VEGAN DIY - Liquid Dish Soap

I ran out of dish soap today and I have been meaning to make some for a while, so I guess the fates aligned to bring this post to you :)

There are a couple of brands of cruelty free dish soap out there.  Seventh Generation, Mrs. Meyers, and Target's Method brand to name a few but they do tend to be more expensive than their non cruelty free shelf mates such as Dawn or Ajax and I've been on a mission to prove that being a vegan household does not mean breaking the bank, EVEN when it comes to personal care and household cleaning products so dish soap is the next stop on that train! 

So far we have discussed making our own vegan liquid hand soap and vegan dryer sheets and the reasons why we might want to dabble in making our own. Besides contributing to WAY less landfill waste by buying less packaging, there is a LOT of money to be saved by making your own and of course we want to ensure that our products are vegan so as not to contribute to any form of animal testing. There is also a lot of junk in your normal run of the mill dish soap that may cause concern for some.  Check out this post if you are interested in learning more about the goods and bads of what is in your dish soap.

Making dish soap is crazy simple, it took me about 5 minutes to throw together my batch today.

There is one ingredient used in making this soap that is questionable to vegans and that is washing soda.  The only commercially available brand of washing soda I have been able to find is made by Arm & Hammer and they are a terrible company that is known throughout the AR community for their torture and mistreatment of animals. When I first started making my own laundry soaps I was in quite a quandary because I knew of and could find no other alternative and it is a necessary ingredient.  I was stuck using it until the day I stumbled upon this blog and finally I could make my soap with a clear conscience!!  You see the difference between simple baking soda and washing soda is a few molecules, I'm not a chemist so check out the link above for a better explanation.  Basically I buy my cruelty free Bob's Red Mill Baking Soda and bake it in the oven until it becomes washing soda, the heat breaks the molecules and turns it into washing soda!  Cheap, EASY and VEGAN!  I use washing soda in my homemade laundry detergent, to make this dish soap, for my homemade "oxyclean" and as a laundry booster for particularly nasty loads of laundry.  So make yourself up a batch and then lets make some clear conscience dish soap!




You need:
1/3 bar of vegan soap, I found this one at the Dollar Store
1/4 cup of simple white vinegar
1/4 cup washing soda
6-7 cups HOT (almost boiling) water
essential oils as you desire 

This will make a 1/2 gallon of dish soap and I figured with 1/3 of a bar of soap from the Dollar Store and the other ingredients it cost about $1-$2 to make.  Now if you buy more expensive soap your end cost will be more and of course if you add the essential oils those will bring up your price as well but still even with the expensive soap and a bunch of oils I can't see this costing more than $4-$5 for a HALF GALLON (or *about* 8 cups) of dish soap.  Compare that to Mrs. Meyers at $4 for 2 cups of liquid dish soap, Seventh Generation at $4-$5 for about 3 1/2 cups of soap, and Method at $4 for about 2 1/2 cups and you can see that the savings are quite substantial AND you are not buying any more plastic bottles!  

Grate 1/3 of your bar of soap (about a 1/4 cup of shavings)

Washing Soda

Vinegar

Add soap flakes, washing soda and vinegar to a 1/2 gallon jar

Pour 1/2 of your water in over the other ingredients, put the lid on the jar and with oven mitts on your hands (it's HOT!) shake it up for a couple minutes until the soap flakes are dissolved.  Other people do this in a bowl or pan but this way it's already in what I plan to store it in and I have no extra dishes to wash. 

After the flakes are melted take the lid off, it'll be really sudsy from shaking.  Just slowly pour the rest of your hot water in over the top of the suds and they will go down.

Once it's full set it aside (without the lid) to cool over night.  In the morning give it a good shake and then use a funnel to fill up your dish soap bottle.  Label this jar and you have plenty to keep your dishes clean for months!

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place!

I'm OCD, we all know this... I have issues with having to have order in almost everything I do... I also have a husband who... I swear takes joy in seeing just how red my face will turn when he makes a sandwich in the kitchen I just cleaned and leaves it a disaster... bread crumbs on the counter, mayo on the cutting board, spinach dropped on the floor... OY!! he does it on purpose I'm sure of it! and after he cooks... OMG it looks like a bomb went off in there! But the food is AMAZING, he is one hell of a cook :) so I smile and enjoy my DELISH meal and go clean it up later... but seriously babe HOW in the heck DO you get spaghetti sauce on the ceiling!?  Anyhoo back to me and my issues lol.

