saturday soiree home made laundry soap

Tools used to shred the soap, it has three different parts to shred the soap, so I tried all three to make three batches. The point was to find the best way or easiest way to make the laundry soap.



first shred on the cheese grater



second - middle shred



third shred



now to boil the soap to melt it down



I marked the buckets where the water fill was supposed to be, it was much easier then trying to use a 4 cup measuring cup for gallons of water.



my stir-ing stick was also used as a measuring point for the water inside the buckets.



three buckets filled with water and ready for the melted soap to be poured in.



my little helper stirring the batch



it was work doing three batches but she still stopped to smile for me, how cute

Mine didn't turn out how the recipe says it turned out for others, mine looked like soapy water, so if it doesn't turn out slimy for you don't worry, it still works. I made these buckets in May of last year and still have 1 bucket left. I have not seen any difference in how clean the clothes are, it works just like regular store bought detergent but it is way cheaper. I use 1/2 cups of the liquid only and it works just as good, I have had no problems with this what so ever.

I got this recipe from cutting corners/tips and tricks section of sample life


This is the what taxicheermom had to say about what she did, how it worked for her and the recipe:

I’ve been experimenting with making lots of cleaning supplies at home, but this one is by far the craziest - and the most successful. Basically, I made a giant bucket of slime that works incredibly well as laundry detergent at a cost of about three cents a load. For comparison’s sake, a jumbo container of Tide at Amazon.com costs $28.99 for 96 loads, or a cost of $0.30 a load. Thus, with each load of this stuff, I’m saving more than a quarter. Even better - I got to make a giant bucket of slime in the kitchen and my wife approved of it.

Here’s what you need:
- 1 bar of soap (whatever kind you like; I used Lever 2000 because we have tons of bars of it from a case we bought a while back)
- 1 box of washing soda (look for it in the laundry detergent aisle at your local department store - it comes in an Arm & Hammer box and will contain enough for six batches of this stuff)
- 1 box of borax (this is not necessary, but I’ve found it really kicks the cleaning up a notch - one box of borax will contain more than enough for tons of batches of this homemade detergent - if you decide to use this, be careful)
- A five gallon bucket with a lid (or a bucket that will hold more than 15 liters - ask around - these aren’t too tough to acquire)
- Three gallons of tap water
- A big spoon to stir the mixture with
- A measuring cup
- A knife

Step One: Put about four cups of water into a pan on your stove and turn the heat up on high until it’s almost boiling. While you’re waiting, whip out a knife and start shaving strips off of the bar of soap into the water, whittling it down. Keep the heat below a boil and keep shaving the soap. Eventually, you’ll shave up the whole bar, then stir the hot water until the soap is dissolved and you have some highly soapy water.

Step Two: Put three gallons of hot water (11 liters or so) into the five gallon bucket - the easiest way is to fill up three gallon milk jugs worth of it. Then mix in the hot soapy water from step one, stir it for a while, then add a cup of the washing soda. Keep stirring it for another minute or two, then add a half cup of borax if you are using borax. Stir for another couple of minutes, then let the stuff sit overnight to cool.

And you’re done. When you wake up in the morning, you’ll have a bucket of gelatinous slime that’s a paler shade of the soap that you used (in our case, it’s a very pale greenish blue). One measuring cup full of this slime will be roughly what you need to do a load of laundry - and the ingredients are basically the same as laundry detergent. Thus, out of three gallons, you’ll get about 48 loads of laundry. If you do this six times, you’ll have used six bars of soap ($0.99 each), one box of washing soda ($2.49 at our store), and about half a box of borax ($2.49 at our store, so $1.25) and make 288 loads of laundry. This comes up to a cost of right around three cents a gallon, or a savings of $70.

and I am linking to a Saturday party

oriental happiness now readable

Before from the goodwill, a nice happiness symbol sign. I really like it, but the black in the letters is a little too light in certain areas making it hard to read. My little sister Aly who is 7 always asks me what it says because she can't read it.

So I took my sharpie pen marker and went over the letters and now after......


Much better, now Aly can read the sign easily.

finished bed??

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, it's not my fault...seriously I got caught up in everyone else's fabulous blogs. I had 1,000 + blog posts to read. Without further ago here is the finished bed.

The first photo is what it looked like with the mattress and box spring. Remember it's high enough to put rubbermaid containers underneath it for storage.


For a 6 foot something man, this bed is obviously too high. What's a girl to do, but remove the box spring.


