Sometimes even the best laid crafty plans go awry...

I have read about making your own laundry detergent on several blogs, including on the Dugger Family Website as well as this post on Sew Much Ado. Being into a whole "trying to make things myself just for the heck of it" phase, I was immediately interested in making some. Besides, in researching the "recipe", several places referred to the soap that is called for in the recipe as "very lightly scented", so I figured it would be up to my rigid standards for fragrances (anyone who knows me well is pretty much aware that I'm allergic to most artificial scents and some natural ones). I also have two friends who are going through phases of their lives where I thought this would make a cute crafty gift, so I figured, if I'm going to make some, make a lot of it. 

Thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I ended up ordering seven bars of the hard-to-find Fels Naptha soap that the recipe calls for. I had not originally intended to do so; I planned to buy three bars to make three batches. One for me, and one for each of my two friends as "crafty" gifts. However, as is often the case when something takes off in the bloggy world, this particular project has become quite popular all over the blogosphere. So, what is usually not all that difficult to locate (or so they say) is now next to impossible. Since I ended up ordering it online from this site, I figured it would make more sense if  I took advantage of the fact that it costs the same to ship seven bars as to ship one. Thus, the seven bars of Fels Naptha soap currently in my possession. 

I was excited about receiving my soap, and immediately tried to rip into the packaging. I slowed down a bit when I noticed an extremely strong odor coming from the package. Hmmmm....Perhaps this is not the package that I thought it was?

Alas, it was the correct package. The "lightly scented" Fels Naptha has one of the strongest scents of any soap I've ever seen (er, smelt?). Now, granted, there are seven bars in a small contained space, but still. Needless to say, my plans have currently been put on hold until I have a day when I can gulp down two Benadryls, two Ibuprofens, quickly finish the project, and then head straight to bed (to sleep off the Benadryl/Ibuprofen combination). In the meantime, I tried putting the soap into a Zip-top bag to help alleviate the smell, thusly: 

That did not help, so then I put the entire bag in a Wegman's grocery bag and tied it up tight, as so:

That helped some, but I was still having massive headaches just being in the same room with the stuff, so I put that bundle into yet another Zip-top bag, shown here:

No luck. By this point, I was wondering if I was going to have to Freecycle the whole lot because it seemed like that perfume was so potent that no amount of plastic was going to contain it. I was getting a wee bit flabbergasted about the whole project. But my lovely Mom (a.k.a. Woman) recommended that I try one more plastic bag layer, which I did, with this result:

This is what the soap currently looks like. One layer of paper and four layers of plastic (two of which are supposedly "air tight") between me and the potent aroma of "lightly scented" Fels Naptha soap.

I still am eager to make the stuff, and am very hopeful that once I mix up the recipe that the smell of a single batch won't be so strong as it is now. Otherwise, I'll end up having to make it and give it all as gifts, which wouldn't be so bad either. :-)