Homemade Laundry

I have been doing laundry by hand for almost 2 months now.  Why? Well Our local laundromat has a lot of broken down machines and the owners, being older, aren't wanting to put a lot of money into fixing things, or so I have been told.  It makes it hard to get a machine sometimes, especially when someone else is there and washing a month's worth for a family.  I just asked nicely on a local facebook group how the community could help spruce up the place.  It turned into a bashing session of different people saying things about me and on and on.  Well one guy said "why not get a washboard and go down to the river".  So I took his advice, sorta.  I DO have a wonderwasher that I love love love, so technically not washing everything by hand.

2 T-shirts is a load and it struggles with washing a pair of jeans.  Therefore there are a few things I DO have to wash by hand.  You cant believe how dirty the clean clothes were!  I spent nearly 2 weeks rewashing them and washing real dirty clothes to get them clean.  They smelled awful too.  They didn't smell clean.  It didn't matter how much laundry soap I put in the washer.   For the most part I used Zote laundry soap when I started washing by hand.  That stuff is AMAZING!  I used a lot of [off brand] oxy cleaner too.  Some items I had to wash multiple times to get them clean.

Now a month and a half later, doing laundry is a bit easier.  So far I have been able to keep up with it.  I just do a little each night as there is drying room available.  Smaller non bulky items I wring out by hand.  What do I use to wring out the bugger things?  The wringer on our mop bucket.  It does a pretty good job.  Some day I want a spin dryer.  Something similar to THIS ONE.  It would make getting the water out of the clothes much easier and drying time much quicker.

Now for the laundry soap?  Well I still have store bought liquid that I use occasionally.  It only takes at the most half a teaspoon for a load.  I have noticed though, which I find odd, is sometimes it makes our clothes smell like smoke.  We are non smokers and we aren't around any fireplaces, etc.  What I DO like to use though, like I mentioned above, is Zote laundry bar soap.  I bought several bars a few years back because I was wanting to make homemade laundry soap, but never did.  I also got them for $1 each!  SO what I have been doing is shaving a bar of the laundry soap and adding 2 scoops of the [off brand] oxy cleaner to it.  It's Amazing and takes about 1/2 teaspoon per load.  With all the extra washing I did on the first bar, it has lasted a month and a half.  I'm expecting this batch to last a bit longer.  But still it cost me so little to make, it's not that big of a deal.  LOL!

I know there is more I could put in there, if I followed the recipes found on the web, but why?  I have soap and the oxy cleaner stuff.  Together they do the job and it satisfies me and hubby.  Also if there is a smell that you can describe as "clean" it's our hand washed clothes.  I don't need any artificial smell ingredients added to my laundry, it would just add to the cost too.  :-)