Why switch to natural laundry soap you ask? Conventional laundry detergent is loaded with chemicals like sulfates, fragrances, phenols and more. Many brands contain things like petroleum distillates, which are linked to cancer and lung disease. Fragrances in these detergents are made of a mix of harmful chemicals.

Luckily, making your own laundry soap is an easy and fast process! You only need three basic ingredients:

• Washing Soda (Arm and Hammer Brand available at most stores)
• Borax (20 Mule Team Borax available at most grocery stores)
• Bar Soap (Dr. Bronner’s, Fels-Naptha, Ivory, or other natural, unscented bar soap)

All of these things should be available at your local grocery store on the laundry aisle. You can also add a couple tablespoons of baking soda to help freshen clothes.

Wonder what’s in these ingredients? Borax is a naturally occurring mineral made up of sodium, boron, oxygen, and water. It is an ingredient in most of the natural soaps available now (Seventh Generation, etc) but it is much more inexpensive to make yourself.

Washing Soda, sometimes called sodium carbonate or soda ash, is made from common salt and limestone or found as natural deposits.

Dr. Bronner’s soaps are free trade and made with vegetable castille soap and pure organic oils.

To Make the laundry detergent:

1. Grate the bar soap or mix in food processor until finely ground. Use the soap of your choice. I personally use Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Bar Soap because of its exceptional quality, and because it is available in several different natural scents like lavender, tea tree, peppermint, almond and others.
2. In a large bowl, mix 2 parts washing soda, 2 parts Borax and 1 part grated soap. (Add a few teaspoons of baking soda if desired).
3. Store in closed container. I keep mine in quart or half gallon mason jars. If you are using a big enough container, you can skip step 2 and just put all ingredients in storage container or jar and shake.
4. Use 1/8 to 1/4 cup per load of laundry.

This recipe is also a great way to save money on laundry. By my calculations, I am saving over half on my laundry bill by switching:

On this recipe, I spent:

• One 55 ounce box Washing Soda- $3.49
• One 76 ounce box of Borax – $4.99
• One Bar Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Bar Soap- $2.99

With the amount this mixture I use (1/4 cup) per load of laundry, this recipe works out to $0.09 cents per load of laundry. This saves me almost $0.15 per load over using Arm and Hammer or Tide.

Happy Washing and have a healthy week!!

Related posts:

1. Natural Cleaning Recipes
2. Cleaning Naturally with Common Household Products
3. Natural Beauty Tips

A few quick beauty tips and recipes for the week:

• For a quick and natural facial, give yourself a honey mask. Take a warm shower, or hold your face over a bowl of steaming water to open pores. Rub warm honey on face and sit for 20-30 minutes, Rinse with warm water and splash with cool water to close pores.
• Instantly clarify and remove oils from your hair by mixing 1 part white vinegar with 5 parts distilled water and pouring over hair after conditioning. Add 5-10 drops of favorite essential oil to make a fresh smell. I recommend lavender, lemon, orange, or peppermint.
• For an intensive hair conditioner, blend avocado and coconut milk or cream in a blender and apply to dry hair. Leave on up to 30 minutes and rinse.
• For oily hair, massage baking soda into hair, shampoo as normal and rinse.

Have a healthy week!

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1. Natural Cleaning Recipes
2. Cleaning Naturally with Common Household Products
3. How to Make Natural Homemade Laundry Detergent

Tile Grout Cleaner- Mix 1 part water and 3 parts baking soda mixed into a paste. Apply to grout and let sit, scrub with toothbrush, remove with sponge.

Cookware- Use sea salt or course salt mixed with a little lemon juice and scrub. Also, try baking soda and water made into a paste.

Fabric Softener- Mix 1 part baking soda, 1 part vinegar, and 2 parts water together. Use 1/4 to 1/3 cup during the final rinse cycle.

Toilet Cleaner-Use undiluted white vinegar, pour around the top of the toilet bowl, scrub until clean.

Click here for more natural living ideas.

Have a healthy week!

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1. Cleaning Naturally with Common Household Products
2. Effortless Natural Oven Cleaning
3. Natural Beauty Tips

If you are like me, your oven occasionally (or once a week in my case) gets burned on food on the bottom, splattered food on the sides, or dried food stuck on the rack. I am not fortunate to have a self-cleaning oven as some do, so I had to find a way to solve this problem. I checked oven cleaners at the store, and definitely did not want those ingredients in my oven around the food I was cooking for my family. I tried a variety of natural treatments before stumbling on the best oven cleaner, natural or not, that I have ever found: baking soda!

Though it seems like a simple fix, baking soda is really effective and makes the daunting task of oven cleaning a little easier. All I have to do to get a shining oven is spray the whole oven down with a water bottle so that it is damp, and pour on a thick layer or baking soda, especially on the bottom, until there is about 1/4 inch layer of baking soda paste on the bottom. If any of the baking soda is still dry, I mist it with the water bottle.