And that worked only to a point. It's shorter now, I still need to a step stool to get up on it though. And now I have another problem...the mattress is falling through the cracks of the support beams.

Now I need to get a board so the mattress doesn't fall through anymore. More on that as it progress's.

master your metabolism

For a Jillian Michael's book it wasn't as good as I expected it was going to be. If I had bought the book I would be very disappointed. Don't get me wrong it's not a completely or even remotely bad book, but it isn't over all great or even good book.

The book can be summarized in 2 pages, that's pretty much the extent of good content that I found to be useful.


Step 1: remove bad stuff

Step 2: restore - add good stuff, eat/drink good stuff

Master your metabolism power nutrients

Group 1: Legumes 1-3 (s)ervings/(d)ay
Group 2: The allium family 1s/d
Group 3: Berries 1 s/d
Group 4: Meats & Eggs 3-5 s/(w)eek
Group 5: Fruits & Veggies 5 s/d
Group 6: Cruciferous veggies 2-3 s/d
Group 7: Dark green leafy veggies 3-4 s/d
Group 8: Nuts & Seeds 1-2 s/d
Group 9: Organic dairy 1-2 s/d
Group 10: Whole grains3-4 s/d

GO ORGANIC:

Helps you stay slim and prevent diabetes.
Help you avoid scary hormones.
Help you avoid pesticides and other chemicals.
Help you prevent antibiotic resistance.
Make your food taste better.
In season make your diet more diverse.
Make your food more nutritious.
Help you save the earth.

Don’t bother buying organic

Seafood
Water
Foods you don’t eat often

Sometimes buy organic if you’ve got the cash

Processed foods
Onions
Avocados
Pineapple
Cabbage
Broccoli
Bananas
Asparagus
Corn
Mangoes

Always buy organic

Meat, dairy, eggs
Coffee
Peaches and nectarines
Apples
Bell peppers
Celery
Berries
Lettuce
Grapes
Foods you eat a lot

Step 3 : Re balance

1- you must eat breakfast
2- you must eat every 4 hours
3- you must not eat after 9 pm, especially no carbs

-Eat as early as feasible no more than an hour after waking. Grab a quick bowl of high-fiber cereal or an apple with a handful of almonds before your workout.

-Eat until you’re full but not stuffed.

-Combine foods correctly:

40% carbs
30% protein
30% fat

Average sized women trying to lose weight should consume 1200-1400 calories
A large sized women trying to lose weight should consume 1400-1600 calories
A moderate to large somewhat active women at your desired weight 1600-1900 calories

Master your lifestyle

Vitamins:

Biotin 30 mg
Folic acid 400 mcg
Niacin 20 mg
Riboflavin 1.7 mg
Thiamine 1.5 mg - carb addicts are often deficient in thiamine.
A 2,500 iu
B6 2 mg helps with depression
Copper 900 mcg
Iron 18 mg
Magnesium 320 mg
B12 30 mg
C 400 mg
D 2,00 iu
E 200 iu
K 10 - 20 mg
Zinc 15 mg
Selenium 70 mg
Chromium 60 - 120 mcg
Potassium 4.7 g
Calcium 1,000 - 1,200 mg
Omega - 3 fatty acids 1 g helps with bipolar disorder and depression
Sleep at least 7 hours
Move your body every day
Br good to yourself

2 good pages in the book are those that summarize what to eat for breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. I like that she gives you a list that you can choose from she makes things less ridged.

Skinny Bitch

Yeah I said it. It's a book for those not in the know, a diet book. Let me tell you that the first 114 pages are pretty much shit. It talks about other diet programs and what is good about them and bad. As good as that is, it doesn't really help. I don't know what it is about certain diet books, but they like to dilly dally till they get to the fucking point. Excuse my language, but it is a biproduct of the book that I just read. That's right, if you read this book, don't go in public if you don't want to have potty mouth. The entire book is just as the title very frank and many words in which your mother would wash out your mouth with soap if she head you.

ch 1: give it up basically tells you to give up coffee, pop, and liquor. Don't worry we can have water flavored with lemon and they say if your feeling crazy you can add a fruit to the water. Oh and tea - organic herbal decaffinated.

ch 2 : carbs the truth what you can eat and what you can't, yes there are good carbs.

ch 3 : sugar is the devil self explanatory, substitues are given.

ch 4: the dead, rotting, decomposing flesh diet, talks about the atkins diet and becoming a vegetarian.

