Some handy hints, a little bit of thrift, and a lot of gloop

I know that really washing day should be Monday (the reason being that you can dine off the cold cuts from Sunday as the home fires will be heating up the water and all hands on the laundry, and also that it gives you the week to get things washed, rinsed, dried, ironed and aired, all ready for the weekend), but in the absence of a tumble dryer and the presence of sun and nipping  northeast wind, Thursday it has to be.

Now for some reason, most probably alliterative, Thursdays in Blogland seem quite often to be Thrifty, and to enter into the spirit of things I thought that I would take as my theme washday economy.

It all came about because I wanted to make some more of the world famous Laundry Gloop, and encountered a broken link to the place where I usually find the recipe. So in the public interest (and so that I can find it again), I thought that I would post the recipe here.

And if you don't know about Laundry Gloop, it is a most wonderful thing - a dead cheap, easy to concoct, homemade laundry, well, gloop. I think it probably went under the more dignified name of soap jelly in the past. But you use it instead of laundry liquid or washing powder.

To make Laundry Gloop you need a big saucepan - I use a preserving pan.

The essential ingredients are:

8oz/250g washing soda (also known as soda crystals)

1 bar of cheap white, unscented soap (I use a 150g bar of Boots White Windsor household soap, or supermarket plain own brand white bath soap)

Hot water

Optional ingredients:

8oz/250g borax (available on Amazon/Ebay), or borax substitute. This gives extra stain/smell removing properties.

Your favourite essential oil - I use lavender.

Method:

1. Grate the soap using a cheese grater.

2. Meanwhile heat up a couple of litres/4 pints of water, no need to boil.

3. Add grated soap, washing soda and borax (if using) into the warmed water. Stir really well until thoroughly dissolved.

4. Add further hot water to make 4 or 5 litres total - the amount is not crucial, I just fill the preserving pan, and whisk all together. You can add a few drops of essential oil at this point if you want.

5. Pour this liquid into plastic storage containers - large biscuit/cake boxes or plastic lidded buckets are best. It turns to jelly as it cools, so make sure you transfer while still warm (not hot).

To use: put half to one cup in the washing machine DRUM (not the drawer) on top of the washing - I scoop it out of the storage tub into a plastic dosing ball.


To keep whites bright, you can add some Ecover laundry bleach to the machine drawer if you wish. But if you want to be super-thrifty, to keep your whites white don't mix them with any coloureds, and hang them outside to dry where the oxygen in the air will act as a bleaching agent.

And there, with a warm glow of thrift, I will leave you (it's just about the only place in this house where there is a warm glow today, but I always find thrifty thoughts quite uplifting and fortifying).

(If you would like to know more about homemade cleaning materials, I can recommend this book, and for thrift in general, this one is the grandmother of them all!)