Things You Do When You Don't Watch T.V.

When we lived in our little basement apartment in Albany, A. and I watched a lot more t.v. Of course, we only had an antenna, because we are too cheap to pay for television if we don't have to, which meant our choices were severely curtailed. Mostly, we watched PBS. On Sunday mornings, we would watch "CBS Sunday Mornings," which is a fantastic program, but somehow we never get around to watching it anymore. There are other things to do. Like make laundry detergent.

Oh yes. You read that correctly. We made laundry detergent yesterday morning. I know you're all thinking, "WHY?" To which I say, "WHY NOT?"

See, we somehow ended up with a magazine called "Grit" in our possession. I do not know from whence this magazine appeared--maybe from the magazine exchange at the library? It's not like we have a subscription. Anyway, it's a magazine about . . . well, about self-sufficiency and country living, I guess. You know: gardening, animals, building things, and making things. Like soap. There was a whole section in this particular issue about making soap.

Now, I really have no desire to actually make soap. A. was all for rendering some lard and making soap from it. I really feel no need to be messing around with lye and fat. But there were instructions for making laundry detergent that did not require any nasty rendering or lye. The recipe (is it a recipe if the end result isn't edible?) called for a bar of laundry soap, washing soda, borax, and water. Easy enough.

We always have Fels Naptha in the house. Fels Naptha is a very old brand of laundry soap in bar form. It's pretty powerful, and A. likes to wash his hands with it when he's soiled them with some filthy activity, like sheep shearing or dismantling an oily car. I am told you can actually just add grated Fels Naptha to a washing machine. Not that I have ever done this. And we brought a bar of Fels Naptha with us when we went to Spain for two weeks, for hand washing our clothes in sinks. Easier than hauling around detergent.

BUT ANYWAY.

I had to buy the washing soda and borax, both of which are available at the supermarket, though not prominently displayed. They come in BIG-ASS boxes, and you only use 3/4 of a cup of each, so we have enough for many, many batches of laundry detergent. All you do is dissolve a grated bar of Fels Naptha into hot water, add the washing soda and borax, more water, stir stir stir, cool and done. The texture was oddly . . . mucous-y. Ew. And the detergent seemed to be pretty fragrant (Fels Naptha contains perfumes). Bummer. I don't particularly care for heavily scented laundry detergent.

BUT. That laundry mucous got our dirtiest clothes CLEAN. And the scent disappeared in the wash. Plus, we got about three gallons of detergent out of one batch. The whole thing took us about 10 minutes, and I figure cost about two bucks.

It's gonna be laundry mucous for us from now on.