Going pretty good so far. I swept about 3 inches of snow off my sidewalk and cleaned off my car this morning. Wind has blown about 1/3 of it back on the walk. Have a combo of red beans and pinto cooking in the crockpot. Worked some on a laprobe I'm knitting. Did several small cleanup jobs. I'm just a recent convert to Bob Evans. Everything I'd eaten there in the past was yucks to me, but I tried the chicken pot pie last week....very good so I'll go back. My sister had banana bread with hers. I ate a small bit and loved it too. Sue, is the cherry bread as good as the banana? I may have to break down and buy a full loaf of one or the other. Maybe I can get sis to buy one kind, I'll buy the other and we'll share. Enjoy the rest of your day. Shirley

rosabearr - You may want to check the ingredients in the liquid potpourri so that you don't end up with oily stains on your clothing from adding "liquid potpourri", or damage from the coloring in them. I've added essential oils and/or grapefruit seed extract (as a disinfectant) after all the ingredients are mixed together, but before they are cool and set into the "gel". If you add essential oils while it's "boiling", they will quickly dissipate from the heat and you won't have any left to add scent to the homemade soap. Check the link below for 10 recipes. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: 10 Homemade Laundry Soap Recipes

bumblebeez - Doing laundry is a lot like cooking and baking. There are a lot of "rules" and a lot of "science", then there's what everyone actually DOES! From habit, experience, science, or without a clue - we all seem to do things a little differently when it comes to laundry. If I say you MUST use hot or warm water with homemade laundry soap mixtures, there will be 10 people chime in to say they only use cold water with it; so you'll have to work this out for yourself, according to YOUR results. Hot water has always been suggested for removing dirt from heavily soiled items, until we decided to "save the planet" by only using cold water. Cold water washing works best with detergents designed to be used in cold water - Gain may be and that could account for your satisifaction with the product. If you want a good test to see how well your detergent has been performing in cold water, wash a load of towels with nothing added to the washer but hot or warm water and see if there are a lot of suds. I'd also say it will take 2- to 3-months of continual use of homemade laundry soap to see if your whites are dingy from hard water soap scum. It will take several weeks to rid your laundry of the accumulation from the Gain. I got my best results using the hottest water I could for the fabric types being laundered. Hard water requires more soap or detergent, as a general rule, so you may have to alter the amount of homemade laundry soap you use depending on the hardness of your water. Whites may turn gray if there isn't enough soap (or detergent) used, or if clothes are not thoroughly rinsed. To get clothes white again, this is a procedured to follow from a Cooperative Extension Service laundry guide sheet: *Wash the clothes again in HOT water. *Add enough water softener to make the water feel slippery. *If the water becomes sudsy, the clothes were not rinsed enough. Wash them again adding only water softener. *If the clothes do not whiten, add soap or detergent and rewash. I've also used Cascade Dishwasher Detergent in hot water and a good soaking to remove the dingy gray hard water mineral deposits from white clothes washed in homemade laundry soap. If you've always used cold water, I was wondering why you want to add Oxi-Clean to the mixture? Oxi-Clean works best in warm to hot water, not cold. So once again, that's wasted money in your homemade mixture. Most people who use homemade laundry soap mixtures don't recognize the principal difference between a soap and a detergent - which is primarily the behaviour in hard water. Soaps tend to get together with the metal ions in hard water forming a scum, while detergents do not. As chris8769 pointed out, soaps are not suitable for use in acidic conditions, and there is all kinds of molecular information on the subject when you study soaps VS detergents. When you switch from a detergent (Gain in your case) to a soap-based mixture, you find the mixtures lack enzymes to attack stains, builders to soften water and assist surfactants, optical brighteners to make clothes look whiter, and a long list of other things. Good luck in your trials with homemade laundry soap. It may suit your laundry needs, and budget, perfectly. If not, you can always go back to detergents. Here's a new combination I read recently: 1 T. Simple Green and 1 scoop washing soda (sorry, they didn't say how large a "scoop"). We're all getting creative trying to save a dollar these days. -Grainlady

imsoconfused- There are generally two reasons this happens, especially when using homemade laundry soap. Not enough soap or detergent is used, or the clothes are not thoroughly rinsed. 1. Do you have hard water? Hard water + soap that doesn't get rinsed out = hard water mineral deposits (aka soap scum) that will make your whites dingy. If you line-dry your clothes and they are stiff, then you have a soap scum build-up. Use a water softener product in the wash AND rinse if you have hard water. You may also need an additional rinse on a regular basis to remove the soap. Soap is more difficult to rinse out in hard water than detergents. So you can see what you think you are saving by making your own laundry soap, you will quickly spend on additional laundry aids or additional water for an additional rinse. 2. Do you use the hottest water possible for the type of fabrics being washed? Homemade mixtures work best in hot water, so that will add to your utilities for additional expense from using homemade laundry soap. If you are washing in cold water, especially in the middle of winter and it's extremely cold where you live, or you have extremely cold well water, homemade mixtures don't perform well. Your clothes are getting wet, but without some action from the soap, they aren't getting clean. "Cold water detergents" are specifically designed for cold water, but water colder than 65-degrees F is not recommended for washing because soap and detergents will not activate and clean effectively. Some washers will mix hot/cold water to get the optimum temperature for laundry detergents, even if you sit the machine on cold wash. Cold water is around 75-80-degrees F. 3. Not sure about adding Dawn. Isn't that defeating the purpose of saving money.... It's not a whitener, but a pretty good degreaser, but that's not the problem. I would be afraid it produces too much foam, especially if you use a HE machine. Zote has whitening agents in it, but not enough to help if there is soap scum build-up. 4. How to remedy. If you try this remedy, you'll have a better idea what is causing the trouble. Wash the white clothes in the hottest water possible for the fabric type. Hot water is considered 120-140-degrees F. Add enough water softener to make the water feel slippery (about 1-cup for a top loading machine, 1/4 c. for a FL). Don't add any detergent or soap. If the water becomes sudsy, the clothes were not rinsed enough. Wash them again adding only water softener, which will help loosen the soap scum and remove it from the fabric. If the clothes do not whiten, add a commercial detergent, or more than normal homemade soap, and rewash. Hope that helps you out. Homemade laundry soap is not a perfect science for laundry needs. Save money with it, but you may need to learn live with dingy whites if you happen to have hard water and use cold water for washes. You may need to use twice as much per load to get enough cleaning action, especially if you have hard water and use cold water for washing. For each additional add-in you need, the cost of it goes up as well. -Grainlady