Do you have to have order with your little one's toys?

I do, everything has a place and everything should be in its place!

For a while my husband convinced me to just let them have all their toys in big toys boxes commingling with each other, it was a DISASTER!  For one thing they could never find anything they wanted to play with because everything was just one big mess and because it was all just a huge mess that was how it always got left, things got lost, things got broken and after a while I finally said we are going back to doing things my way.  My way is: A bucket or container for each and every different type of toy with a label on the front to let them know what goes in there.  My husband was convinced I was saddling the kids with my OCD issues by making them clean up and sort their toys in this manner, that was why he just wanted a big toy box "let them be kids!" he said... "Kids make messes" he says...  Um, I don't think teaching your kids to be organized is "saddling them with OCD" but whatever...
 
I do realize that I take it bit further than most might, rather than just a bucket or bin for action figures in general, I have specific ones for the different types:  Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Star Wars, Super Heroes, Ben Ten etc... but honestly the boys are not going to play with their Luke Skywalker and their Superman at the same time, so it makes perfect sense to me to have them in separate bins.  

I have had a problem for years, when it came to labels because often their collections would outgrow the containers they were in. So I would have to move them into bigger containers, or they would lose interest in something and it would get donated or sold at a garage sale and I'd have this bin with a label on it. Sometimes I'd just stick another one over it for whatever was in there now but after a while that starts to looks like garbage and the labels themselves start to peel and get all mucky.  I had bounced around the idea of laminating some labels like I had seen here and here but laminate sheets can get spendy and doesn't solve the problem of what to do when their interests change.

 One day I was cleaning out a drawer of my husband's old junk and I came across a pile of these little plastic sleeves:

And I thought... I can do SOMETHING with these, so I set them aside, and then as I was scraping an old label off a bin later that week I remembered them.  I Googled to see what the measurements of a baseball card are (2 1/2 x 3 1/2) and I got busy!! 

I have been putting pictures on the boys labels since they were babies so even though they are now 7 and 9 I can't help myself but to always Google for a cool pic of whatever toy it is and use that as the label.  I put it in my editing software and just told it to make the image the correct size.  Then I repeated for all the toys they have.  Printed them out and then cut them to size.  Then I had to get all the old labels off the darn bins... rubbing alcohol is your friend here squirt some on, let it sit, come back and then it should be a LOT less work to get the label and all the goop off.

If you don't already have some of these baseball card sleeve things laying around (ask your hubs he might have a stash somewhere) they are really cheap!  Like 100 for $1 and you can get them at any Comic book shop or hobby store.  The ones we had might have been a little more expensive as they had a black backing and not totally clear but I bet they were not that much more.  There are also some thicker really nice ones that are like 25 for about $3.00 if you want them to be really sturdy.



Run a bead of hot glue around the outside edges of the card holder and press onto the container.  Be careful not to touch the tip of your hot glue gun to the card holder because it will melt it.  Then slide your printed image into the sleeve and viola! Neat organized labels!  

But the BEST thing about these for me is that they are SO EASY TO CHANGE!!  NO MESS, no label goo... just slide out the printed image and slide in whatever new one you want to change it out with!

And... don't limit yourself to labeling toy boxes!  I have gone kind of crazy with them around the house.  I have them on the dishwasher:

 Just use those cheap free magnets you find all over  the place to hold them on!

I used a hole punch and zip ties to attach them to my kids catch-all baskets that I keep at the top of the stairs.

Hole punch and zip ties to label containers in the freezer.  Told ya... I kinda went crazy :)

Hey before you go, I wanted to share one other thing with you all today...  We read SO much around here, seriously PILES of books and we LOVE the library!  We check out so many books.  We always have a HUGE stack to carry up to the counter.  I have two library baskets in our house; one is filled with the books we need to read, and one is filled with the ones we have already read, that need to go back.  We have to go empty that basket about 2-3 times a week (of course we always bring home more too!) Anyway... I have found that checking out books from the library is a GREAT way to determine which books are worth buying and are destined to become favorites!  Two that we read this morning over breakfast that we just LOVED were Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers, which is about a bunch of CRAZY, WILD animal crackers on the loose



and Spoon, which is about a little spoon who thinks he is kinda dull and not cool like his pals the fork or chopsticks, but he learns that spoons are pretty awesome too!


