Homemade Laundry Detergent - PERFECTED!

Finally - after a ton of research and a little bit of trial and error (emphasis on the ERROR) my quest for the perfect homemade laundry detergent is successful!

I've borrowed the basic DIY recipe that you will find on many blogs all over the interwebs, and tweaked it a little so it smells better and is a little more user friendly. It's still very low-cost and easy to do.

Here's what you need:

- 1 gallon jug or bucket (I used an old vinegar jug)
-  1 small bottle (8 oz I think) of Dr. Bronner's castile soap in your favorite scent
- 20 mule team borax
- washing soda
- essential oils (if you want to add scent)
- water
- a large pot
-  1/2 C measuring cup
- *A funnel is helpful but not completely necessary

NOTE: if you use my recipe please don't skip any steps! Skipping steps will demonstrate to you some of the "error" I mentioned earlier. Trust me.

Start with putting 12 cups of water in your large pot and putting it on low heat. (LOW is the key word here. You don't need to boil the water). Add about 1/4 of your Dr. Bronner's bottle to the water. This is also a good time to add your essential oils. (I used lavender DB's and dropped some lemon oil in - it smells lovely and clean.) Now use your 1/2 C measuring cup to add one HEAPING scoop of borax and one HEAPING scoop of washing soda. Stir this mixture and continue heating on low until all the powder is mixed in. Turn the heat off and let the mixture cool for a few minutes. If you've got a funnel stick it in your gallon jug and pour your lovely laundry detergent in.After this sits for a day or two it may "gel" a bit, but not much. Just give it a little shake before you use it.

I've been using this stuff for about a week now and I'm really happy with it. It gets our clothes nice and clean - from baby clothes, to delicates, to my husband's dirty work clothes! For small loads I use about 1/4 C, for large or especially dirty loads I use 1/2 C. It leaves the clothes with a barely-there fresh scent, which is exactly what I wanted. I do still use a stain spray for the tough stuff like engine grease and baby poop!

The cost of all ingredients is about $12 but they will make several batches of detergent. They're also useful in many other ways. Stay tuned for more ways to use them and have a "green" clean house!

Oooh (eew) that smell!

Caution - I'm about to share about body odor and deodorant. Don't read it if you're easily grossed out. If however, you're interested in being healthy and smelling lovely - read on!


Last month sometime I stopped wearing deodorant/antiperspirant. I started to notice that my armpits were smelling musty all of the time - even after I scrubbed in the shower. I am a very hygienic person, so I found this seriously troubling!

The first thing I tried was scrubbing with some witch hazel, thinking that the antiseptic would kill the yuck causing bacteria. It helped a bit but not as much as I'd hoped. So I decided to get a little more drastic. I stopped wearing the Dove at all. I started scrubbing with a good natural fiber brush - and some great smelling coconut-lemon soap that I found at the natural foods store. For a few days I just put lotion or coconut oil in there. And as you'd expect - for a few days I was kind of a stinky hippy... Although the coconut oil really curbed a lot of the stinky (It's a natural antiseptic - didja know?).

Now I'm using some cool aluminum free, paraben free stuff I got at Lush while I was pregnant. It doesn't have much of a smell (which is why I picked it when I was pregnant) and it seems to work pretty well. It's just a hunk that you have to scrub into your armpits but I don't mind too much. If it's a really hot day, or I'm really active that day it fails sooner than normal scary chemical stuff would - like 8 hours instead of 12.

I am not one of those people that enjoys my stink - if I am sweaty and gross I can tell and it bugs me! So when my pits stink I know - and can't wait to hit the shower! But now I am finding that I actually stink less.** If I'm just hanging out at home I can skip the deodorant altogether. And I don't smell myself until the next morning - when it is just obvious to me that I need to shower, not overwhelmingly gross. :)

**This could have a tiny bit to do with what we've been eating around here lately - lots of organic and very little (to no!) processed junk. 

So I've convinced my mom to switch to a crystal or some other aluminum free deodorant. Using coconut oil first as a moisturizer and sort of a prep.

So there you have it - several paragraphs about body odor and deodorant! Hope you find it helpful or inspiring - get rid of your cancer and alzheimer's causing yucky deodorant and get a little more healthy and a little less stinky!

