Your results may vary..... From personal experience, it's not as simple as the cost factor alone. Although this, and similar mixtures (both dry and liquid versions) are generally very cost effective, there are other "costs" you need to take into consideration than just the price of the ingredients due to cause and effect. Not everyone has great results using homemade mixtures, especially the longer you use them and if you have hard water. These are things I experienced when using homemade laundry mixtures on-and-off over the last 25-years, and things I learned when I studied the science of soap and detergents and what was happening to my laundry when using it. Using it for one wash, one week, or even one month isn't a good test. See how things go after using it for 3-months or more. 1. This formula is missing a lot of chemical ingredients you've enjoyed in your commercial detergents, such as: corrosion inhibitors, enzymes, whiteners/brighteners, surfactant formulations that reduce foam, and chelating agents (bind things together) that are found in commercial detergents. What this means is after prolonged use of the homemade mixtures you may find the life of your clothing diminishes, it doesn't clean as well, your clothes are stiff when you line-dry them, and numerous other possible issues. This is why detergent was overwhelmingly chosen for laundry over old-fashioned soap products after WWII when all these chemicals were formulated. Detergents just worked better than soap, and these formulas are changing all the time to keep up with today's laundry needs. 2. $$$ If you use ZOTE (a bar soap formulated for laundry) instead of Fels Naptha, not only will you save money (ZOTE is 90-cents at Big Lots and it doesn't take the whole bar for a batch of laundry soap), it also has some brighteners (bluing agents) in the bar that will aid in keeping whites looking white better than Fels Naptha. Fels Naptha, which once contained Stoddard Solvent - a great cleaning agent, was removed years ago because it turns out it's pretty toxic stuff. Fels Naptha was basically used as a pre-wash (wet the bar and rubbed directly on stains), rather than as a laundry soap. I believe Stoddard Solvent is used in dry-cleaning chemicals. Most people used homemade lye soap for laundry and Fels Naptha for pretreating. 3. The ingredients used in these mixtures may NOT be good for your washing machine, and may actually diminish the life of it. There are reports that washing soda and Borax can damage washing machines. If you have an HE washing machine, check with the manufacturer for information about using homemade laundry detergent mixtures. Some of the bar soap products people use in the mixtures have fat in them that can build-up in the washer drum and cause that awful stinky smell and black mold growth front-loaders are famous for. This happened to a friend who used Oil of Olay in the mixture because she had sensitive skin and it was the only soap that didn't bother her. She had to replace her machine because of black mold. Use of a homemade product may cancel your warranty, so be sure to check. Washing machines aren't cheap compared to the cost difference in soap and detergent. 4. For optimal cleaning performance with homemade mixtures use hot water for the wash cycle to give you the best cleaning for whites and heavily soiled clothes. If you are going back to pre-WWII laundry products, you will get better results using the prescribed hot water that went along with their use, and you may also benefit from soaking some heavily-soiled items overnight. So use the hottest water possible for each fabric type for optimal cleaning. By using hot water, that will increase the cost of utilities, but will also increase the performance of the soap mixture. If you normally use cold water for washing and your cold water is really cold in the winter (65-degrees F or colder), the soap mixture will not activate and clean effectively. Cold water detergents are formulated for use in cold water, and detergent manufacturers define cold water as 80-85-degrees F. Some washing machines actually mix hot water with cold to achieve this temperature for the wash cycle, even when it's set on "cold". Wet clothes aren't necessarily "clean" clothes. Your soap or detergent needs to perform that first 5-minutes of the wash cycle in order to clean well. 5. If you have hard water you may find you need to use more than the normal 2 T. per load to get your clothes clean. More is needed for extra-large loads as well as extra dirty loads. You may need as much as 1/2-cup at times. You may need to add an oxygen-type cleaner (Oxi-Clean or Sun from the Dollar General) to the dry mix or add it to the laundry if using the liquid version, to aid performance. With each add-in or larger amount needed to do each load, the cost increases. 6. You are now using a soap-based product. Soap reacts with minerals in the water and can leave soap scum residue. You may find you need an extra rinse or need to chemically soften your water (Calgon or vinegar in the rinse, or a whole house water softener) in order to avoid soap scum build-up. That adds to the cost of use. Soap scum will eventually cause your whites to yellow or gray, and light colors will look dingy. If you line-dry your clothes they will be stiff because of the soap scum build-up. Dried soap scum build-up is like leaving sandpaper in your fabrics. It will actually be abrasive and reduce the life of your clothing, and can actually cause holes in fabrics. It can also cause skin outbreaks for anyone who may be sensitive to this soap residue in fabrics. If you launder cloth diapers in homemade laundry mixtures, it may contribute to diaper rash and will reduce the absorbancy of fabrics. You may find your clothing doesn't wear well or may wear-out sooner than they once did. 7. When I used these formulas years ago I would have to switch to regular detergent about every 3 months to remove the soap scum build-up and to brighten the clothes again. This is because of our extremely hard water. It worked best when I had a whole-house water softener unit. Eventually I was increasing the add-ins and using softener, so I really wasn't saving money at all. Especially since our clothes weren't lasting as long. 8. Off-season clothing would smell acrid/rancid after being in storage from the fats found in the bars of soap used for the mixtures. All off-season clothing had to be laundered before they could be used again because of this smell. 9. It takes several washings to remove your old detergent from your clothing, and then a couple months of using the homemade version to really show it's true results. I'd give it three months trial and see if you notice a real difference. Keep some "samples" for comparison. Save back a washcloth, a white T-shirt, etc., to compare before and after. 10. If you are laundering baby and children's clothing, homemade mixtures may destroy the fire-retardant coatings on fabrics. Charlie's Soap, which is what I use now, has been shown in testing to improve the the flamH retardant properties after each washing to the point where the fabric would not catch fire at all. No other detergent tested improved the flame retardant properties of children's sleepwear at all. Just some things to consider.... -Grainlady

To those of you who have been using these "home made" detergents, are you experiencing any odor, mold or mildew issues? The reason I ask is because castile soap builds up into a gooopy, gel-like gunk if not properly rinsed. This could potentially cause problems in washers. Every home-made product I've tried - from detergent to fabric softener - has proven unsatisfactory. Either the products don't clean well, they risk building up in my machine or on my clothes or they just don't work. Price is not the only consideration, which is what appears to be driving this homemade laundry movement.

