Making Liquid Laundry Soap

So a while ago, I said that I would do a post on making liquid laundry soap. Here it is: YAY!!!!! I find that making liquid soap is not only a lot more forgiving than making bar soap. I am sure that most people won't agree with me, but this is my blog so I can say what I want.

I make laundry soap from 100% coconut oil because in my research I've read that soap made from coconut oil a lot better than soap with other oil bases. It's also relatively easy obtain coconut oil, it's sold in the grocery store. I don't buy my coconut oil from the grocery store unless I'm in a bind and don't have any other option but it is doable.

The first thing you need to do is determine how much soap you want to end up with by weight. This is important because you need to know the total weight before you can figure out how much soap paste you need to make. I usually make a gallon of laundry soap at a time. A gallon of water weighs about 133.5 oz, so that's the number we're going to use. Please keep in mind I'm talking about weight not volume. When making liquid soap made from 100% coconut oil about 40% of the total weight of your finished product needs to be the soap paste (we'll get to this term later).

NOTE: The 40% ratio does not apply if other oils other/addition to coconut oil is used, to determine the dilution ratios look in Making Natural Liquid Soaps by Catherine Failor, this a a great book that is EXTREMELY necessary when making liquid soap. Please buy it before you try this.

You need 53.4 oz of soap paste to end up with a gallon of laundry soap.

 53.4 = 133.5 x 0.4

Catherine Failor suggests that the water needed to make your lye solution be 70% of total oils used for liquid soap. Also, there is no superfatting in liquid soap. Plug this info into your lye calculator and it will give you the following measurements for making your soap. (PLEASE REMEMBER THAT LIQUID SOAP REQUIRES POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE)

Total oil weight 53.4 Water as percent of oil weight 70 % Super Fat/Discount 0 % Lye Concentration 26.855 % Water : Lye Ratio 2.724:1

Sat : Unsat Ratio 89 : 11 Iodine INS Fragrance Ratio .7 Fragrance Weight 2.336 Oz

Ingredient	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
Water	2.336	37.38	1059.704
Lye - KOH	0.858	13.724	389.063

#	√	Oil/Fat	%	Pounds	Ounces	Grams
1		Coconut Oil, 76 deg	100	3.338	53.4	1513.863
		Totals	100	3.338	53.4	1513.863

Once you've gotten all this information, you basically follow the same method as making hot process soap. Check and stir the mixture every 30 minutes for about 3 hours on low, the translucent blob that you end up with after 3 hours is called soap paste. 

Once your soap paste is made you have two options 1) dilute it now or 2) store and dilute later. I dilute all my soap paste after I finish making it. Soap doesn't go bad so in my opinion it's better to just dilute it and be done. 

To dilute the soap paste you need to boil enough water equal to 60% of the total amount of laundry soap desired, in this instance that would be 80.1 oz. I would suggest boiling the water first and then measuring it, rather than measuring than boiling. Pour the boiling water in the crockpot, turn the crockpot on high, put the top on and walk away for about 30-45 minutes. After 30-45 minutes the soap paste should have softened and no longer stuck to the bottom of the crockpot. Using a metal spoon try to break the soap paste into smaller pieces, come back and check the soap about every 30 minutes until the soap paste is fully diluted. Fortunately soap made with an all coconut oil base the soap should be relatively easy to dilute. 

The next step is to neutralize the soap, because soap made from coconut oil will not thicken when borax is add, it doesn't make sense to add more than necessary, it's not going to get any thicker. Dissolve 0.85 oz of borax into 1.7oz of boiling water and add the mixture into the diluted soap.

After you've let the soap cool for a little while, any fragrances or essential oils that you want to add can be mixed in and the soap bottled. The amount of fragrance/essential oil depends on the manufacturer's recommendations. I use .7 oz per lb of soap paste. That's it your done. 

Each large load of clothes needs 1 oz of laundry soap, I happen to have a 1 oz scoop but if you don't 1/2 tbsp is the same thing. The gallon will do about 133 loads. This can also be used for baby clothes, just decrease or take out the fragrance/essential oils. 

While this is a long process, it really doesn't require a lot of your attention. The crockpot does most of the work. I guess the real question is if this is economical, well let's do the math shall we. 

7 lbs of coconut oil: $17.95

8 oz Lemongrass EO: $11.55

32 oz KOH: $16.51

7 lb = 112 oz

17.95 / 112 = $0.16/oz coconut oil

11.55 / 8 = $1.45/oz lemongrass EO

16.51 / 32 = $0.52/oz KOH

($0.16 x 53.4)+($1.45 x 2.35)+($0.52 x 13.72) = $19.09/gal liquid laundry soap

$19.09 / 133 = $0.14/load

Until next time, 

Kellan

Kellan, Where Have You Been?

