getting super clean

"I was wondering whether you had a few minutes to talk about a little laundry detergent."  ahhhh, I love "the 40 year old virgin".  Great, great movie.  But I digress...

I ran out of laundry detergent today so I figured that while I was making another batch I'd share my super secret recipe.  We have an old-school washer/dryer set - meaning no fancy HE (high efficiency) models in this abode.  Seems like for the higher efficiency ones you need less sudsiness.  Is that a word?  But I don't see why the recipe wouldn't work for those models too as, yes it makes some suds, but nothing compared to what my box of Tide used to do.

Here goes.  You're going to need a box of Borax (I found that easily in the laundry section at Walmart) and a box of Washing Soda.  This is different from Baking Soda in that the crystal is larger.  I guess that makes it better at washing.

Then you'll want a little something to make it smell like fresh laundry, or you can go without.  For that purpose I had some of these Purex crystals laying around which I used.  You could use something like that, or I know some friends of mine who sell Scentsy offer some sort of ingredient you can add to laundry to make it smell like your favorite scents.  The Scentsy ones are called "Washer Whiffs".  I'm thinking next time I may opt for adding some essential oils (just a few drops at a time to the mixture and mix well to distribute), but this batch will last me quite a while so I have some time to think more about that later.

The final ingredient is one I had to do some digging for.  All the recipes for laundry detergent wanted you to grate a bar of soap into your concoction.  It's not that I mind the hard work of grating soap, but the instructions then go on to tell you that you have to start the wash with hotter water to melt the soap!  No way!!  I mean I started making this stuff to save money, and if I'm now having to use hot water that sort of defeats the purpose of making it because money saved in detergent was just wasted by heating up that water.  So instead I found a powder surfactant.

A surfactant is "a surface-active substance (as a detergent)" as defined by Webster.  In simpler terms, the surfactant is what breaks the bond of the dirt to your article of clothing.  Same applies when you wash your skin and you want to break the bond of the dirt to your skin - it's the surfactant that does this.  The grated bar of soap contains a surfactant, so that's why most recipes called for it, and it's easy to find at the local store.  For my purposes I chose a mild surfactant called Cocoyl Taurate.  I found it online at a cosmetic manufacturing supplier called Making Cosmetics, but then I also found it on Amazon.com which is super easy especially for those of you who have a prime membership, or were planning to order your other ingredients from them as well.

So the recipe I used was...

• 3 cups Borax
• 3 cups Arm & Hammer Washing Soda
• 1/2 cup Purex crystals
• 1/2 cup Cocoyl Taurate

 

First I mixed together the borax and the washing soda.  Mine had been sitting since the last time I made a batch, so they were slightly clumpy, but the clumps break apart really easily when I stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon.  Then I added the scented crystals.  Once the first 3 were mixed well I added the cocoyl taurate.  Don't drop this one from high up, add it so it barely moved from the measuring cup onto the other ingredients.  You want to keep it from becoming airborne as much as possible because that stuff will make you cough and hack a bit.  It's just a super light ingredient.  Also stir it in slowly, almost more like you're folding it into the other ingredients... again this is to keep from stirring up a lot of dust.

 

and BAM!  You've got laundry detergent.  It won't look like a ton of detergent, and you may find yourself doing some calculations in your head to figure out if it really saves you any money.  I believe if I added up the 2 boxes, the scented crystals and the surfactant, it might run me about as much as my usual box of Tide.  But what you'll find is that you only need 1/4 as much to do a full load and everything comes out incredibly clean and fresh.

As a side note, these canisters (below) are super cute.  Kind of like the one I use, but even better as they have a spoon attached to the side so you could easily measure out your detergent with it.  The important thing is to find one that's airtight to preserve the freshness of your detergent and to keep humidity from making it clump up.

Gloom and Doom

Well, we're back to the dark season... and in the weeks ahead the days will go so short that I'll start to wonder if they even started. 

When we moved across the country from Maine to Washington I had thought that the weather would be similar... I mean both states are kind of located way up there in the tippy-top corners of the US.  But no, Washington (at least where we live) is much more mild with little shifts in the temperature, but huge shifts with the amount of sunlight we get -  in comparison to Maine.  We get a bad rep for being rainy, but really it's just super drizzly starting about now (September) through to the spring.  Once we hit November there will be days when the sky seems to go dark by 4:00P.

Now that I've properly depressed everyone, I'm desperately trying to figure out how I'm going to keep my energy level up this year while the weather encourages everyone to walk around in comfy sweat pants and never quite crawl out of bed.