I definitely think these are two that we will be purchasing to add to our personal library.  Check them out from your library and if you love them like we did we'd love to hear all about it!!

I am linking up over at:
Gluesticks

VEGAN DIY - Dryer Sheets

Last week I posted about making your own vegan liquid hand soap for a FRACTION of the cost of buying at the store.  Today we are moving on to laundry.  Back in the soap post I introduced you to an animal ingredient called tallow, again if you are not familiar with this ingredient PLEASE click on the link and take a few minutes to learn about it also check out this article. Tallow is in almost all big brand fabric softeners and dryer sheets, if you are using them you are coating your clothing in rendered animal fat... gross, I know. 

So what is the solution?  Well some people use vinegar in the rinse cycle as a natural softener but I have found that it does not make clothes anywhere near as soft as I like AND I can never remember to set a timer to add it during the rinse cycle.  Some vegan brands such as Mrs. Meyer's and Seventh Generation do make vegan dryer sheets but they are expensive and I have been making a big effort to stay away from single use items even if they are biodegradable.  I read something about someone soaking a HUGE towel with a whole bottle of fabric softener and then hanging it out to dry, once dry they used that softener soaked towel over and over again in their dryer... hmmm... THAT sounds like something worth looking into!  A little Pinteresting later I saw that a few people were making DIY dryer sheets in a way similar to what I am going to show you the important difference is mine are VEGAN :) Mrs. Meyer's fabric softener is about $10 a bottle, for 32 loads compared to other (non vegan) brands on the market it is expensive but not if you stretch the 32 loads the bottle says you get for 100-150 loads.  I save money and only have to recycle ONE bottle not 4 or 5!  I'm saving about $30-40 doing it this way vs. just buying the fabric softener needed to launder that many loads. 

150 loads would require about 5 bottles of softener at $10 a bottle your cost would be $50.  
 Getting 100-150 loads out of ONE bottle of softener saves you $30-$40!

You need 3 things:

1.  An old towel or t-shirts or sweats, whatever... just something you can cut up.  Or if you have some of those baby sized washcloths those are the perfect size already.
2.  An empty wipes container or similar sized Tupperware/Rubbermaid type container with a sealing lid
3.  A bottle of vegan fabric softener there are a few brands out there, I happen to like Mrs. Meyer's the lemon and lavender are my favorites for laundry!

Step 1:  Gather your supplies.

Step 2:  Measure your container and cut whatever fabric you are using to a size that will fit inside your container.

Step 3:  SHAKE, if you are using an old towel shake the heck out of your cut up pieces to get off all the loose little fibers from cutting it.  You could use pinking shears to cut it if you want, I didn't and I have not noticed much fraying and even if they did fray who cares, no one is looking at your dryer sheets :)

Step 4: Put your pieces of cloth into your container and pour just enough fabric softener into the container to get them all covered and wet.  

Step 5:  Close your container and put it in your laundry room until you are ready to do laundry :)

Are you ready to dry a load??  Ok...

Step 6:  Open your container and take out 1 cloth wring most of the liquid out of the cloth and back into the container.

Step 7:  Shake out the cloth.
 

Step 8:  Toss the cloth in with your clothes in the dryer and dry as usual.  *Yes you will have fabric softener all over your hand at this point. I am usually running another load anyway so I'll just rinse my hand in the water running into the washing machine.  If I'm not washing another load I'll just turn around and wash my hand in the sink, no big deal.

 

Step 9:  When pulling your dry clothes out of the dryer, take a second to hug a nice warm soft snuggly piece of fresh smelling laundry :)  When you are done with that unload the dryer and when you find the cloth set it aside to be used in the next load you toss in.  You can reuse the cloths about 3 times before having to resoak them in the container.

Step 10:  Once you have reused the cloth 2-4 times stick back in the container with it's buddies.  