Anne- Thank you for your kind words; and I hope you don't find my answer discouraging. Even though I'm certified to teach home canning, I no longer use canning as a method for food preservation for a number of reasons. Cost of utilities. Not only the heat processing for the canning, but also the air conditioning necessary to cool the house off because you are talking about peak summer months are also peak canning months. I don't have enough produce from our small garden to have the quantity needed at any one time to fill a canner. If you can't process a whole canner full of jars, it's not cost effective. If you have to purchase the produce you can, you are losing money. I doubt that you can compete with the prices of canned goods at Aldi and finding good sales and stocking up. I find home canned foods nutritionally inferior for the time and money you invest to prepare them. By the time people harvest and process produce, nearly half of the vitamins may be lost within a few days unless the fresh produce is cooled or preserved a.s.a.p. Do you have an extra refrigerator for keeping produce while you get enough accumulated to process a whole canner full? The cost of the extra refrigerator and the utilities to run it should also be factored in. The heating process during canning destroys from 1/3 to 1/2 of vitamin A and C, thiamin, and riboflavin. Once canned, additional losses of these sensitive vitamins are from 5 to 20% each year. Do you have a stove you can safely do canning on? Some of the smooth glass-top stoves are not capable of canning (check the user's manual or the manufacturer). In some cases the canners have fused to the surface. Article: Home food preservation may be more expensive than expected. http://apps.caes.uga.edu/gafaces/index.cfm?public=viewStory&pk_id=3499 Article: Cost of Preserving and Storing Food http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/nutrition-food-safety-health/cost-of-preserving-and-storing-food-8-704/ Article: What You Should Know About Preserving Food at Home http://www.uaex.edu/publications/pdf/FSFCS02.pdf --- I'd like to suggest you take the Self-Study Coarse for home canning at the National Center for Home Food Preservation - http://nchfp.uga.edu/  This will help you get a better idea of what you are needing to do for successful and safe home canning. --- I currently do a lot of dehydrating for food storage, which is inexpensive. There is a learning curve for making and using dehydrated foods, and it doesn't appeal to everyone. ---What I would suggest, and what I'm going to do, is to save money and purchase a home-style freeze-dryer like a Harvest Right: https://harvestright.com/#sthash.ENrByuNZ.dpbs I'm hoping there are more companies entering the market and the prices go down. Until then.... I'm saving my money, and these are the ways I save my cash: The 52-week savings plan where you save $1 the first week of the year, $2 the second week, $3, the third week, etc. At the end of the year you have $1,378. If you Google - 52-week savings plans - you will find charts you can copy and follow. I save my $1 bills. I've always saved at least $500 and as much as $1,000 each year. We are "cash" people when it comes to day-to-day spending, and this plan works best if you are. I cut my own hair, and so I REALLY save the money, I budget and pay myself $20 a month - so that's $240 a year added to the Christmas/Emergency Savings Account where my savings are deposited once a month. I'm up for more discussion or questions, so fire away. ;-) -Grainlady

I'm not sure I'll be much help on this subject since I'm just now decluttering and reorganizing my home. Here's a few little things I'm doing: Since I don't have a regular pantry (I'm going to make one somewhere, someday--lol) I keep all breakfast items in one drawer, like instant oatmeal, grits, hot chocolate, etc. So, I know in a glance what I need and don't buy extras. I just tear off the top of the pkg. and set the whole thing in the drawer. I also keep my ironing supplies on one drawer---irons, spray starch, etc. I actually had to buy a second iron because I couldn't find the first one---before I organized! I took all on my junky paper and cut it into note size, put it in my desk drawer. If I have pretty junky mail, or envelopes, I cut them up to use as gift tags or small note cards. I hate frying bacon, so I bake it now on a rack. It's healthier and I don't have to spend so much time at the stove. I actually baked a pkg. this morning, used it all at once---now, we have bacon for tomorrow. I don't have very many closets, so I'm using decorative tins and hatboxes (I went thru a hatbox-making phase a few years back) for storage of sewing and craft supplies, and anything else that I can't find a place for!!! LOL These things hold a lot, so I may not have to buy any shelves. In my foyer area, I have a narrow table with a mirrow above it. I just cleaned out that drawer in the table----I have a place for car keys (his & hers), gloves, hairbrush, and glasses. Since I wash my hands a zillion times a day, I keep either an old dish detergent bottle or shampoo bottle with soap, water (*and now hand lotion or baby oil mixed in) under the sink to wash hands with. I just saw a Dr. on Tv say that if you wash your hands too much and they're dried out, germs can enter your body thru the cracked dry skin EASIER!! They were talking about the flu viruses. He actually said that rubbing your hands back and forth, creating friction, would kill germs on your hands!! Rub your hands, rub your hands!!!!!!