Organizational ramblings

My big sis suggested that I post some tips about how I organize my grocery stockpile to make sure that items get used before their expiration. This is one of those things that I really don't give much thought to; there are many, many things I am not good at (scrubbing the toilet, balancing the checkbook, styling my hair). But organization is something that just comes naturally, without much thought. Here are the tips I can give you (you'll see that I am pretty left brained, if you are right brained I can't help you!)

• Everything should have a place. If you open my fridge, the yogurt is on the top shelf in the center, leftovers are on the 2rd shelf right in front, and the ketchup is in the top shelf of the door, all the way to the left. When everything has a place, you have a very quick visual of what you have and what you need. When your items are overflowing from their assigned place, stop buying more!
• In my pantry I am meticulous about sorting according to use by date. Whatever needs to be used first is in front, easiest to grab. As I add things, they go in the back. Obviously, it's a bit annoying to pull out 10 cans of tomatoes in order to put 2 more in, but it's quicker than having to look for a date on each can to see which one of the 12 needs to be used first, and it's definitely better than throwing things away.
• I also sort by theme, so the top shelf of my pantry is baking, the second shelf is canned, the 3rd shelf is more canned and pasta, the 4th shelf is snack food like crackers, as well as rice and beans, the 5th shelf is condiments and spices, and the bottom is cereal.
• About monthly, I spend 10 or 15 minutes sorting and organizing my pantry, and I pull everything that needs to be used soon. It goes on the counter of my kitchen, where I have a "sudden death" policy. It has to be used in a week, period.
• When I meal plan, I look quickly through my fridge to see which items need to be used first.
• I limit the amount of different items that I keep a stock supply of. I used to have all sorts of random canned tomatoes for example, diced, petite diced, sauce, paste, peeled whole, ground, etc. etc. They were always in different sized cans which made it hard to rotate them through the pantry, and it annoyed the heck out of me! Now I buy only diced and sauce, and never once have I wished that I had some other variety.
• I'll be totally honest, I don't religiously follow the suggested best by dates that are printed on items. And I've yet to poison anyone. That said, you gotta do what you gotta do, but keep in mind that those dates may be when the manufacturer thinks the quality of their product will start to deteriorate, it may not have anything to do with food safety. If you have a system to rotate your items, you shouldn't have to worry about it either way!

So, what do you guys think? Is my advice in any way helpful? Do you want me to come over and organize your fridge? Cause I will...

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!

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.