More About Soap and Saving Money

I got a lot of response to my soap recipe. It was one of the topics of conversation at open knitting last night at DE and it seems that people are willing to try it! But apparently washing soda is not available as easily as I thought. Here in Minnesota you can get it in some grocery stores but not all of them. I did some googling and found that in some areas of the country it is very hard to get. Washing soda is sodium carbonate, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate – they are not the same thing. But one on line source said that you can get sodium carbonate at pool supply stores. Haven’t checked but it’s worth checking if you’re in one of those areas that doesn’t seem to have the Arm and Hammer brand. And as always call ahead and see if a store carries what you want rather than driving all around to find it. Even though gas has come down in price it still costs money to go from store to store.

One other thing that I forgot to mention about the laundry soap, put it in the washer and let it dissolve before putting your clothes in. And the original recipe called for grated Fels Naptha soap but I used both my homemade soap and a couple of bars of hotel soap and it works just fine. I can’t make more homemade soap until I find a source of lye – the stores don’t carry it anymore because there are people that make bad things with it. Grrrr. It was fun to make – as long as I followed the directions exactly. I did have one batch where I mistook the temperature and started combining ingredients at too high a temp – big mess. Good thing that was in our old kitchen and it didn’t matter too much.

I just thought I’d mention one other cost savings I know about. Some of you make your own bread like I do and need to buy yeast. I was in the local grocery store with my son and since he expressed interest in making some bread I thought I would encourage him and buy him some yeast. Not at those prices!! I’ve always bought my yeast either through school or at Sam’s Club now that I’m not working for school lunch any more. So I did a little price comparison. It was about a dollar and a half for 3 tiny packets of yeast or 4 something for a 4 oz. jar at the grocery store. Yesterday I did my shopping at Sam’s Club and bought 2 pounds (yes I did buy 2 pounds – it lasts a long time. Just keep it in the freezer after you open the brick). Sam’s Club price was $4.16 for the two one pound bricks. That’s 8 times the yeast for about the same price as the 4 oz. bottle!! And I was asked recently why I still shop at Sam’s Club even though there are only two of us to shop for! Actually the main reason that I keep up my membership is that the price of hearing aid batteries is half of what I can find anywhere else. That pays for my membership right there. I would caution you that some prices at Sam’s are not as good as what you can find elsewhere – soda pop comes to mind. Again, you need to balance driving from one store to another with the savings that you can get. We usually do a big Sam’s Club run about once a month or we stop in if we are in the area anyway.

I'll leave you with a fun video that I found. And I'm not even a dog person!