Then, I walk away, and leave the baking soda there for a few hours (with the oven off, unless you want to see some amateur special effects… I don’t recommend this!) After a few hours I simply wipe up the paste with a cloth and all the grime comes with it. For really baked on grime, this may take a couple applications, but it always works and it is 100% natural!

Hope you have a healthy week!

Some of my other natural cleaning ideas  here!

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1. Natural Cleaning Recipes
2. Cleaning Naturally with Common Household Products
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The product I use the most in my new natural lifestyle and that you probably already have in the house is distilled white vinegar (It is also available organic). I know, I know, you don’t want your house to smell like pickles, but don’t worry, the smell fades when it dries and can be easily masked with a few drops of essential oil. Things I use vinegar for in my own natural cleaning:

• Stains- with two kids three and under, I have gotten a lot of practice with stains, especially on white clothes, which seem to attract stains like a magnet. The most effective treatment I have found so far is pouring undiluted vinegar onto the stain and washing as normal. This also works great for wine, tomato sauce, or other spills on carpet. Immediately pour vinegar on the area, wait a few minutes, and wipe up with a damp cloth.
• Window cleaner- Vinegar is by far more effective than Windex or other window cleaners at cleaning windows and mirrors with a spot free shine. I mix 1 part vinegar to three parts water and add a few drops of my favorite essential oil (lemongrass) or a 1/2 tsp or so of my organic dishwashing liquid.
• Mold Remover- One part borax mixed with four parts white vinegar in a spray bottle does wonders for mold. Just spray it on, wait about an hour, and wipe up. The mold wipes right off.
• Hardwood floors- Our last house was entirely hardwood floors, and this meant a lot of mopping for me. I found that 1/3 to 2/3 cup of white vinegar in a gallon of warm water cleans hardwoods very quickly and easily.
• Toilet Cleaning- Pouring a few shakes of baking soda in a drain and then adding a cup or so of vinegar will create a bubbly reaction that, when scrubbed, leaves the toilet shining.
• Cleaning cabinets- If you have food spots, oil buildup or stains on your cabinets, mix 1 part vinegar with 3 parts water and scrub with a rag or sponge. The vinegar will cut any grease, leaving the cabinets clean and shiny.
• All Purpose Cleaning- For everything else, I have two bottles of homemade spray cleaner in the kitchen and all bathrooms. One of these is 1 part white vinegar, 4 parts water, 10-20 drops of essential oil (optional), and 1 tsp of organic dish soap. This does wonders on counter tops, high chair trays, baseboards, walls, appliances, floors, and everywhere else things can be dumped, spilled or tracked.

Hope this will get you started on natural cleaning with an inexpensive product you already have in the house. More to come next week.

Happy Cleaning!

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1. Drink water. A good starting benchmark for water consumption is to take half of your body weight and add twenty. That is the minimum number of ounces you should consumer, per day. If you exercise, add 8-16 ounces for each thirty minutes of exercise. Also, add 16 ounces for every caffeinated or carbonated beverage you consume. Statistics show that many Americans are clinically dehydrated and do not even know it. The effects of this dehydration can lead to things as small as headache and as devastating as early death.

2. Exercise. You have heard it before, but exercise has so many positive benefits, and is necessary for optimal body function. Recent statistics show that about 65 percent of all Americans do not get any exercise at all. The CDC also reported that about 65 percent of all Americans are overweight or obese. Coincidence? Exercise lowers your risk of several types of cancer, increases the flow of endorphins and good chemicals throughout your body and reduces stress, just to name a few of the main benefits. Even small amounts of exercises are good, so try to fit in any amount that you can. A good benchmark is to try to exercise for 30 minutes at least on 3-5 days of the week. Your exercise level should be enough that it is difficult to carry on a conversation, but you should still be able to talk. Even working in this small amount of exercise can dramatically improve many aspects of your life.

3. Supplement your diet. In today’s society, it is virtually impossible to consume enough pure, whole foods to give your body the structures it needs to function properly. Though the benefits of eating fruits and vegetables cannot be ignored, even nine servings of each per day is not enough to provide your body proper nutrition.

4. Proper diet. It is no secret that fast food is not good for you, but there are many other common foods that are just as bad. Any kind of soda is bad, even diet. Carbonated beverages deplete your bones of necessary calcium and magnesium and can lead to problems such as osteoporosis. Diet beverages are even worse than their sugar-heavy counterparts, because they contain dangerous sweeteners, many which can never be removed from your body. Any food that has been fried is basically devoid of nutrients and does nothing for your body. Diets too rich in artificial carbohydrates can lead to many problems. As a general rule, it is good to avoid foods that contain refined sugar or starches or bleached flour.

5. Sleep. This is one of the hardest elements of health to accomplish in today’s high demand society, but as you know, an average person needs 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Not getting enough sleep can lower your mental abilities, lead to fatigue and cause physical pain such as headaches.

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