Okay, I seriously thought I posted this in APRIL, only to see it as a draft when I logged in today. Oops! Please feel free to read my blog, and check out the bottom for an update on how the product is still working for me now.
Who hasn't wanted to find a great detergent that take out stains, whitens whites and brightens brights? That seems to be what all the top brand of laundry detergents claim they do, but most of the time my laundry begins to look a little grungy, dingy or stained up fairly quickly, and for a mom who sells at JBF (see my Congisnment Sales Blog) it is IMPERATIVE that our laundry looks it's best when my little ones have outgrown their gently used, but well loved items. We started with Tide with Stain Fighter but it has always been cost prohibitive, then Surf, and it did great for a while, then went to All Free and Clear (sensitive skin alert), then tried Gain because my hubby likes the scent (fragrance DID NOT last as long as they claim!) and now we are back to Tide and using Dreft for my Little Lady. I CANNOT pay $26.00 for a bottle of Tide again, especially when the original formula I loved is no longer available and, once again, I feel like our clothes are looking a little dingy........ughh.
We have a front loading washer and stacked dryer, which I love, but sometimes I miss my good old fashioned top loader, especially whenever I want to soak something overnight, and one of my favorite benefits of our front loader is that I can see the cycle, and I feel like I can see my clothes getting clean because of the suds, but I just learned (um, duh! really I didn't know this) that most detergent companies add an ingredient to make the soap lather and foam, that the foam is NOT what is cleaning our clothes, foamy soap is a FRAUD! I feel like I have been lied to my whole life. Hand soap, body soap, dish soap, laundry soap...........all a lie! So, after learning of this lifelong fraud I decided to look up some recipes for homemade laundry soap and Pintrest, once again, has not let me down. Now, I looked, and looked, and looked some more until I found a recipe that sounded good to me, and would have my favorite lavender fragrance, AND has fabric softener built in, SCORE! I found Budget101 Lavender Super Laundry Sauce recipe and decided that I was going to make my own laundry detergent, around $2.00 and I can make 128 loads, and it only takes 1 Tablespoon of detergent to clean a load of laundry!
So I set out to get the ingredients, of which I already had the Purex Lavender Crystals, and I found the Washing Soda and Borax easily enough, but could NOT locate the Fels Naptha (what the heck kind of name is that? Check the blurb at the bottom....). I tried three different Wal-Mart Stores, A Kroger, Tom Thumb and Albertson's, they all had Zote Soap, but the recipe specifically says use Fels Naptha if you want the stain removal abilities, so I continued to look. FINALLY, on a Milk run to my closest Wal-Mart I saw someone restocking the Fels Naptha, I grabbed 4 bars, because at .99 a bar I could afford a little room for experimentation. WooHoo! I am ready to give it a shot, and I have the perfect load of laundry to try it on!
So, the next morning, after I get the big boys off to school and work, I set out to make my detergent while the Little Ladybug sleeps in. Good thing too because the smell is fairly powerful. I open the doors for a bit of a breeze and to carry the strength away, not a bad smell, just strong. So I follow the directions explicitly and IT WORKED!!!! My detergent did exactly what it was supposed to do, so I broke the thick layer with my wooden spoon , popped on my old (very tired and useless) blender base and whipped up some laundry detergent. Pretty simple really, the hardest part was waiting for the Fels Naptha to melt away. Now us try it on some gardening clothes, then a Tinker Bell and Fairy Friends Toddler bed set I got at a JBF sale (FOUR PIECES FOR $3.00!!!!!), then some kitchen towels. EVERY TIME the load came out clean and fresh smelling from the washer and static free and still fresh smelling from the dryer. All clothes seem a little whiter, a little brighter, and FEEL cleaner to the touch. I know this sounds weird, but I am a true believer and may never go back to store bought laundry detergents!
My only hints to this recipe is to be sure to finely grate your soap, or grate it then put it into a MagicBullet. Blending it for a few seconds worked great, and since it is soap you can just wash it out really good and run it through the dishwasher. If you are dissatisfied with your store bought laundry detergent, whether it be because of the financial aspect, or the lack of cleanliness, give this a shot. You, too, may vow never to go back to the expensive jugs of pre-made liquid and instead choose the Super Laundry Sauce!
