Homemade dishwasher detergent.

I have slowly been starting to make my own household cleaning supplies.  It is quite a bit cheaper and is much safer and healthier to have in your house.

I'm not going to preach to you about the dangers of having commercial products, that are filled with chemicals and toxins, in your home.  I am just going to show how easy and inexpensive it is to make your own cleaning supplies.  It only takes a few minutes to do most of them and once you assemble the dream team (my name for the staples needed to make almost any of them) it is quite cost effective.

Today is dishwaster detergent. This is my favorite because it takes three minutes to make and does a fantastic job. I got the recipe here.  I did modify it a little as citric acid can be a little spendy and half the amount still works great.

Recipe:

1 cup Borax.
1 cup Washing Soda.
1/2 cup salt.
1/4 cup citric acid.

The recipe called for kosher salt and I used canning salt, but I don't think it really makes a difference. Use the salt you have.

Borax you can find anywhere.  I have found it at Target, Bimart, Walmart and even my local Lamb's Thriftway. The Washing Soda was a little harder.  The only place I can find it locally is Walmart, but I haven't really tried that hard. It just wasn't at Target, Bimart or Thriftway. You can also find it online, obviously. The citric acid will be in the canning aisle.  It comes in a container that holds a little more than a cup and is about 4 bucks. You can also use Fruit Fresh if you can't find citric acid. I have also found it in bulk (pay by ounce/pound) so check your health food store section and see if they have it.

The first rule is: You need to keep everything completely dry. It's not really the first rule, it's the only rule. I store my detergent in a large mason jar, but I wash it a few days before and let it dry completely.  The first batch I made clumped up really bad.  It was like one solid mass which I had to chip away every time I ran the dishwasher. It made me mad inside my head. But... My second batch is loose and wonderful.

All you really have to do is dump everything into a large mixing bowl and stir it together.  I break up any clumps from the borax and washing soda with my potato masher.

You use one tablespoon in the inner door and if the dishes are super dirty I use 1-2 teaspoons in the outer door. I use an old coffee scoop which is one tablespoon.

It works really well and smells like nothing. No chlorine or perfumes which is kinda gross when you think that you actually eat off those dishes and ingest that garbage.

Another great tip is using white vinegar instead of a rinse agent if your machine has a spot for it. I never used a rinse agent before because I'm cheap and didn't see the purpose. But vinegar is cheap so give it a try.

If you don't have mason jars, just store in an airtight container.  Just make sure it is clean and dry.  Let me know if you make it and what you think.

Revenge of the weeds.

Ok, so I'm trying to clean out the backyard of all those pesky weeds, but it is just too hard!!  I cut down a bunch (chopped down would be more adequate, I've never seen stalks like that on a weed before) and laid them out to bag and throw away.  They are all thorny and spiky though and would just rip the bags to shreds and I couldn't even really get them in there in first place.  So I just took the giant stack of weeds and threw it on the other side of the yard.  And I'm sitting here sweaty and itchy because I'm convinced THERE ARE SPIDERS CRAWLING ALL OVER ME.

I didn't take any photos because well, it looks the same as last time except the weeds are mostly brown now and half of them are hacked off and laying on top of the other half.

Oh golly.  I really thought it looked the same as it did in June, but I am really wrong.   Here is what it looked like in June:

Seems so cute and inviting.  Here is what it looks like right now.

The really amazing part is what it looked like in March when I moved in.

Katie thought I was so lucky because I didn't have any grass to worry about.  I bet you don't think I am lucky now!!  I pray for grass.  At least grass doesn't have thorns!!  Or spider webs at the base of their giant trunks.  Or dead things, Mikey, dead things!  Anyway, I just want you all to know that I will be setting my yard on fire this afternoon.  I'm just gonna douse it in lighter fluid, set it on fire, let it burn for like 30 seconds and then hose it off.  What could go wrong?  It's an ingenious plan!!

I've been working on the spare room this weekend too (see?  I said that like I worked in the yard when we all know I really didn't.)  The spare room for me is such a blessing and a curse.  I love the extra space, but then I just dumping crap in there all the time.

So I spent a little time in there yesterday and organized it.

It's getting there.  I was thinking about buying a futon or a twin bed for this room, but I have no idea where I would put it!  This was originally suppose to be my craft room, but it has really become more of an office.  It was funny because I called Katie to see if she had any straws and when came over to bring them to me she told me Jesse was taking a nap.  I then proceeded to hang some pictures.  They must love me as a neighbor!

Alright, I gotta go set my yard on fire.  Don't forget to check out my giveaway!

Thrift Store Finds

I went thrift storing a few days ago with my folks and found this:

Are you jealous yet?

How about now?

