Over thanksgiving my sister gave me some of her home made detergent. At first I was skeptical, because it was a plastic jar filled with white sludge, but I had to wash some some of Dirk's "play" clothes, so I gave it a try. WOW! That stuff works great, and his clothes are so soft. After adding all the costs it ended up being a little over a penny a load. It takes about 15 minutes to make a batch, and it makes 64 loads.
I found some of the ingredients here a bit cheaper, so it could cost even less. I think I'm going to make some--that is once I use up the 543232432 gallon jug I bought at Sam's.
I've really been trying to simplify things in our life a bit, not so much the process but the ingredients. For example, making my own bread. Yes, the process is longer but I know what goes into it. There are no ingredients I can't pronounce. When I look at things like shampoo, detergent, cleaning products... they are so full of things I have no idea what they are... I just trust that the manufacturers know what they are doing.
I'm not ready to make my own shampoo, but I have been using baking soda more than I used to. For example, I have a glass cook top. I only use baking soda to clean it. It scares me to use chemicals, because I wonder, when I heat it up, what if there is some scary residue that evaporates?
It also frustrates me that high fructose corn syrup is in everything. We bought some tomato soup and sure enough, corn syrup! In soup! Next year when we have our garden I plan on making lots of things myself, tomato juice, sauce, soup.
I've also stopped using margarine in cooking (Dirk still likes to slather it on toast.) But really, what IS margarine anyway? A bunch of oils and weird junk? I just find that butter is fine to use in moderation. A little goes a long way! My subscription to Cooking Light taught me that. It's an awesome magazine, by the way.
This post is kind of pointless. Stay tuned for the next installment of Noah's Ark!! I have 3 sets of animals done and I'm finishing up Mr. and Mrs. Noah!
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
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2 comments:
We stopped using margarine years ago. Did you know that ants won't even eat it? Also, I made margarine once in o-chem lab and that scared me off the stuff forever! Natural saturated fats are much better than artificially hydrogenated fats.
i agree re: margarine. except, can you get Earth Balance in okc? i swear, it is a miracle product. it is the most amazing non-hydrogenated spread stuff ever.
are you going to share with us how to make our own detergent? :)
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