You may be wondering why you even need multiple cloths... if you are single or don't have a large family you might be able to only use one small washcloth over and over again resoaking when needed.  But I have a largeish family and laundry does not always get folded and put away right when it's pulled out of the dryer... I know... the shame lol...  anyway having several in rotation helps keep me sane.  

Once you have been using them for a while you will start to be able to tell when they need to be soaked by the way they feel.  Have you ever accidentally put too many dryer sheets in the dryer and had overly "coated" clothes? I know I'm not the only one who can't remember from 30 seconds ago whether she threw in a dryer sheet before she put all the clothes in the dryer so then you throw in another just to make sure and the minute you pull the clothes out of the dryer you just know you put 2 in there, grrr!! Anyway that is how these cloths feel when they still have enough softener in them to reuse.  Once they start to feel like the rest of the laundry and not overly coated then it's time to resoak them.

VEGAN DIY - Liquid Hand Soap

Making your own soaps, personal care items, laundry detergents and other household cleaners to save money and have a greener household is not a new concept but it is one that has caught my interest lately.  I have been saving DIY soaps and cleaning products to my Pinterest boards like crazy lately, but I need to take it a step farther being that my family is vegan.  This means we don't use products with animal ingredients in them and we try very hard to ensure that the products we use are not tested on animals.  We are not perfect, we do the best we can to show compassion for our fellow Earthlings and make as little impact as possible on the planet.  Reducing our impact is one of the main reasons I LOVE the idea of making my own soaps!  We go through so many plastic bottles for shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap, dish soap, dishwasher detergent, laundry soap and on and on and on...

Did you know that the average American creates almost 5 POUNDS of trash a DAY!  

For my family that is 25 pounds of trash a day, or 175 pounds a week or 750 POUNDS OF TRASH A MONTH!  That number disgusts me! Seriously makes me ill to think of that much garbage being generated and knowing that my family is only one of millions and millions out there generating trash. I know that that our number is a LOT lower than the average but still, we make too much trash.  Of course we recycle but I have read that a large portion of items that get set out for recycling never actually get recycled and the act of recycling is actually not all that green, we compost and try not to buy single use or other wasteful items.  We buy used as much as possible. We upcycle and we repurpose, so making my own soaps seemed like a very reasonable way to reduce our costs and cut down the amount of plastics we are purchasing.

I am going to be doing a whole series of posts on making your own VEGAN personal and cleaning products.  

Today we are going to talk hand soap.  I buy Mrs. Meyers liquid hand soap which costs me $4.99 for a 12 oz bottle at my local health food store.  This "recipe" will make a gallon of soap or the equivalent of a little more than 10 bottles of liquid hand soap.  This gets me $50 of soap for $6.50! See below for the cost comparison. 

Yes I do realize that you can purchase a 64 oz (1/2 a gallon) bottle of Target/Walmart brand or Dial type liquid hand soap for anywhere from $4-7.  A little info on why we do not buy these "big brand" products, why we spend more money the natural vegan options.  Most of the parent companies that produce those soaps test on animals and some of them, Dial for instance, contain tallow.  If you are not familiar with this animal based ingredient take a second to bone up.  

tal·low/ˈtalō/

Noun:

A hard fatty substance made from rendered animal fat, used in making candles and soap.

If you buy commercial soaps, lipsticks, shaving creams, fabric softeners, dryer sheets, wax paper, crayons, margarine, paints, candles etc... you are likely coating your body, face, lips, clothes and art projects with rendered cow, pig, horse, dog and cat fat.  Totally NOT what I want to be washing my hands with!  In addition to gross animal ingredients and animal testing there are TONS of chemicals that I want nothing to do with in most name brand products.  See at the bottom of the post for ingredient comparison.

Personal care and household cleaning items are two areas where being vegan DOES cost more, to me anyway and though I consider it "money well spent" I am super excited to not only reduce our impact but to start saving some coin!

