I’ve been using home made household cleaners for several years now.  I got tired of my lungs getting irritated every time I cleaned.  Now, I mostly use some combination of baking soda, vinegar, castille soap, and/or borax.

Recently, I have gotten sensitive to our usual laundry detergent and all the blogs/articles I’ve read about laundering baby cloths and diapers have recommended some form of home made laundry detergent.  I could easily see how it’s less expensive to make your own. I could believe the claims of greater environmental friendliness, but I had to wonder: did it really work as well or better than what was offered in the detergent aisle?  Experiment time!!

Hypothesis:  Home made laundry detergent cleans as well as “regular” laundry detergent.

Prediction: Home made cleaners have been observed to effectively clean other household items (windows, oven vents, cupboards, tubs, etc). I predict this laundry soap will clean as well as regular laundry detergent.

Independent Variable: Detergent type (Home made and regular detergent).

Dependent Variable: Three types of cloth soiling (Baby feces, grass, and strawberry stains).

Materials:

• Home made detergent (2:2:1 borax:washing soda:oxyclean)
• Regular detergent (ALL)
• Two new, pre-washed and dried (without fabric softener), 100% cotton flannel cloth wipes.
• Washer (top loader) and drier (both are old!).
• Baby feces.
• Grass.
• Strawberry.

Procedure: Soil each cloth with equal amounts of each baby feces, grass, and strawberry. I applied each item to one wipe, placed the second on top of it, and rubbed them together until the soiling amounts appeared equal.

I washed one cloth with home made detergent and the other with ALL. (Too bad the lighting is poor on this one!)

Observation:

• Neither detergent got all of the grass stains out. DRAW
• The home made detergent did not get as much of the strawberry out as ALL did, but (despite this picture) ALL did not get all of the strawberry out. DRAW
• Both detergents removed any visible trace of the baby feces. DRAW

Conclusion: This home made laundry detergent cleaned as well as regular laundry detergent. Further tests need to be conducted to determine if other detergent recipes with a variety of ingredients and their ratios are more or less effective than regular detergent.

I would like to be able to find out if either one had any bacteria on them, but I do not have the equipment available to test that.  I have decided that the home made detergent is effective and I will use it on my family’s cloths.

This experiment and some of the reading I’ve been doing about borax (there is debate about whether it is safe or not) and all purpose cleaning recipes has me designing a second experiment! Yay!  Stay tuned!

With some consulting with my father, I decided to finish my sewing-cupboard-hack by cutting a curved piece out of the new front of the cupboard and reattaching it with hinges.  I didn’t take much time to try to grind out room for the hinges to be flush with the wood – I just didn’t have the right tools and my Helper Baby was very unhappy I was running the hand drill.

The finished piece!

It’s not working for me. Not with my darling boy with me! So, I have resorted to what my friend Maria and I talked about in comments, which was to do one chore all around the house at a time.  So far, it’s been working…

Last week I dusted, swept, and wiped down all the ceilings and walls. This week, I have washed the interior windows and will be cleaning off the porches tomorrow.  It really has been easier for me to wrap my head around doing one thing in each room and, while nothing will ever be CLEAN, it will at least all get cleaned at some point.

Except I need to sweep at least every other day.  This kid of mine is getting covered in cat hair and dust and it’s going up his pant legs. ICK.

Last month I made the following meals and here’s what I thought about them:

1. Beef and Cabbage (my own ‘recipe’) – a tasty and simple concoction. I’m not sure how it would freeze… maybe after it’s baked? But we eat it pretty quickly once it’s cooked, so that’s sort of moot.
2. Amazing Lentils and Kale from (allrecipes.com) – (what I said in the previous post) “It really is amazing. Easy to make and my carnivorous husband ate it and the leftovers readily. He did mention ham at some point, but it wasn’t too important to him.  Serving it with rice or bread may have made it last longer, but it already fed us for three meals, so I’m cool with that.” Again, it did not get frozen.  I’m not sure how well it would work if it was frozen pre- or post-cooking.
3. Meatloaf with Rosemary Potatoes (from Baked in the South) Didn’t care for the taste, the loaf was squishy, and there was (relatively) significant preparation before freezing.
4. Honey Sesame Chicken (from Baked in the South) Tasted alright, but not stellar. Loved how easy it was to bag, freeze, and cook.  I may do this again, but change the seasonings.
5. White Chicken Chili (from Baked in the South) Another one that only tasted alright.  The husband liked it more than I did. Pre-cooking the chicken was a pain (says the super lazy girl).
6. Beef Stroganoff (from Baked in the South) Bleh. I really didn’t care for this one, either, but the husband liked it.
7. Thai Chicken Wings with Peanut Sauce (from Baked in the South) We ate it, but thought it could be a little more ‘thai’. Also, I’m not going to use drumsticks next time, maybe healthier chicken filets.
8. Indian Chicken Curry (from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen) – (from my previous post) “although it was a “cook everything now and freeze your leftovers” type of meal it was pretty good.  I felt there was way too much cinnamon in it and would have easily benefited from onions, peppers, and carrots too.”
9. Salsa Chicken (for Quesadillas) (from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen) – Dude, shredding chicken is a pain! But it tasted alright in Quesadillas.
10. Pho (which isn’t a freeze-ahead kind of meal, I just wanted to use some rice noodles and my husband loves Pho!) – I never made it. Didn’t find any marrow in the one store I asked at.
11. Spinach and Feta Oven Omelet Breakfast Bagel Sandwich (from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen) pretty good. I still often chose cereal or pb&j over these, though.
12. Blueberry and Banana smoothie packs as inspired (from Skinny Mom’s Kitchen) ended up making very large or two servings!  Otherwise, same thing – cereal or pb&j trumped! I think because it was so big, you had to pound on the frozen lump to get it to break up enough for the blender to blend it.

What I learned:

• I preferred the “no prep other than chop and measure” and “open, pour, and heat” meals.
• I am incredibly lazy.
• Raw and frozen potatoes don’t cook very well. They turned black and had a grainy texture.  I wonder if they would work better if submerged in a sauce?
• Frozen and reheated mashed potatoes do work well, though! At first, after the mashed potatoes were thawed, it looked watery and gross, but as soon as you heat it up it was fine!

Planning for this time!!

ON HAND:

• 3 lbs lentils
• 1 lb small red beans
• 1 lb brown rice
• 2 cups parsnips
• 1 cup beets
• 1 cup potatoes
• 3 carnival squash
• 1 lb cheddar cheese
• 1 bunch of kale
• 1 large cabbage

SALES:

• BOGO Free meat sale!
• Baby carrots
• Jackson sausages (digital coupon)
• Eating Right Meals (digital coupon)