Browsing the archives for the cleaning tag.

Homemade Laundry Soap!

Crafty, Domestic

I have seen recipes for homemade laundry soap around on Pinterest and some of my favorite blogs for at least a year, and while I made soap with my girl Vanessa last year, I had never attempted to make it. Last week I hit the bottom of my 2 gallon tub of bulk laundry soap and texted my dear friend Sammie for her recipe because she’s been making and using her own soap for a while and has had great success.

Initially, I was going to use a liquid recipe because I only use liquid soap but Sammie and I had both read that oftentimes the liquid soap gets gloopy and stuck together. So, powdered it is, and then my husband had the idea to mix the powder with a little water before adding it to the washer. Perfect!

Homemade Laundry Soap
The recipe for it is insanely easy. Just grate two bars of Ivory soap and mix it up with a cup of washing soda and a cup of Borax. Seriously, that’s it!

Homemade Laundry Soap
Homemade Laundry Soap
Homemade Laundry Soap

What really matters to be, aside from the obvious savings, does it work?

Honestly? I feel that it works better than any other laundry soap I’ve ever used. I know that seems crazy, but I think it’s the washing soda really lifting the dirt off. I washed three different loads of laundry to put it to the test.

In my first load with this soap, I washed Wee One #3’s laundry. She basically spends all her free time either painting up a storm or playing in the dirt in the backyard. There was a shirt covered in day-old paint and a dress covered in serious dirt from earlier that day. No pre-treating with either, I just threw all the laundry in the washer, topped it with 2 tablespoons of soap mixed with about 1/2 cup warm water. Everything came out bright and clean and smelled just clean without smelling like that fake clean smell, you know?

The second load included a pair of my husband’s pants. He is always brushing up against the truck when he gets in and out of it and ends up with grease on his pant legs on the regular. Ugh. Regular laundry soap almost never gets it out on the first try. Usually, I just pretreat it before I wash it, but that’s not really the most convenient thing. So this time around I put the rest of his laundry basket in the washer, topped it with the same 2 tablespoons of soap mixed with about 1/2 cup warm water but I also rubbed some of that soap into the grease on the pants. This grease had sat for at least a day, maybe two before I did this. I saw it start to lift off as I rubbed the soap into it. Whaaaat? That’s pretty incredible!

The third load was all about smell and maybe sweat stains too. Apologies to Wee One #1, who is not at all wee anymore. He just turned 13 and took up jiu jitsu early this year. He puts in a lot of hard work and training four days a week, and you know, that leads to a lot of sweat! So I was hoping for both a clean smell and no yellowing of the fabric! Guess what? It totally worked! It smelled clean without the factory clean smell and his gi is as white and sparkly as when he got it!

This recipe is officially a win. I’ll never buy laundry soap again, it took less than 10 minutes to grate the bars of soap and mix it together. One box of washing soda will do several batches, one box of Borax will do even more and you can easily buy bars of soap in larger quantities, but even at 3 bars per package, three packages would do more than four batches. Keeping extra bars on hand just means when you run out, you can easily make more right away!

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A Typical Day….because you asked.

Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Kids, Marriage, Naughty, Nerdy, Small Town

For what it’s worth (and because I’ve been asked), this is my basic schedule since we moved about 6 weeks ago. I’ve included the other stuff too, just to give you an idea of how I work around everything else.

Our mornings are prepped the night before, (because as I’m sure you know, chopping celery and washing lettuce goes a lot faster at 9pm than it does at 7am). So clothes are already picked out and school bags are already packed and ready on each kid’s hook by the front door. I know my neurosis is showing again, but this takes maybe 20 minutes after the kids are in bed to accomplish and I save myself all kinds of headaches in the morning – and frees up that time to get other things out of the way.

I brush my hair and throw some makeup on while I’m still in my PJs right after I’ve brushed my teeth – otherwise it just might not happen! Then I just grab whatever I put out for myself the night before and wake the kids – then they separate into their bathrooms for teeth brushing and face washing (that sentence made me sound a lot snobbier than I really am, we just happen to have two bathrooms very close together). I’ve changed the baby and brushed her teeth at this point and she’s likely on my hip in the kitchen making oatmeal with me while the other two get dressed in whatever was pulled for them the night before.

While they’re eating breakfast, I take their (mostly made) lunches from the fridge, add whatever is left to add and put them in their bags. Now, I have time to make the beds, pick up laundry, give each bathroom a tidy and wash the breakfast dishes before we even have to go outside for the school bus.

Once the older two are on the bus (to keep time in perspective, I usually get up around 6:30ish and the school bus rolls up around 8:30), wee one #3 and I go back inside and do a quick tidy of the home office so it’s ready for my husband when he gets up. Then, for no more than an hour, I set to work on all the chores for whatever room is assigned to that day:

Mondays – office & kitchen
Tuesdays – living room & dining room
Wednesdays – bathrooms & hall
Thursdays – kids’ rooms
Fridays – our room, laundry room & entrance
Saturdays – outside & garage

Each room gets a total once over every week, so it’s always super clean. Aside from the occasional ‘how did that end up on the ceiling fan’ chocolate milk mishaps, nothing too damaging happens over the course of a week. It’s when we leave things for months on end and then notice how gross it is, but by then everything has been left that long and it’s all gross!