Crème fraîche (AKA homemade sour cream)

I was hesitant to try this - it sounded too good to be true. The "recipe" is so simple, it's so cheap... I was worried it would be gross, or that it would make us sick. But you know what? It's easy and DELICIOUS! I like it so much I plan meals around it. I bought some regular sour cream the other day and it just isn't as good.  Plus even ORGANIC sour cream has a label that looks like this:  Grade A Pasteurized Cultured Milk, Cream, Whey, Sodium Phosphate, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Calcium Sulfate, Locust Bean Gum, Modified Food Starch, Potassium Sorbate. WHAT?!? I don't know about you, but I will pass!

What I love about this recipe is there are 2 ingredients. It's cheap (even if you buy organic!) and you know exactly what is going into your body.

So here we go. You'll need: Cultured buttermilk, heavy cream, a jar with a lid, and a warm place in your home to store it.

I use an old pickle jar because it's large and I had it already. You pour a few cups of buttermilk into the jar first. I never measure - the buttermilk goes about to the black line:

Then you pour in the whipping cream - I use *almost* the entire pint. Close the lid, and set the jar someone in your home that it won't be disturbed. A nice warm place is best.

Let is sit for 24-36 hours. Then stick it into the refrigerator. After it's nice and chilled eat and enjoy!

Quinoa Jambalaya -

I forgot to take a picture - and this turned out so yummy that there's none left!

Ingredients:
1-2 chicken breasts
1 package spicy chicken sausage (I used jalapeno cheddar this time)
1 qt chicken stock
2 medium tomatoes
1 white onion
1 each red/yellow/green bell peppers
1-2 cups of uncooked quinoa
1 ear corn (optional)

Get out your crockpot - this recipe is easy-peasy!

Cut up your chicken breast into bite sized pieces. Slice the sausages. Chop your veggies - I like to do long thin slices because they cook up nicely. Puree the tomatoes. Toss all meat and veggies into the crockpot with the stock. Cook on HIGH for about 3 hours. When the meat is fully cooked, rinse your quinoa thoroughly (it tastes bitter if you don't wash it well!) and toss it into the pot. If you're going to use corn slice it off of the ear and toss it in as well. Let it cook for 30-45 minutes more... And that's it! It's a little spicy and super yummy!

A wannabe housewife...

I want to be June Cleaver, or Carol Brady... Or at least some awesome 21^st century version of them. I have this vision of waking up to drink coffee with my husband and then sending him off to work. Waking and spending the day with my children who are magical, well-behaved hybrids of the Von Trap family and free spirited creative Waldorf kids. I bake bread and make home-made everything. Our home is sparkling clean, the laundry is done and hanging on a line outside, and our dogs are so well behaved they are the envy of dog owners everywhere.   I am of course a svelte size eight, I sport adorable skirts I’ve sewn myself, and my toes and nails are always neatly manicured.

Okay - I realize that this is so far from reality, and anyone with any sense is rolling their eyes at me right now.  But we all have our fantasies and this happens to be one of my favorites! Right behind winning the lotto and moving to the Caribbean. 

The reality is that we can't afford for me to stay home, and our life looks more like this: I wake up at the butt-crack of dawn, early enough to feed my baby daughter so my husband can drop her at my mom’s on his way to work. We try very hard not to be surly to each other as we chug our coffee and scramble to get out of the house on time. I head off to work for 7 hours and when I get home I’m exhausted and don’t feel like cooking or cleaning. So I make a salad and cook a frozen pizza.  Our dogs are sweet and well- meaning but so obnoxious that we have to toss them outside when we have company because they get on peoples’ nerves.  My husband works weekends so I’m on my own getting us ready for the week; doing the laundry, grocery shopping, and doing the bare minimum to keep our home livable. What little time is left I spend trying to soak up as much of my daughter as I can.

In the midst of all that I can’t completely give up my June Cleaver dreams. I try to keep our home tidy and as “green” as possible (on a budget). I try to feed us healthy and (mostly) with whole foods. I read (obsess over) blogs from “home-makers” that make their own everything (soap, laundry detergent, bread, butter, salad dressing, etc. ad nauseum), women have their families on the GAP diet, or some other healthy whole-foods structured plan. It’s all great in theory but just not very realistic for a busy family on a tight budget. So we do what we can.

Just recently I've been a little obsessed with doing as much DIY as I can. Some of it is (or can be modified to be) actually doable for a normal family like us.  So now I plan to (when I have the time) share what I’ve found – and occasionally how I’ve modified my finds to make them more practical.