It's crazy old and never been used.  It was six bucks which is really expensive for me, especially for something like this, but my clos-i is not tidy and I couldn't resist.  My clos-i is actually like this:

This is my hall closet and it is completely unusable and it drives me mad inside my head.  I just shove the vacuum in and I have all these coats that I never wear and I really just hated this closet.

Until... Wait for it.

The CLOS-I-TIDY!

Much better.  Best six bucks ever spent.  I moved all the coats into the spare room closet.  It's so weird.  When I first moved in I thought I had so much closet space, but now that all the closets are full of junk I'm convinced this place has the worst closet space possible.

My spare room is driving me crazy right now.  With the exception of my desk, there is no order in this room and I basically have it laid out the same as the day I moved the furniture in.  I did buy a new table for the tv I'm putting in there.

I tried to really zoom in, but you can still kind of see the disorder that is this room.  I think I'm going to make it my project this weekend.  Make it look nice in case someone wants to visit me.  The table above was $7.50.  It was half price day at Salvation Army.  Oh yeah.

I also got this cool hamper.

And this teapot I thought was cute and now kind of hate.

Well, I don't know.  It's still kind of cute.  We shall see how it pours.  Don't you hate those teapot that you go to pour and it shoots boiling hot tea 8 inches out.  Don't people test those pour spouts before they send them out?  If it pours funny it is going right in the trash.  That's right teapot.  You have been warned.

The television is calling to me so...  you know.  Smell ya later.

My conscious and unconscious self.

Sometimes I think about being able to split myself in two people.  And by sometimes I mean, I think about it a lot.  Mostly in ways to remain lazy.  Currently my favorite split personality fantasy is when my alarm goes off in the morning at 5:30.  I set it for that time because what I should do is get up and work-out, but what I really do is reset it for 6 and think about how nice it would be to split myself.  Wait.  That doesn't sound right.

So here is how it would go down.  My unconscious self would get up and go work out while my conscious self would go back to being unconscious.  So I guess both myselfs would be unconscious.  How lazy am I?   My fantasies are of me being lazy.  Wow.  My fantasies are totally achievable!!

I was actually able to drag my conscious self up to finally put that shelf in the pantry.  It was all very technical.  The first thing you have to do is find a stud.  I couldn't find one so I had to do it myself.  HAHAHAHAHA!  Oh goodness, I slay myself.

No, really.  First thing is to get some tools.  I hate this drill.  It drives me insane.  But it was free so I really can't complain.  Well, I really shouldn't complain.  And then you like, drill some holes and screw some screws in.

And then you get distracted by a freakish screw.

Look!  It has a parasitic twin!!  Perfect opportunity to use my cameras macro feature:

Yeah, and then you get back to what you are doing which is really just a lot of screwing and in my case stripping out a lot of screws.  Oh my!  This post sounds so dirty!!

And then viola!  You have a pantry shelf:

It's like magic!!

A Brand New Day.

It is finished.  I wanted to show the whole kit and kaboodle, but I was such a wreck yesterday all I could think was "load, load, load... UNLOAD.  load, load, load... UNLOAD."  Although on the up side, I finally realize why they called those makeup storage cases Kaboodles.  It's like all the pieces finally fell together and the world makes sense.

 

This is the view from my front window.  But it isn't from today.  I took this yesterday.  I took one today too, but it's cloudy out today so this one looks much better.  I meant to get photos of all my helpers, but I forgot (because I was a wreck) until the only people left were the Smiths.  So here they are:

I think Christy was afraid she was going to smile ugly in this photo.  I do that.  I have so many photos where I am making this exact expression.  It reads "God, please let me look thin and pretty."  Don't you hate when someone has a really horrible photo of you where you look so fat and hideous that you hardly recognize yourself and they say "here's a good one of you!"  And then you realize you actually look like that.  And then you quietly resent that person for the rest of your relationship.

And now for the tour!!  The spare room/office/craft room.  It's the least set up of the bunch.  I got the computer up (obviously!!) and got the closet pretty much organized, but it's pretty empty.

 

  

The my bedroom, it's also pretty empty.  I haven't gotten any pictures up yet:

 

 The bathroom:

The living room:

Yeah, I know.  I have a lot of rocking chairs.  I don't know how it happened but I think I'm collecting them now.  Ken and Christy bought me the brown one and I really wanted it for the back patio, but it's so nice I don't really want to put it out there to rot.

Here's the dining room (I need a dining table and chairs for a good price.  FYI):

 

And the kitchen:

 

Here are some photos of the backyard, I know it looks kind of crappy, but I'm hoping to clean it up this summer so I'll post photos as that comes along.  I also want to put a clothesline in so that will be fun.

 

Tada!!  I'm so glad the moving is over and now I can get back to crafting.  I have nothing to show on that front, but I bought a ton of perler beads that were on clearance at Joann's so hopefully I'll come up with something really cool to do with those.  Alright, peace out.