Homemade laundry detergent ramblings

First of all, hear me out. If you don't make laundry detergent already, I am here to convince you that it is so ridiculously, stupidly easy, even I can do it. You don't need to invest more than 10 minutes, and even that's probably an exaggeration. The cost savings compared to the time investment is probably one of the absolute highest ratios I have seen, so yes it's worth 10 minutes!

I don't remember where I got this recipe from, but if you were to search for homemade laundry detergent, you would get approximately 1 bajillion hits, so I don't feel bad sharing it.

Very roughly 4 gallons water
1 bar of soap, grated
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup borax

So here are my pointers. To procure these items, I would first suggest you check out alice.com for the washing soda, cause that's going to be your toughest find (and it's not that tough, is it?). It's currently priced at 2.99/box. While you're at alice, if you don't already having some Borax, you can pick that up there too, 4.29/box. I haven't the faintest how that compares to what you'd pay at Walmart, but it might be a bit cheaper there. You will buy these two items once and have soap for at least 3 years I would guess, so I don't sweat it too much. For the bar of soap, I like to pick up Ivory when it's on sale, I know Fels Naptha is like the gold standard for this process, but I've never seen it locally, and I'm not willing to pay what Amazon wants just to give it a try. Ivory works just fine. It's nice to have a 5 gallon bucket to make the soap in, and store it, but something of a comparable size would be fine too.

So for the actual production part of things;
1. Fill your bucket with water. I try to do this the night before, so I can use cold water and it will come up to room temp.
2. Dump the soap and a couple of cups of water in a saucepan, and heat over medium until the soap has dissolved.
3. Remove from heat, add 1/2 cup each of Borax and washing soda. Stir to combine.
4. Add to bucket of water.
5. Let it sit overnight. In theory, this will solidify to some point, and become gelatinous. This has NEVER happened with my concoctions, but it still works just fine.
6. Use 1/2 cup per load of laundry.

I wish I had some specifics for cost comparison, but what I remember from when I actually figured it out is that this costs less than one cent per load. I do remember that I couldn't get commercial soap for less than 11 cents per load, even with coupons and sales. A batch of this lasts me roughly 4 months, and I do laundry every day.

One thing to get used to is that your pants no longer smell like a mountain forest. I'm okay with that, but it is an adjustment. My absolute only concern is that my bath towels have gotten a bit musty smelling lately. Because of this, I no longer leave a load in the wash for any length of time, it really has to be dried pretty quickly. I washed all the musty towels in hot water, with commercial detergent, and machine dried them on hot, and that worked just fine. If I have to do that every few months, I'm okay with that!

What's that smell...

So my oven died this week. I guess it didn't really die, but it started smelling like gas, and since it has not been heating well or consistently for a long time, months really, we decided that fixing both of those issues were more than we wanted to tackle, especially given its age. So, I sucked it up and bought a new oven, but it won't be here until the 17th. In the meantime, I will be attempting to creatively use my crockpot, electric grill/griddle, rice cooker, and gas grill to feed us. Thank goodness my sweet hubby likes to buy me kitchen gadgets for Christmas, I think we'll be fine! My only disappointment is that my pizza craving will not be satisfied.

Saturday; bonus date night (thanks sis!)
Sunday; beer can chicken and asparagus on the grill (whole chickens are on sale again this week at Safeway, .79/lb!)
Monday; Crock pot mac and cheese (I am perfecting this recipe, so when I get there I'll share)
Tuesday; Chicken Cesar salads (romaine lettuce is $1/head at Safeway, and I'll use leftovers from the beer can chicken)
Wednesday; Pancakes, bacon and eggs on the griddle
Thursday; Between picking up the oven and installing it, this could be a long evening. I'm thinking grilled cheese and canned soup
Friday; Pizza in my brand new oven! Yeah!
Saturday; Regularly scheduled date night (thanks mom and dad in law!)
Sunday; Father's day extravaganza, chez moi. We'll be making Cheater Barbecue Pulled Pork, which is seriously delicious and so perfect for a group. Plus all the fixings, to include cucumbers and onions marinated with vinegar and jalapenos, baked beans, potato salad, and maybe angel food cake for dessert. You know, something light after all that food we've crammed in...

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, right?

People who know me well know how much I have started to HATE paying money for things that get thrown away. Disposable diapers (or landfill diapers as we call them) are not to be tolerated in my house, instead I cloth diaper. Paper towels? Not going to happen. Once in a great while, I will pick up something disposable if it will make my life easier, and I get it for free or just about free with coupons, for example paper plates for family get togethers.

So one of the things that has been driving me crazy is handsoap. You know how you have to have a cute little Bath & Body Works dispenser at every sink, with a room/mood appropriate scent? Kitchen lemon, foo-foo berry, I can't remember any of them, but I definitely used to hit the BBW sales hard to stock up on those babies. When I went frugal, I still had a supply of them, but when that dwindled, I had to come up with something else. I found a foaming hand soap dispenser at Lowe's, and though it was quite ugly, it did the job at one of our sinks for a while. Basically you put in a little bit of soap, fill it with water, and it produces foam just like you often find in public restrooms.