ch 5: the dairy disaster, mothers milk should not be drank after 24 months and cows milk is going to make you fat, it's made to make a baby cow go from birth weight to 2,000 pounds in 2 years. Talks about other dairy products and more about being a vegetarian and it's benefits.

ch 6: you are what you eat. More information about being a vegetarian.

ch 7 : the myths and lies about protein.

ch 8: pooping. You should shit as much as you eat every day. If your not increase your water intake, exercise, and start eating better.

ch 9: Have no faith: Governmental Agencies don't give a shit about you health. Self explanatory. USDA, FDA, NAIS, PCRM, CMPB, OCA, RDA, and other agencies and the amount of caring they give us talked about.

ch 10: Don't be a Pussy. FINALLY! The book get's to the point of it all and starts talking about their diet and their suggestions that they came up with.

More on chapter 10 later, off to read some more.

diy bed frame

I originally was going to make a farmhouse bed from knockoff wood, but I wanted the space underneath the bed to be able to fit a rubbermaid container that measured 16 inches. Adding that to the headboard and foot board length and current legs would make it a very high headboard, too high for my room at the moment. However, I was able to use the same plans to make a frame for my bed without a headboard and footboard. Slightly modified, we added length to the legs and since we didn't have a headboard or footboard we didn't need to leave 3.5 inches on either end.





Seperating the headboard, footboard, side rails, and the inner support boards.





After measuring I squared the lines



Travis cutting the boards



Made the outter frame



Again squaring lines, this time marking for the inner support boards. These boards were supposed to be 16 inches apart occording to the plans I was following, but with 3.5 inches left on either end for the headboard and footboard, since we weren't doing those we started from the foot board and marked 16 inches from the foot board for ever support board for 4 boards. That did leave room after the 4th support board, but since all it is supporting is our heads we didn't find a need to modify the plans to space out the support boards any more then what the plans called for.



Painting the all put together bed frame.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the bed frame with it all put together with the bed all made up.

Coupons don't make people poor, people make people poor

Frugal Dad recently had a guest post from Neal Frankle of Wealth Pilgrim, titled Your coupons are making you poor. He had some questions within the post he posed but also ended it with some questions, so I will go through the post and answer all the questions he posed from my opinion as well as make some comments on the topic as well.

When you spend time thumbing through the paper or surfing the net for great coupons…aren’t you really just thinking about spending money?

Of course you are.

I absolutely do not, I don’t spend my time going through coupons just to spend money but to save it. I go through the ads, the coupons, and all the blogs looking for ways to save me money and to stretch what little I have.

Coupons are directly tied to spending.

I agree, of course they come from the manufacturer of the product or the store carrying the product. The companies agenda is to get you to spend, and if you don’t think about it then you will spend. And people do get caught up in couponing and buy stuff not because they need it but because they have a coupon for it. However, if you are smart about it and patient, you will wait and find a sale for the product you have the coupon for and use the coupon then to get an even better deal. If you wait for Walgreens or Cvs to have the product on sale with register rewards (walgreens) or easy care bucks (cvs) you can do even better. If you look for rebates for those items, you do the best possibly making the deal a money maker as the rebate amount is before coupons and RR’s and ECB’s.

Have you ever heard of someone telling you that they bought something just because it was on sale?

This is another tricky thing to watch out for. You have to ask yourself is it really a sale, is it really a good deal, do we really need this, will we really use it?

Best way to find out if things are really good deals is to start your own price book. Use columns and write where you got it, the size, when you got it, and how much it was. Do this for your most shopped stores. Bring the price book with you when you shop and next time you see a sale you can look to see if it really is a deal or not.

If you find it difficult or think it’s too time consuming or daunting of a task you can subscribe to The Grocery Game, which is a coupon site that tracks sales by their 12 week cycles and lists in color coded sheets if something is at it’s rock bottom price to stockpile. It cost’s to subscribe, but most people have said that they save what they pay for the site and much more. If your not sure they do have a discounted trial period. I was subscribed to their site myself, but I didn’t spend enough to justify continuing my subscription. I saved as much as I spent on the subscription so they just canceled each other out, but I was only spending around $100 a month, most families spend that a week.

Coupons were created by the Retailers Association of America probably. They did it to give you a reason to get into their store and spend money. That’s it. They know that once you’re there, you’ll keep spending. You might get a deal on toilet paper, but they’ll get you on the breakfast cereal.