So lets get on with it! You need 3 things:

1. 1 bar 5-8 oz of vegan soap (Mrs. Meyers and Dr. Bronners are my fave)
2. 2 tablespoons (1 oz) vegetable glycerin
3. 1 gallon good old tap water

My cheese grater has been pretty lonely since my family went vegan, it's finally going to be getting some action again! Your equipment needed for making the soap:

Cheese grater
Large pot
Container(s) to store the soap in

Measure 1 gallon of water into a large pot and put on med/high.  Grate the entire bar of soap, I used 1 bar of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint and my whole kitchen smelled (and still smells) minty fresh while I was making the soap. Add the grated soap to the water, add 2 tablespoons of glycerin and stir it up.  Keep over the heat until the grated soap is completely melted, but don't boil it turn the heat down to med if you need to.  


Remove from heat, it's just going to look like a murky pot of soapy water at this point.  set it aside and let it cool overnight (about 10-12 hours).  Just leave it alone and let it do its thing.  When you come back to it in the morning it will look a LOT different.  Mine had a consistency similar to old jello, do you remember from when you were a kid how when it was left in the fridge too long it would get too thick and solid?  Like that.  Take the electric mixer to it for a minute or so and you will have liquid soap!  Use a funnel to pour into your soap dispensers and storage containers and go count the coins you saved.

Get that cheese grater back in action!

1 bar of soap grated

Heat and mix until the soap is all dissolved

Set aside to cool for 10-12 hours

The next morning you have... The BLOB!

Using your electric mixer, mix for a minute or so

Fill your dispenser(s) and containers and go forth and prosper with clean hands of course!

A few notes

• This will be a bit thicker than liquid soap you may be used to.  This does not bother me but if it bothers you, you can add a few more cups of water when you are doing the final mix with the mixer until you get the consistency you like. Bonus *Thinning it down more means you get more soap, which means you save even more money!
• This soap WILL NOT lather up all the suds you are used to.  This does not mean it is not cleaning your hands, IT IS.  All those suds from commercial soaps are the result of chemical sudsing agents added to the soaps to make them make bubbles and make you think your hands are cleaner.

Cost Comparison

4.99 for a bar of Dr. Bronners Soap

1.50 for 1/2 a bottle of glycerin (2.99 a bottle)

--------

6.49 for a gallon homemade liquid hand soap

4.99 a bottle for store bought

x 10 bottles

----------

49.99 for a gallon of store bought liquid hand soap 

For a savings of $43.50!  This gallon of soap will last my family at least 6 months, so I'll have plenty of time before I run out to keep an eye out for sales on Mrs. Meyer's or Dr. Bronners bar soaps and save myself a few more pennies!

Ingredient Comparison

Dr. Bronners Peppermint Soap 

INGREDIENTS:
Organic Coconut Oil*, Organic Palm Oil*, Sodium Hydroxide**, Water, Mentha Arvensis*, Organic Olive Oil*, Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil*, Salt, Citric Acid, Tocopherol
* CERTIFIED FAIR TRADE INGREDIENTS
** None remains after saponifying oils into soap and glycerin

Dial Liquid Hand Soap Ingredients

Soap (Sodium Cocoate or Palm Kernelate, Sodium Palmate, Sodium Tallowate (Contains One or More of These Ingredients)), Water (Aqua), Talc, Coconut Acid, Palm Acid, Tallow Acid, Palm Kernel Acid (Contains One or More of These Ingredients), Glycerin, Fragrance (Parfum), Sorbitol, Sodium Chloride, Pentasodium Penetate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Titanium Dioxide (CI 77891).

Don't forget to check back in the future for DIY VEGAN laundry detergent, fabric softener/dryer sheets and more! 

Wherever You Go Whatever You Do... May The Luck of the Irish Be With You

I have had past lives, I don't mean like I was Cleopatra of Egypt, or Besty Ross in a past life... I just mean my life was not always what it is today.  I have led 6 different lives so far:

Life #1 was my childhood

Life #2 was that of young bride to a very controlling older husband

Life #3 was a CRAZY single in the city in my early 20's kind of life

Life #4 was me as highly stressed very anxious new mother

Life #5 was me as an even more stressed, single working mother to 2 young boys

Life #6 is me now, married mama to 3 babies

If you had asked me when I was a single in the city girl if I would have ever moved out of California and my beloved San Francisco to the often dull and dreary city of Spokane I would have laughed my ass off at you, "Um... you're like outta your mind!"  Those days were days of excess, of spending way too much money on partying, clothes and mostly SHOES.  Though I was single I had a very passionate love affair with shoes... oh how I loved them and I swear they loved me back... me and my shoes we were very happy together.  