So after giving the area(s) of the day an hour of cleaning time, it’s about 9:30. 9:30 and the house is clean (I don’t do laundry in the day because we’re on time of use meters in Ontario for our hydro consumption, so I save my family a lot of money by only doing laundry (and cooking) at off peak times).

This frees up the next hour to working out. I know. Roll your eyes at me harder, why don’t you? 😛 I’ll type out my workout routines for another post – some days it’s stability ball exercises, some days it’s resistance bands and there are usually free weights in there too. And cardio. As a rule is goes like this; Mon, Wed & Fri are abs & arms days with PSX cardio. Tues, Thu & Sat are butt & legs days with strippersize (ooh la la) and on Sundays I try to do ‘fat burning yoga’. My friend Gill is the fitness queen, and I try to make her proud, this schedule may seem crazy and you may assume I am super fit, but really this routine is nothing compared to hers and I am just borderline healthy, not yet fit. Ask me where the toddler is. You know you’re thinking it. She’s right beside me trying to work out – it’s hilarious! Of course. Then, once you add in changing in and out of my workout gear, drinking about a liter or more of water and having a very fast (and very hilarious) shower after, where I very carefully avoid getting my face and hair wet – and try to keep wee one #3 from stepping in with me, it’s about 11am.

That’s typically when I sit at my computer and check out my favorite forums and read some of my favorite blogs (while sucking on a protein shake, no less). I check in with my girlfriends via email around this time and then as I’m making lunch I generally call my Dad. I’ll be 30 next week and I still feel the need to check in with him, and let’s be honest – I totally call him Daddy. Ahem. I’m a grown up, shut up. 😛

I feed the littlest one and then cart her off to her room for a nap between 12:30 and 1pm. This is where parenting controversy comes in. When I put her down with her water and her blanket, I sit in the room with her (on wee one #2’s bed) and I knit until she sleeps. Will she always need me there? Am I warping her for life? I don’t know, but I did this with the other two and all is well, so I’m not messing with a good thing. Sometimes, she’s out cold within 15 minutes and on those days I’ll sit there and knit for another 15 or so. Other days it might take half and hour or even 45 minutes. I just keep knitting, happily while she lays there watching me till she drifts off. I’m out of there by 2 for sure, usually a lot earlier.

Wee one #2 is in SK, and in this district that means she’s in school 3 days a week. So if she’s home, we’ll get crafty together for an hour and a half at this time. Usually painting or coloring or something involving pipe cleaners or glue and googily eyes. If she’s at school, I’ll use this time to work on the blog or call a long distance friend or reply to pen pals. Yes, pen pals. <3 The magic ‘nap must end time’ at this house on a week day is 3:20, because we have to be at the end of the driveway for the school bus drop off just before 4.

Once they’re off the bus, they run around and play in the front yard, if no one has homework we take the 5 minute walk to the lake and maybe collect rocks, or just throw them in the water.

Once we’re inside (always by 5) it’s that whirlwind of supper prep and homework. I am a homework helping kind of mom. I never do it FOR him, but I always check answers and insist sloppy homework is redone. If supper is ready before homework is done, we take a break and it’s finished up while I do dishes and clean the kitchen after supper. Now it’s about 6 or 6:30ish. All homework is finished up or kept at if there is lots and school bags are prepped for the next day. All papers signed, all books put away, and they’re hung on the kids hook by the door.

Wee one #1 will either read or practice his guitar or maybe watch a movie with Dad or wee one #2. Bath time for the younger two is at 7, I wash them and then read to them till 7:30, then it’s teeth brushing and PJ time for them. They’re both in bed having their last story read by 8. I sit there again and knit till #3 is sleeping, which usually happens around 8:30. Then I remind wee one #1 that it’s time for a shower, he gathers up his school stuff if he hasn’t already, puts it on his hook and is in the shower by 8:45.

While he showers, I prep lunches for the next day, take another look at the calendar to see if there’s anything important going on and once the oldest comes back to the kitchen to get a glass of water and say goodnight, I’m off to the laundry room to pop in the only load of dirty clothes (sheets and towels are done on Saturdays). Then I’m in the office with my husband to update the family photo site with the day’s photos and then I close my laptop, watch old movies with the husband and knit my face off till around midnight. Then I have a shower, get primed for the next day and go to bed, usually somewhere around 1am – unless my husband comes with me and then who knows how late I’m up? 😉 I pop the wet clothes in the dryer before I got to bed because we have this indoor dryer vent thing to help heat the house at night. Anything that saves on hydro make us happy around here. 😉 Saturday and Sunday are typically the days I do the most baking, though I can be found in the kitchen instead of knitting doing supper for the next day if I’m excited enough about it. Food nerd alert!

Nothing fantastically glamorous, but I love it. Things we used to do weekly (like date nights, Saturday night parties and Sunday suppers at my aunt’s house) are now monthly things because we moved to the woods, but the trade off has been amazing! My girlfriends will come up in two separate groups about once a month, and we’ve already had a handful of random visitors make the drive, and a few on their way!

What I like most about this schedule is that if we make last minute plans or someone wants to come for the weekend on little notice, it’s not a big deal to skip a day because it’s always done!

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