The Laundry Saga

Found this link on Polly Hood's Counting Your Blessings blog about making your own laundry soap - soap that not only cleans well, but doesn't trigger allergic reactions and costs a fraction of what regular laundry detergent costs.

Step 1:  convince John it's OK to use it
Step 2:  find the ingredients
Step 3:  go to target - mistake - they didn't have the ingredients
Step 4:  go to grocery store, look at watch, don't have enough time to shop, checkout, and get back for an appointment.
Net result:  drove back and forth with nothing to show for it.  Now I have to figure what that fruitless jaunt and the gas expense adds onto the cost of the home  made soap. (to be continued) 

 



Step 5:  Afternoon of same day:  Ran out again and got the ingredients and on the way home I stopped at the shop to pick up this cute covered tin can (if you look closely, you can see that I have yet to remove the price tag.)
Step 6:  I followed the instructions, made the soap, put it in container and put the first load in the washer.

And now about the laundry room.  We have a very small 2nd floor laundry room at the top of the stairs, an add-on (John's idea) when we put on a first floor addition.

The  room is barely deep enough to fit the washer and dryer side-by-side with a little space left over. It is as wide as the window plus the washer depth plus room on the other side of the window for a shelf and clothes rack with the laundry sorting bins underneath. Not much space to decorate. The scale is in a place accessible to all, and it is way too accurate for its age!

On the other side of the window is this small vintage plaque with a message, which is as much for me as it was the for the kids.

 

I thought the laundry room was the perfect place for it, agree? Also wanted to show you my "curtain tie-up" (nailed a clothespin to the window frame and voila!

I filled a small jar with enough soap to do 10 loads of wash.  You use only 2-3 Tbs. per load.  The jar sits on one of the shelves above the washer and dryer.  The higher shelf has vintage picnic baskets perfect for storage, because they have covers. They store some sewing and craft materials. That's a lot of vintage stuff to fit in one very small space. Another example of "where there's a will, there's a way".