Schultz Party of Four

This week I ended up working far more hours than normal at work. This left me feeling like a huge slacker on the domestic side of life. The house was in shambles and we ate out far more times than I care to count. Needless to say, this day of reprieve meant overload on the domestication side of things, thus the following...

Mom of Eight had an entry several weeks ago where she explained the all-natural cleaning agents she creates to clean and do laundry. Since I had the opportunity to hang out with her recently, and see that she is quite normal and her clothes did not look any different from the rest of ours, I decided to try out her homemade laundry detergent. While I would like to claim the environment made me do it, the reality is that I was drawn to the incredible cost savings one can realize when you make your own cleaners.

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Normally I would buy a bottle of Tide that would get me about 72 loads for about $18.

This recipe for homemade detergent yields 72 loads for about $3, AND it's free of unnatural chemicals and environmentally friendly, win-win-win.

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Here's how you make it:

1 1/2 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda

1 1/2 cups Borax

3 cups (1 full bar) Fels Naptha Soap finely grated

[1 Tbsp for a normal load, use 2 Tbsp for heavily soiled loads]

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Yes, grating the soap became tedious, luckily Brandon stepped up to the plate on that one. Not to mention the difficulty I had in identifying the ingredients. Turns out they are all available at HyVee, but I had no idea what the packaging looked like, so I stared for a long-long time before I figured it all out. Should go much quicker next time.

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We mixed it all up all the ingredients and put it in an airtight container. I have done several loads today and it seems to be working marvelously. The clothes are coming out clean, and the smell is fantastic, very clean smelling.

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I am always fighting this lovely adult acne on my forehead and chin. I love my Arbonne, but I'm looking for something to wipe out the zits. Someone told me about acne.org which has reviews of all sorts of products. Under the 'household and natural remedies' several people raved about Jojoba Oil doing wonders for them. I decided to give it a shot. I'll have to wait on these results for a few days...[fingers crossed]

And to top off our day of all-natural domestication, we made homemade Playdoh from a recipe my sister-in-law gave me. I have plugged this recipe into my new Tastebook. Carolyn enjoyed and Jules was dumbfounded by what we were up to.
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Homemade Playdoh recipe from Sue [incase you can't read it above, but doesn't Tastebook do an awesome job of streamlining recipes and making them look professional...love it]
1 cup flour
1 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp. cream of tartar
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp. oil
Food coloring
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Mix all ingredients and knead together. Let cool at least half and hour.