Frugal Friday: Homemade Foaming Hand Soap

Who here loves Bath & Body Works Foaming Hand Soap in their yummy smelling scents?

*Ohh Ohh raises both hands here!!*

They get quite spendy even if you buy them on sale. I had no qualms before to snatch those babies up during a sale to stock up when I used to work and make my own money. Now that we've been a single income family for the past four years or so getting those BBW soaps were a once a great blue moon buy. Then I started to use generic Target foaming hand soap to refill the BBW bottles until I of course discovered Pinterest.

I stumbled upon several pins on how to make your own foaming hand soap. I honestly cannot tell you who I saw the pin from since it's been months since I first tried this out, but if you searched DIY foaming hand soap several pins will come up.

The one I found though simply just used an inch of baby washing soap and filled the rest of the bottle with water. You should actually leave about half an inch or so from the top of the bottle since when you put the pump back in it will overflow, then just tip side to side and up and down (DON'T SHAKE) to mix.

I had some baby washing soap from my baby shower that I ended not being able to use since the baby was "lucky" to have sensitive skin like me. So rather than waste those bottles of baby wash I put them to use and been using them for our hand soap.

It's been working great for us and in the end is a really cheap way to refill those foaming hand soap bottles. I think when I would buy the generic big bottle refills which ran about $4 and would only refill at the most four empty foaming dispensers. One 15 fluid ounce bottle of baby wash that cost about $4 as well has so far refilled my kitchen and downstairs bathroom dispensers at least a dozen plus times so far and there's still a little over 1/4 left in the baby wash bottle.

I'll be doing this for a long while now and you can even use the other scented baby washes. I had the lavender scented one as well and used that for the upstairs bathroom. My hands almost smells as good as a baby's freshly bathed bottom haha.

I hope that you try this out as well since I highly recommend it. So that's my frugal tip for Frugal Friday.

Everyone enjoy this Aloha Friday and long weekend!

Frugal Friday: Homemade Dryer Sheets Part 2

Last week I posted about making your own homemade dryer sheets using scrap material and spraying in diluted liquid fabric softener on them before tossing into the dryer. I had been using that method for over a year but now have found another method.

I found this similar option on Pinterest via One Good Thing By Jillee where she also made homemade dryer sheets. Instead of the scrap material I currently use, she used old dish rags. Now why didn't I think of that? Rags or even washcloths are more absorbent and would retain the liquid softener longer.

She too soaked the rags in softener, squeezed out the liquid, and let them completely dry then tossed into the dryer. According to her post one "sheet"is good for at least 12 loads of laundry before you need to re-soak them.

So I went out and got me a pack of cheap washcloths from Target. They were having their back to school sale and there was a section of home essentials. I got a pack of eight washcloths for about $3.00. Just to experiment with this new method I only used four washcloths just in case I didn't like the results and I didn't want to waste perfectly good washcloths either.

I took my spray bottle of equal parts of water and liquid fabric softener and sprayed the cloths outside and hung them over our patio chairs till they dried completely. Today I did a load of laundry and used one of the cloths to test them out and it worked AWESOMELY!! My laundry smelled fresh and no static cling either. Looks like I'll be doing this method from now on and I highly recommend it too.

That was my frugal tip for the week and hope you have a great Aloha Friday.

Frugal Friday: Homemade Dryer Sheets Part 1

This will be a two part post since i missed last week's Frugal Friday post. The first part will be about the current way I've been using homemade dryer sheets for over the past year.

I first learned about this technique after reading the book "Big Ass Book of Crafts" by Mark Montano. In the book it showed that all you needed was some scrap cotton material and a spray bottle of equal parts of liquid fabric softener and water. Then just spray your fabric scrap with the softener and toss into the dryer.

I had been doing that for several months but kept finding that my clothes would have "wet softener stains" and the blue Downy would bleed onto the whites laundry load. So rather than putting in a wet fabric scrap I would spray each scrap and let them dry completely before throwing them into the dryer.

This has working well for us and I haven't had to buy disposable dryer sheets for over a year. There is no static cling and our clothes still smell Downy fresh (I still put some for the laundry rinse cycle).

I did though find another similar way for homemade dryer sheets, but will save that for next week's Frugal Friday. Here's my current how to on the dryer sheets.

Until then Happy Aloha Friday!

HOMEMADE DRYER SHEETS

Supplies:
8x8 sized cotton fabric scrap
Sewing machine and thread
Spray bottle
Liquid fabric softener
Water

Directions:
Zig zag stitch or serge the edges of your scrap material to prevent fraying.

Put equal parts of liquid fabric softener and water into the spray bottle.

Spray mixture onto each side of fabric scrap and let dry completely.

Toss into dryer with your laundry load.