I use Ecos Free & Clear. A website (sorry; I can't remember which one) recommended it for grey water. You want to be sure your laundry soap doesn't have salts (sodium in various forms), phosphate or boron compounds, as I understand. Ecos is the only brand I found that didn't have any of that stuff. I was using Arm & Hammer the first month or two that I used grey water, & the plants didn't look that great then, either. Of course, I'm underwatering, due to the drought. Vinegar makes the water somewhat acidic, depending on how much you use. (Tho, I usually add some to my white loads.) I don't know if the tomato paste would have had much to do with the yellowing - it sounds like very little got into your soil, unless some bacteria built up in the barrel. Kudos to you on recycling your water!

It smells like Lye Soap, but not meat greases. I save all of the following greases and oils: Bacon Grease Hamburger drippings from my grill pan Ground Beef grease Shortening and/or oils used for frying meats. Oils used for any kind of fast frying (donuts, french fries, etc). Meat greases rendered from roasts (beef, pork, etc) and so forth. I don't fry very often, but I still save the oils and grease. It adds up faster than you might think! NEVER dump grease and oils down drains. Not only does this stop up sewer lines and septic systems, but it is a major cost to the public in city sewage systems repairs and maintenance and sewage processing plants. It pollutes the land and water systems...kills fish and other wildlife, creates algae in water ways, and more. Awful stuff. The chemical action in the soap making process removes the smelly odors of meat greases. Make sure you strain it well to remove all the bits and pieces. I just use my kitchen sieve. The soap will not LOOK like commercial stuff. Those are mostly detergents. This soap is wonderful. Leaves your skin soft. Gentle on clothes. The two commercial soaps that I know that are REAL SOAP are Castile and Ivory (or Ivory used to be real soap anyway). For JUST hand soap, you can add a little glycerin (found at all RX drug store counters), and omit the Kerosene. OPT. - Kerosene is not necessary for the recipe to work, but it makes the laundry soap better. Boosts the cleaning power. As mentioned above, you can add coconut oil (and/or other fancy oils) to make it more sudsy and feel softer. But, the purpose of this topic is HOW TO USE old MEAT GREASE that you should not put in your compost. There are all kinds of soap recipes on the internet. I've tried a few. The thing I object to in these NEW recipes is the cost and waste. Those fancy oils are EXPENSIVE. Cheaper to buy commercial soap and be done with it. Hope this explains my purpose in posting this topic: ***Recycling old meat grease rather than throwing it into the garbage that will go into land fills*** We can greatly reduce the amount of trash and garbage that goes into land fills (millions of tons of garbage dumped on the land and in the ocean )just in America) just by practicing the three "R's" of waste management for good conservation - REDUCE -> REUSE -> RECYCLE -> Don't waste food! Use those leftovers and compost your kitchen garbage. Many household items that most Americans tend to just toss in the garbage daily can be REDUCED, REUSED, and RECYCLED, including clothing, buttons, zippers, snaps, hook and eyes, and other items just in our households alone. Good conservation practices not only saves the Earth by preventing pollution and conserves our natural resources, but it will save each of us MONEY, not only collectively as a society, but in each household! There is an old Mormon saying: "A woman can throw it out the window with a teaspoon faster than a man can pitch it in the front door with a shovel." - Brigham Young, 1860. This is so true. ~Annie

It looks like I could use pretty much anything within reason to get these quilts clean - thanks for all the suggestions. I've always used Orvus on my quilts, but may rethink this - they're definitely made to be used, and so, occasionally need to be washed. I have two older quilts made by someone in my mother's family, that I will treat more gently, but my quilts aren't heirlooms by any means. I think the Dreft, or similar detergent made for delicate baby clothes, and a delicate cycle, will probably do it. One of my older quilts - a red and white drunkard's path - I took with me to a class on dating quilts. It was clean, and nicely made, and I knew it smelled of cigarette smoke, due to DH, so I aired it out on a clothesline for hours, sprayed it with Febreeze, etc. and got it - to my nose anyway - smelling fairly neutral - and the instructor spent about one minute with it, telling me as much as she could about its possible history, then told me that the cigarette smoke, over time, would damage the fibers. I was just a little disappointed and dismayed that she still could smell that! Her solution was to wash it out by hand in a bathtub, (many rinses, lay it on a sheet to lift it out by, spread out to dry, etc. etc.) I was just a little reluctant to do all that - what if the reds ran? What if the batting disintegrated? I took it home and gently folded it into a cotton sheet and put it on a shelf in my closet, and it's still there.

No one said that scent is not important - it is very important, and it is especially important that the scents we want to enjoy are not obliterated by scents that we do not want. I was unable to detect the scents in food that I liked because they were being masked by the scent of the hand soap. Scents can also warn us of danger as much as they can delight us. I remember being constantly nauseated by the barnyard smells when I was growing up, and I would not wear shoes in the house that I had worn in the barn - I had to have galoshes to protect my shoes whenever I would go there. I saw one show on TV about human development, and it said that brothers find the scent of their sisters repulsive (and vice versa) thus helping to prevent interbreeding. Therefore scents are very personal, and what one person finds attractive, another person will find repulsive. For this reason, it is important to respect boundaries with regard to scents and not invade someone's space with unwanted fragrances. For me, the hand soap was a very unwanted fragrance. There are as many repulsive smells as there are pleasant ones. Smells also trigger the most intense memories, and olfactory memories have been shown to be some of the strongest. I've noticed this when I smell freshly cut grass.