Just say NO!...to Wal-Mart. :)

If you know me then you know how much I hate Wal-Mart. Of course, I've shopped at Wal-Mart consistently up until this year even though I've hated it. The convenience of getting groceries and other necessary items in one stop does have its appeal and that is why I continued to shop there. Chris and I decided to make an effort this year to only go there if we ABSOLUTELY have to and I'm proud to say we have spent less than $70 ($63.04 actually) there in 2010. That may seem like a lot but, in the past, we would have spent that much and more at least once per week. Blah.blah.blah. Long story short....

One of the more difficult things about not going to Wal-Mart is that buying things like Pine-Sol and Magic Erasers cost SO MUCH MORE in the grocery store than at Wal-Mart. Luckily, I've found a better solution: alice.com Alice.com sells exciting things like Tylenol and paper towels and dish detergent. You can order the products online and set up reminders to buy that product weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. The products are delivered right to your door and as long as you order at least 6 items, the shipping is FREE!!!

Some products are probably still more expensive than buying them at Wal-Mart but they are definitely cheaper than buying them at the grocery store. In addition, if there is a manufacturer's coupon available, Alice will apply it to your order automatically. Sweet! I'm in.
I received my first order this week.



In addition to the products I ordered, I received free sample of laundry booster, a granola bar and a full size carpet cleaner.

SCORE!!!

Mom and I went "treasure" hunting this weekend. I found the best treasure for $19.95! After I got it home I looked it up on the Broyhill website. It retails for $389! Sweet! It goes perfectly in the master bedroom!

Homemade Laundry Detergent or as I like to call it...what you do on a Monday night for fun.

What better way to spend a Monday night than to make some homemade laundry detergent? I know, I know, just call us the Duggars. I've wanted to try it for a while now so I got the ingredients this evening after work. I was able to find everything at Food City. The ingredients are Washing Soda, Borax and Fels-Naptha laundry bar soap. I found the washing soda and Borax on the laundry aisle but for some reason the Laundry Bar Soap was with the regular bars of soap a couple of aisles over. It is definitely a laundry product though so check there first.
The recipe is:
1 Bar of Fels-Naptha soap finely grated
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of Washing Soda

If you are interested, there is also a liquid recipe that you can find online. Just Google it.

Grate up the bars of soap. Chris used the grater. I tried the food processor. Either way, the results were about the same.

Here are all four bars grated up. (we made a quadruple batch)

Add 4 cups of washing soda.

Mix well.

Add 4 cups of Borax and mix again.

The directions I read said to use one tablespoon per load for normal loads or two tablespoons for heavily soiled clothes.

We have a High Efficiency Front Load washer and since the detergent has a low suds content, it is safe for front load washers. Trying it for the first time tonight.

I'll let you know the results.

So here's the break down of cost per load as best as I can figure it.

4 bars of Fels-Naptha soap: $5.00

1 box of Borax: $4.29

1 box of washing soda: $2.99

I used all four bars of soap so add $5.00

+ half a box of Borax so add $2.15

+ 2/3 box of washing soda so add $2.00

+ tax of 46 cents for a grand total of: $9.61

For the sake of arguement, let's assume that all our loads are heavily soiled and we use 2 Tablespoons of detergent for every load. There are 16 tablespoons in a cup. There are a total of 16 cups in the recipe I made. Based on that, I made enough detergent to do 128 loads of laundry. $9.61 divided by 128 loads equals 7.5 cents per load.

As a comparison, I normally use Gain detergent. At Walgreens's, Gain costs $9.99 for 40 loads. The cost is 25 cents per load. Making your own will save you 17.5 cents per load.

Yes, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I need a life.