He has a point when he says that retailers want to get you by getting you in the door for the good deal just so that you continue to spend and buy other things not on sale. Best way to avoid this trap is to make a list of things that you need and stick to it.

Of course, some people use coupons to stop spending money they don’t have — and I hope that describes you. But most people get sucked in. Coupons get you to buy stuff you really don’t need.

He goes to say that our trash cans being full is proof that we are buying more then we need. I disagree, I think if the trash can is full it means we aren’t using what we have. Something bigger then people getting sucked into spending more money because they have a coupon or because they didn’t just buy what was on their list and mindlessly put things in their cart is that we are a wasteful nation. A lot of people make too much food for meals and then don’t eat the leftovers.

Not to mention that many people don’t recycle and reuse items. Or that they get into just buying a new item when the old one is broke. Many people would rather buy new then spend the time fixing what they have. I have 6 people in my house my family coupons and stockpiles items at rock bottom prices and we don’t even fill up 1 trash can. Why? Because we only make enough for us to eat, if we do have leftovers we don’t let them go to waste. We also recycle/reuse and fix broken items. Just because something is no longer of use one way doesn’t mean you can’t find another creative way to use it differently; you don’t have to use something how it was intended to be used.

When I need something I go out and get it. I don’t clip coupons and then find a reason to need something. Maybe I pay more for the stuff I need than you do. But I don’t buy anything I don’t really need. At the end of the day, I spend less money as a result of not collecting coupons.

For me it depends on the person, you have to be accountable to yourself and your family. You have to be financially responsible. Clipping coupons is the it thing, you see it all over magazines. It is a marketing ploy to get people to buy their magazine, that’s one reason they are talking about it and the other as he said to try and lure people into spending.

If your smart about it, you can take the amount of money you spend now make a list of everything you buy for your house and then find coupons just for those items, that alone will save you money. Yes you may find yourself buying additional things from time to time, but when combining deals with coupons you should continue to spend only what you started out spending. There are coupon queens/kings out there who actually spend less.

A Thrifty Mom shared a post from one of her very first readers; you can see the post in it’s entirety here. The reader Jeanette wrote about living within your means and how her family made certain decisions about their lifestyle. They hadn’t always made those decisions and she speaks about that as well that hindsight is 20/20, and how they wish they knew what they know now.

I can relate to that myself, as I am sure most people can. I have tried to pass my own wisdom of my own life experiences onto my family and friends, sometimes it is well received while most of the time I get humored. Can you remember anyone warning you about something and you did it anyway? We all get advice and learn about so many things yet in the end it’s our life experiences that teach us the most. I am a firm believer that sometimes we need to fail at things and get hurt to really learn those lessons. Life is like college courses, there are parts where you learn from reading and being told and then the parts you learn from doing and experiencing yourself. We hopefully learn from our mistakes or as I read somewhere there are no mistakes just learning experiences.

“We have made financially poor decisions over the years. We have used credit cards and then felt the burden of getting out from under them as the interest quickly accrues. We have longed for things we couldn’t afford. However, in the end, we have learned to work with what we have. And I am always looking for new ways to stretch our budget. Couponing is my newest find. I started only a couple of months ago, but it has become a challenge and game for me to see how much I can really buy with my money. I find that I am spending as much or less than I was before, but am getting 2-3 the amount of things for that same money."

Way to go Jeanette! It isn’t easy, using coupons can be confusing and in the beginning you might get caught up in spending, but I think most people learn from that and get to where Jeanette is, yes Neal she buys more then what she needs, but she is stockpiling when there are sales and she is spending less then what she initial was, you too can do it.

I myself subscribe to Refund Cents, Michele Easter has made books, videos, and interviews about her coupon experiences. She compiles deals for walgreens and cvs, but also mentions a lot of other deals out there. I go to the website but also get the newsletter and she always has success stories from familys showing how much they got and for how little, you really do get inspired by seeing what other can do with coupons. And you can’t beat the cost, even I who doesn’t spend a lot of money per month saves a lot of money, one trip to walgreens I saved around $75.

Of course I also have free blogs that I go to as well, here are the ones that I follow:

For financial matters I subscribe to Frugal Dad, he has great articles, but mostly I love all the links he has to tons of other great articles.

For couponing, frugal, thrift shopping:

A Thrifty Mom
Frugal Living Skills
Money Saving Mom
Passion for Savings
Saving with Shellie
Clipping Money
Frugal Living and Having Fun
Kansas City Mamas
My Frugal Lifestyle
Saving and Giving
Thrift Jinxy