So I've been MIA for a while.......I apologize. Life has been a little hectic. I've had a great combination of moving and being sick. Now that I'm done moving, I have to sort through and organize all my crap. I JUST dug out the supplies that I needed to make liquid laundry soap and that's because I desperately needed to make some (more on that later).

I'm going to get better..... I promise. I have a few fun projects that I want to experiment with, including a new bag design. I have to dig out all my fabric and sewing machines first (yes I said machines), but I hope to have that done by the end of the week. I also will be buying/building (probably building) a craft table because my old one literally fell apart in the move.

I have a new favorite website, Ana White. If you've never been on her site, it's EXCELLENT, please go check it out. I'm currently deciding which table I'm going to build and will be working on that later this week.

Lots of exciting announcements will be made soon but right now I have more digging in boxes to do. New experiments coming soon!

Until next time,
Kellan

Upcoming Posts

I know I've been a little MIA lately but I've been rather busy lately. As I stated in my last post we have a new addition in our family, so I've been spending most of my days with her.

How cute is she? I love my cousins.......since I've been "hanging out with the baby" I haven't been at home a lot and when I'm am at home I'm generally studying for finals. I don't know if I mentioned before that I'm currently working on a Master of Science in Accounting degree. I'm pretty much done with finals and since I won't be coming to see the baby everyday anymore I'll be posting a lot more.

Here are the upcoming posts:
Garlic Knots - this is a variation my Great-Grandmother's roll recipe
Liquid Laundry Soap - basically liquid soap made from 100% coconut oil
Unpaper Towel - My next step is moving away from disposable products
Traditional Corned Beef - This is a 7 day process that so I will probably be posting this closer to New Year's
Super Creamy Alfredo Mac N' Cheese - This recipe was inspired by my grandfather, it's super delicious and I can't wait to share it with you guys!

I also wanted to take a moment to say hi to all my new followers. Thanks for following my blog, I hope you find something that you find cool and want to try.

My aunt, who is a GREAT cook,  is launching her new blog January 1. She has a lot of great posts and giveaways planned for the kickoff, I'll make sure to include more information about that when we're closer to the launch date.

Until next time,
Kellan

Using Leftover Turkey: Day ? - Corned Beef

It's been a while, but we got a new addition Friday night so I've been a little busy. My aunt had a baby........YAY! My family is very close so I had A LOT of stuff going on. We had the baby and a 2nd birthday this weekend. I had a super busy day at church yesterday and I'm on newborn and babysitting duty for the rest of the week. Needless to say, I been busy but I wanted to share something with you.

I ended up making turkey salad out the rest of the leftover because we've been so busy. I'll post the pics later when I get back home. Most people think that turkey salad tastes just like chicken salad, that's not true. In my family we smoke all our turkeys and one had a jerk rubbed on the outside, so it had a very different taste.

Corned Beef
What does corned beef have to do with leftover turkey? Great question. Well I used my delicious turkey stock as the cooking liquid for my corned beef. I made my corned beef in 45 mins in the greatest cooking device ever.............the electric pressure cooker.

I love this thing. LOVE IT!!!!!!!! I have always been afraid of pressure cookers because they can explode but I don't have to worry about that this puppy. It has a built in safety precaution that doesn't allow the unit to be opened if there's any pressure built up inside so I don't have to worry about opening it too soon and having corned beef on my ceiling. If you don't have a pressure cooker you should definitely get one of these and they're relatively cheap. On Overstock they start at $45.

If I get a chance to make something cool this week I'll do another post but right now I'm not entirely sure that's going to happen. I want to make some liquid laundry soap this week but we'll see.

Until next time,
Kellan

Using Leftover Turkey: Day 1 - The Cats

My first use of the turkey requires no actual work. How is that possible you ask? Well because I fed turkey to the cats.

Aren't they cute? This is actually a pretty old picture. Jack Bauer (the black and white one) was little and cute then, he's still cute but FAR from small.