And then I did something really stupid. You know the BBW lotion soaps? For some reason, I swear like 20% of the soap is left when the bottle stops pumping, so silly me, I thought I would put that in my foaming dispenser. And of course, my foaming dispenser clogged up completely, never to be fixed. So I went searching for replacements for all of my sinks, not quite so unattractive this time please. This is what I found. They are a bit pricey, and I waited almost 2 months as they were back ordered, but I am so glad I got them. I like this version better than the first one I tried not only because it looks nicer, but also because it seems to hold more, is easier to clean, has lines to tell you how much soap and how much water to use, and has this really neat suction cup bottom, from which the actual bottle will easily detach if you so wish. I am very pleased with them, and as long as they hold up for a few years, by which I mean I don't break them by putting lotion soap in them, I will definitely come out better than I ever did by looking for BBW sales. Plus I will have thrown away a heck of a lot less plastic.

FTC deals 6/6 through 6/12

There were a couple of sales this week at Thrift Center that I am excited about. All of the following are for the store brand.

Sugar, 4lb; 1.39 with coupon here
Canned veg, 6 cans for 1.50 with coupon here
1 gallon ice cream; 1.50 each, limit 2, will combine with one other dairy item in order to use $2 coupon off 3 items (from last weeks ad)

It seems like there was one other thing that I can't seem to remember now....

I liked that they are advising us of which sale items can be combined with their store coupons for even better savings, though I did find some of the wording was confusing, like on the canned veg.

I just sent this comment to Safeway, I think I'm grumpy today...

I am consistently overcharged at your store, and I'm starting to wonder why I continue to shop there. As a rule, the checkers are great, very nice and friendly. However, today when I attempted to get reimbursed for an item that I was overcharged on, I found the customer service staff to be not particularly helpful. I expected to pay $1 for 2 items, between the sale price and an e-coupon that I loaded from your site, but was charged 5.98. I was told that unless I could produce a printout of the e-coupon that did not come off, I would not be reimbursed (although I was reimbursed for the remainder of the overcharge). The e-coupon has since expired, so I have no way to prove that I ever had it. Why is it that I only have trouble with Safeway e-coupons, never cellfire or shortcuts? Also, it would be nice for customer service to act a bit apologetic for the overcharge in the first place, the guy I dealt with wasn't rude necessarily, but dismissive of my issues. I'm lugging a 14 month around who doesn't want to sit still, so I don't really have the energy to make a visit to customer service every time I come to your store. I appreciate your attention to my concern, and I enjoy shopping at your store, but am getting really frustrated with being overcharged. What do you suggest I do?

FTC dairy coupon reminder!

Don't forget to grab some extra copies of the ad by Saturday, so that you can take advantage of the dairy coupon that is good through 6/12/10! Not sure if there will be any more super good sales to pair it with, but better safe than sorry. When I ran in today for yet another batch of cheese, I got a game piece that was a $1 instant winner, so that was fun! Are you playing the game? I find it really annoying messing with all those little bits of paper, but maybe it will make me a millionaire...

Menu Plan

I want to get into the habit of posting my weekly menu plan, even though I have yet to figure out how to create a printer friendly copy of recipes, so I thought tonight I would just discuss a bit of the menu plan method I use. When I first started menu planning, I definitely sat down with the Safeway ad, checked out what was on sale, and generated my plan from that. And I think that is a really good way to start writing a menu if you have never done it before. But now, I shop completely based on the sales, stocking up my pantry and freezer so that I am prepared to make a variety of meals when they strike my fancy.

For me, I may not stick to the plan 100% of the time, but it is so helpful to have it written up when I have a couple of minutes to think, rather than trying to figure it out at 5pm. I have a master plan of the theme of each day's meal, so for example,

Monday; Meatless (I'm not sure where I first heard of meatless Monday, but I can't lay claim to the idea)
Tuesday; Ethnic (stir fry, pasta, tacos, something along those lines).
Wednesday; Crockpot or freezer meal (I don't really freezer cook like many others do, but I stash leftovers that are in adequate supply for a complete meal).
Thursday; Leftovers (this is where I use up leftovers that are hanging around the fridge because they don't freeze well or there wasn't very much of the item, I usually rework these into something new, but it depends).
Friday; Grill or soup (depending on the SD weather of course!)
Saturday; Homemade pizza, or once a month it's date night.
Sunday; Big meal (like roast chicken, pot roast).

So, when I need to write a menu, here's what I do;
1. Check out the fridge, and note meats and produce that I need to use soon.
2. Pull a couple of frozen meat items to defrost in the fridge.
3. Pull copies of any recipes that I want to try that I already have the ingredients for.
4. Think about any events that I have coming up for the week, for example my hubs is going fishing this weekend, maybe, so I probably would do better to use leftovers or something really easy if he's gone.
5. Write up my menu on the really cute Sandra Boynton calendar that I got for Christmas, which is hanging on the fridge. That way, I never have to tell anyone what's for dinner!

So this week, we skipped meatless Monday due to the holiday, when we ate at my folks house and I just had to bring a pasta salad. We moved meatless to today, and had rice and beans for supper. Tomorrow we'll have lentil soup from the freezer, and Cuban Bread from The Complete Tightwad Gazette, a rocking good book. Thursday, we'll have beef stir fry, since I won't have any leftovers to use up, and Friday, we'll grill steaks and my fab grilled potatoes. Saturday's pizza night is probably my favorite actually, because I love coming up with new toppings, and we have dough balls too, which are my answer to breadsticks (my favorite part of takeout pizza).

I promise to spend some time figuring out how to start posting recipes!