what I made. I get it. I got it from the start. Everyone else gets it too. Well, except that one guy, he thinks he's the first and only to have thought of that. I figure it the using the same format you spelled out in your post. If I get so many uses per gallon, and so on. That was one of the first things I projected. Apparently so have a lot of others and they find homemade to be cheaper. I also considered whether or not I like the product, how well it actually does the job, and so on. My only gamble was whether or not the homemade turned out to be useless, and it didn't. It's doing a great job. Problem is the one guy that can't or won't back up what he said with his cost formulations. I don't care if you're a Theoretical Physicist, it doesn't make you automatically correct by saying "But I'm a Theoretical Physicist".

Here's an example: 1 bar Fells Naptha = $.97 (+tax about $1.09) I use it for stain remover, rubbed directly onto the fabric.
1 container of Shout (we'll go with the average spray bottle size) around $5 with tax. I also use directly on the fabric.
I have found the FN to work far better than the shout. If it were $10 per bar, I'd still buy it. I might not be making laundry detergent with it but I'd use it for stain remover exclusively. Factor in how much of the FN has to be used vs how much of the Shout has to be used and its still cheaper to use the FN for stain remover, in part bc it does a better job.
The rest is just an infinite set of variables and cannot be measured, which is why the cost per load/gallon does mean beans. What I mean is the who uses how much and the quality of their water, age of machine, quality of machine, what size their hands are, are they coordinated, how well do they follow directions, these are the things I think that one guy was attempting to use to make ridicule.

I appreciate your efforts in giving us a time out though

 

[dma1974]

Ok you guys off the topic I was wondering what you all pay for the ingredients and what total cost is. I noticed that the borax box I am getting now is half the size and more expensive. I pay about 8 dollars for enough for about 2 gallons laundry soap.

I paid around $4/box for a 4lb 12oz box. Even without quoting how much I use per batch, its still a lot less than $8 worth. The A&H washing soda was about $3.25 for 55oz, and the bar of Fells Naptha was $.97 but I use 1/3 bar per 1.7 gallon batch. The others I use the same amount of each so their cost per batch is similar enough that only the FN stands out in cost.

So its 1/2C Borax, 1/2C washing soda, 1/3 bar (grated) FN. The rest is water.

How much Borax are you using per gallon?

 

[dma1974]

C'mon guys. We all know the style and tone of ~gd's posts. Just let him post his opinion and if you care what he says read it. If you don't , skip it and move on to the next post. There is absolutely no point in egging him on. It serves no good purpose.

IMHO,

Mike

If only I'd have known. Your comment confirms what I've come to realize.

 

[FarmerChick]

holy cow

 

[hqueen13]

Ok you guys off the topic I was wondering what you all pay for the ingredients and what total cost is. I noticed that the borax box I am getting now is half the size and more expensive. I pay about 8 dollars for enough for about 2 gallons laundry soap.

What is your recipe? That could be part of it.

Our recipe makes 5 liquid gallons, which cost LESS than the cost for 1 gallon of All that we used to use from BJs (that also included purchasing all the products whole, i.e. the ENTIRE box of Borax, plus the ENTIRE box of Washing Soda, and the fels-naptha bars). The 5 gallon bucket lasted us 1 year. I'd say that is a savings

So glad I learned about the naptha as a stain remover.... it literally SAVED our brand new kitchen rugs... the other half dropped an entire container of chili on them while trying to put it away for lunches and the freezer. I managed to scrub it out with the naptha bar, and then washed them, and the only mark that is really left is a darker reddish stain on the backing of the rug. I won't use anything else for my stains now!

 

[Bettacreek]

I'm making my own bars of soap for laundry detergent. I do 3oz soap, 4.2oz washing soda and 3.5oz Borax with 32 cups of water. I use about half a cup of this detergent (after it's completely incorporated, it's a nice smooth, commercial consistency), which is much more than I really need, but I've always been hoggish with my detergent. In the end, it costs me $0.01 for every two loads, or $0.005 per load. I could easily get away with slicing half of the amount and paying a penny every four loads...

 

[hqueen13]

Betta - how do you make a laundry soap bar? Do you just toss it into the wash? Or did I misread that?

Here is an interesting article from a repair man on using soap and the volume of soap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/y...ted=1&sq=Alina Tugend, dish soap&st=cse&scp=1

Interestingly enough my mom was here staying with us and used our homemade laundry soap, which she said she seemed to like (she'll probably make the powder instead of the liquid as storing 5 gallons is a bit of a drag). However, when she went home she noticed that her clothes were sudsing in the washer, which they hadn't done here. We also recently identified that our water is very hard water, and soaps don't suds like the used to with the water in NC where I grew up. So the water can have an effect on things as well. I do not think that our soap would be as effective is we lessened the amount even though there was soap residue when mom washed her clothes at home. We were using it half strength, but the other half noticed that his jeans weren't getting as clean as he felt they should.

Tricky this homemade stuff is!

 

[dma1974]

queen, that's good stuff to remember. I am a detergent hog too like the article described, lol! I guess I should start using less detergent and more hot water.