Within the last year or so I noticed that the cats would vomit pretty much whenever they ate. We switched cat food and nothing changed, the vet said they were fine so we assume that just had a hairball problem. We got all the special hairball treatments, nothing helped so finally we just accepted this was our life. Well about two weeks ago we ran out of cat food and I didn't feel like going to the store (lazy, I know) so I gave them shredded chicken. They loved it but even better no vomiting. I continued feeding them either chicken, turkey or tuna for about 10 days, eventually I went to the store and bought a small bag of food. Within 5 minutes of pouring the food in their bowl the vomiting began. Now at this point I have to conclude, even though this wasn't an official experiment, that something in cat food is making them sick. I know that I can't deal with preservatives and artificial ingredients so maybe they can't either. 

I'm sure there are some people who would say that I shouldn't feed my cats straight meat but cats are carnivores. They don't need vegetables and fruit, if you tried to feed a cat whole, unprocessed fruit and vegetables they won't eat them. At one point I considered feeding my cats Blue Buffalo cat food but even they have other ingredients besides meat AND it's really expensive. In my area, a 2.5 lb bag is $10, do you know how much meat I could buy them for $10?

I've haven't gotten to a point where I feed them raw meat yet. As of right now I still cook it but eventually we're moving to the raw. 

Until next time,
Kellan

Using Leftover Turkey: Prep Day

I know that I was supposed to be doing a week of bread next..........but after making 20 dozen rolls for Thanksgiving, I'm really not feeling making ANY bread for at least a week. When we were cleaning up from Thanksgiving dinner my grandmother gave me the turkey carcass, she figured I could do something with it. I hate to disappoint so I'm going to make as many turkey dishes as I can with the carcass.

As with any carcass, the first use is to make stock.

Isn't that beautiful? Making this stock was crazy easy, I put the carcass in the slow cooker, filled with water and let it cook on low overnight. I turned the slow cooker off around 10:30 this morning but I didn't pick the turkey until 7 pm. Why the long wait? 1) I've been doing laundry and forgot. 2) I don't like burning myself (don't ask).

WARNING: picking turkey is not pretty or fun. There's no gadget that you can use for this, so mentally prepare yourself and stick your hand in. All you have to do is separate the bones from the meat. Sounds easy right? It is..............just do it and don't think about it.

Once you've finished separating the meat from the bones strain your stock and your done! Super easy right?

I'll be back tomorrow with use #1 for leftover Thanksgiving turkey. 

Until next time, 

Kellan

The Chicken Experiment - Final Thoughts

The rest of my week wasn't quite as successful, mostly because I wasn't feeling all that great.

Tomato Soup
I used some of the stock I made to make tomato soup from a recipe I saw on Keeper of the Home. When I was originally reading the recipe I was trying to figure out what the baking soda was for. I didn't realize until I was actually making the soup that the baking soda was to neutralize the acid in the tomatoes. Since I used tomatoes that I canned myself, they had a little extra acid from the lemon juice I put in bottom of all my jars. Overall, the soup was really good but thin. I ended up reducing mine by a lot. I will definitely make this soup again but I'm only going to use about 2 cups of stock instead of 4.

Chicken & Broccoli Fettuccine Alfredo
I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Heavenly Homemakers, and found a great recipe for easy alfredo sauce. When I saw it, I had to make it. As I've said before, I LOVE TO EAT and one of my favorite things is alfredo sauce. That's not to say that you can slop alfredo sauce on anything (I once ordered the blackened cajun chicken alfredo from Red Lobster, it was horrible).

Ingredients:
half a chicken worth of picked chicken
1 batch of Heavenly Homemakers easy alfredo sauce
1/2 bag of frozen broccoli
fettuccine noodles

Make the alfredo sauce first, then throw in the chicken and frozen broccoli.
Turn the pot on medium/low, put a lid on and let everything hang out for about 15 minutes.
Cook the amount of fettuccine you feel is adequate. (I personally like more sauce and toppings than pasta so I don't make a lot but that's up to you)
You really don't have to drain the pasta, I fished mine out with tongs and threw it directly into my sauce.
Mix everything together and serve.

It's tasty, delicious and super easy.

At this point we had been eating chicken for a little over a week. I couldn't think of anything else to make and honestly I was a little tired of chicken. So I fed the rest of the chicken to the cats. I recently discovered that feeding them cat food was making them sick so I've been feed them tuna, chicken and turkey (cats are carnivores). They were quite pleased. They had been eyeing the chicken since I brought it home.

Final Thoughts
I definitely think I proved my original theory that we could eat off two chickens for a week. I actually think we could have went two weeks but I'll leave that for another experiment. It definitely takes creativity and research to try to use the same main ingredient over and over again.

I'm currently working on a bread experiment and I just ordered potassium hydroxide so I will be making liquid soap soon (SUPER EXCITED ABOUT THAT).

Until next time,
Kellan