Things have changed so much since those days, I often look back at all the wasteful spending and wish I had known better, had cared about saving for the future.  When I think about having spent as much on a pair of shoes as I now spend on 2 weeks worth of groceries for my family I cringe.  I work hard to help my children understand the value of money I have on occasion pulled the cash needed to pay the rent out of the bank and let the kids count it. They get excited handling a large sum of money but then when I tell them we have to give it all away to pay for our house they are amazed that it cost that much just to have a house to live in.  I tell them how much I make per hour and we do the math to figure out how many hours I have to work to pay for our home.  Once I tried to explain to them rent was only one of MANY expenses we have as a family; car payment, power, water, cable, internet, cell phones, groceries, clothes, gas.... the list went on and on and they soon got overwhelmed and lost interest.  So now I just talk about things in terms of how much I have to work for something.  When they ask for a new Lego set that cost close to $100 I tell them to figure out the math to see how many hours mama would have to work to pay for that.  They understand more and more as they get older and they are starting to value second hand shopping and saving money which I think are VERY valuable lessons.  

So these days when we want to spruce up our place for the holidays we try to do it as cheaply as possible using as much secondhand and repurposed as possible.  I was browsing Pinterest and was getting inspired to put up some St. Patrick's Day decorations.  I saw this pin and LOVED IT so I went to Michaels all set to buy wood letters to paint and decorate but after I saw that the wooden letters were $3-$7 each depending on size, and then I would have to spend another $5-$10 on paint and ribbons it would have been about a $30 project, way more than I was willing to spend.  So I bought a couple of fake potted flowers on clearance for $2.50 each, 2 little signs also on clearance for $2.50 each and a package of little leprechaun hats from the Dollar Store.  Then I came home to search for things I had to make decorations with.  I have a craft room packed with crafty things so I pulled out a roll of craft paper, some green construction paper, scrapbook papers and ribbons.  Then I raided hubby's packing supplies (he sells on ebay so we always have a bunch of shipping boxes in the house).  I sat down with the kids and we created this display with the things I found around the house and the $12 I spent at Michael's and the Dollar Store.

Do you ever cheap out on your decorations?  I find that I love and cherish the stuff the kids and I made so much more than things we buy :)  Don't you?

Colors of the Wind

The next posts here are going to be crafty posts, I am having some medical problems and have not felt much like cooking.  So my poor kids have been surviving on unhealthy and expensive take out, sandwiches, cereal, smoothies, soups and ramen... my poor babies they are used to much better meals.  When my guilt gets the better of me and I'm in between episodes of dizziness and headaches I have been trying to make it up to the kiddos with fun family craft projects.  With all this time at home my Pinterest boards have gotten pretty full so I have been using them for inspiration.

I love all things Disney, all things DIY and making things out of things I already have.  So when I saw this pin I just knew I had to make these homemade finger paints for my little ones, and anytime I see or talk about painting the song from Pocahontas "Colors of the Wind" plays in the back of my mind... I have a huge princess complex, Disney tunes are a constant internal soundtrack to my life :) Yes, I know... you are shaking you head at me, that's ok I get that reaction a LOT lol.  Anyway... Today we painted with all the colors of the wind and it was fun!

The paints were made with regular kitchen ingredients that I always have on hand.  My daughter Bella does not like being dirty so she was kind of unsure about using her hands to paint, she does love to paint with her brushes though but after a while she was digging in and having a blast.  When these paints run out I think I might adjust the recipe to have 1/2 the cornstarch and see if they would work with her brushes like poster paints vs finger paints. 

Please see the original post here by blogger Easie Peasie Thank you for sharing this!

 

Everything in the pot, stir, stir, stir.  It took about 10 minutes and it will get REALLY THICK!

Looks kind of like glue at this point

Colors added, super pretty!

Dreaming up all the things she can create

She was very timid with them at first, only using her thumb to paint with.

Big brother getting in on the fun

Brother showing her how to make new colors by mixing the paints

Not so timid any more!

OH MY!

The finished masterpiece