I'm stocked up on Vitamin D... popping my 2000 IU's daily since there's zero chance my skin will be making any with the sun not making appearances for weeks at a time.

I even started taking it earlier this year, ordered up my first bottle about 3 weeks ago now.  I feel better... maybe it's all in my head... but who cares if I feel like I have more energy then I'm all for it.  I snag mine off Amazon.  Have you ever used their Subscribe & Save thing?  So you go on their website, you look around for stuff you would normally grab at the grocery store or a Walmart/Target store, stick it in your cart and then decide how frequently you need to get more (it ships as frequently as once a month).  I love it for a couple of reasons. 

1. It's cheaper!  Hello!  I hate giving away my money when I don't have to.  So I just make sure I've got 5 or 6 items coming each month and I save an extra 15% off the price... and BTW the price is already cheaper than Walmart's prices, so double bonus!
2. I don't have to think about it.  I am notorious for getting to snag the paper towels or toilet paper when I'm grocery shopping.  And let me tell you, it's horrible to be the one who finds out you've used the last square and there's no backup supply.
3. My shopping trips are super quick now... and that is an incredibly great thing especially when you're a military wife (whose husband is constantly deployed) who is having to make trips to the grocery store with a pair of insatiable elementary school-age boys!  Grah!  At this point I really just have to hit up the chicken, meat and dairy sections of the store and I can head home - because I have our toiletry products being delivered by Amazon, and I get a weekly produce delivery from a local organic farm - genius!

Wow, I totally went off on a tangent there... back to the task at hand - figuring out how to keep energy levels up while the dark season creeps in.  A couple years ago I had some nursing aid at my doctor's office tell me I should put in daylight light bulbs.

To preserve your sanity, please don't do this!  Maybe this would work well for a desk lamp, or for the occasional light bulb here and there, but my kitchen has approximately 12 recessed lights and replacing all of these with daylight flood bulbs was not only a little expensive for an experiment, but also created the worst lighting ever!  It was bright, that's for sure.  But bright in a sterile, operating room, going to perform brain surgery... and then later make dinner... kind of way.  It was super irritating.  It reminded me of being in a Walmart.  Do those lights make you feel pissed off and angry too?  So lesson learned.  Won't be doing that again.

 

Exercise seems like a good way to keep the energy levels up, so I'll be making a point of getting in the habit of heading over to the gym - as outdoor exercise becomes infrequent.

 

Anyone have any other ideas or things they resort to when the days get super short?

The Fruit Fly Trap

It has become that time of the year, at least at our house, when some lucky little fruit fly larvae makes its way into the house.  It probably hitches a ride in on some bananas, but to be honest I haven't yet figured out how they get in but they sure do set up shop once they get here.

I came across this really simple "shot glass of death" 5+ years ago and once a year it seems that I have to pull it back out of my memory to deal with these little suckers.  Look how smug they are in my picture... just sitting on the rim of the glass like they own the joint.  It occurred to me the other day that others aren't aware of this secret recipe and are fruitlessly (pun intended) trying to get rid of their own infestations.

Here's what you'll need...

1.  Apple Cider Vinegar - I believe the original recipe I saw for this just called for vinegar, but I use the apple cider one because I swear it makes those fruit flies goes NUTS!  It's like fruit fly pheromones.  It doesn't have to be anything special (like this organic one pictured).  Just get the cheapest kind you can find.  You will fill up your glass container about 2/3 full with the vinegar.
2. Dish Soap - I have this orange-ish/citrus-y dawn at my house right now, so that's what I used.  But you can use any liquid dish soap you have.  The dish soap will have to coat the wings of the fruit flies making it impossible for them to land in the concoction and fly away.  You will add about 2 squirts of this to a shot glass.  More of it if you choose a larger glass.
3. Shot Glass - The original recipe I saw suggested the use of a glass that was tapered in at the top so the flies had a hard time leaving.  I haven't seen any of them manage to get back out of the liquid, so I just opt for any glass that is handy.  I like the shot glass because it's discreet and I don't have to use tons of my ingredients to renew the trap every other day.  Plus, they are narrow enough that I can watch the carcasses build up in that cloudy liquid... because I'm sick like that.  My shot glass of choice has a green tint to it, so if your glass is clear it will appear to be more orange/brown in color.

Then set your trap next to your fruit bowl, or wherever the flies are abundant.  You'll find they don't come out to explore much when you're making a lot of commotion, but if you stir them up and then sit and wait patiently you'll find they start trekking towards your trap.  The 2 in my picture that are sitting on the rim of my trap arrived less than a minute after I refreshed it for the picture, and are contemplating checking out that yummy smell.