Blurb: Fels Naptha, where did the name come from? Well, the Fels part comes from the inventor, Joseph Fels, who originally made the product to cut through the oils in Poison Ivy and Poison Oak and the Naptha part is a name for the solvent originally used in the soap. Interesting....
UPDATE:
So, I have been using this Lavender Laundry Sauce for over two months now, and it still works great for getting out stains, BUT I have noticed that my Ladybug's baby clothes are becoming worn out faster, and are 'pilling' more than with traditional detergents. It still seems to work fine on my big boy's clothing, and most of my own, but I have reverted to Dreft for the Ladybug. I am a consignor mama, so her clothes need to look their best for resale. ALSO, I only use this powerful detergent on my towels about every three washes, as it seemed to make them a little bristly.
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
O.M.Gum!!!!
For about the 100th time since summer started I could literally wring my son's neck!!!
At 16.5 (as I am regularly reminded) years old my oldest child has decided that he is an adult and we parents know nothing.......come on, we have all been there, and usually admit we are wrong about the time we become parents ourselves. My wonderful child has decided that texting is the form of communication of choice (as most teens in this era have), that his dad is an idiot (I have to admit, I do occasionally agree), and that he no longer has to check his pockets when it is time to do the laundry!!!!
While trying to prepare my Boy Scout for reality without Mama in his not so distant future (come on mom, you'll do my laundry forever, right? ~ Um, NO!) I have taught the boy how to check pockets while sorting clothes into various piles, how to use the Washing Machine with all it's fancy cycles and temperatures, and the dryer with all of it's different settings and impressive knobs and buttons, did I mention that the silly things sing a song when they are finished with their cycles? Well, they do. So you would think that with all that training, and the implanted knowledge that you fold while the clothes are still HOT, that the boy would have learned to do the job properly, BUT NOOOOOO!
I go to the laundry room to start a load of the Ladybug's clothes only to find that my son did not finish the laundry he started..............three days ago! So, STRIKE ONE is the souring laundry left in the washer, UGH! Warm water and vinegar to the rescue! After a cycle of the warm and vinegar I washed it AGAIN with laundry detergent and softener. That's better. STRIKE TWO, not folding the laundry in the dryer while it was still hot enough not to get wrinkles, wait! What is that sticking to the glass of the dryer door? Could it be? REALLY??? Yes, yes it is, MY Orbit Spearmint GUM (so that's where it went)! AGH!!!! I pulled each piece of clothing out of the dryer checking it for gum and residue, blessedly it seems to be only on the glass and the dryer itself, not the clothing.
O.M.Gum! I have NEVER had to deal with this before, and I had NO CLUE how to get gum out of a dryer. I tried ice, but the streaks of gum were not thick enough for ice to do anything to it. I tried alcohol, didn't really do anything. I tried peanut butter (hey, it works for hair!), but that also didn't do anything. BUT, as I was using a paper towel and vinegar to get the peanut butter grease out of the dryer the darnedest thing happened! The gum started to come off! I tried another area that I hadn't used the peanut butter on, just to make sure it wasn't a combo effect. Nope, the gum was still coming up with just the vinegar. Sure it smelled strongly awful, and hot (ever smelled hot vinegar? NOT pleasant!), but IT WORKED!
I can now officially say: Been There, Tried That on removing gum from a dryer drum!
(not that I ever wanted to be able to say that, but whatever!)
Friday, March 15, 2013
CONSIGNMENT Sales!!!!
So, it is that time of year again, SPRING CLEANING!!! WooHoo! Yeah, right! However; I LOVE to clean out the kiddo's closets and take all the clothes they have outgrown from the past season. On the other hand I DESPISE getting rid of clothes that are in still in great shape even though my children have outgrown them. So stop and think about this article the next time you clean out your children's closet in the spring and the fall.
Now, like MOST financially conscious parents, I have tried the little chain re-sale stores, Once Upon a Child, Finders Keepers, and such, and I have always left a little put off because I felt like I was getting ripped off. Yes, they paid me cash on the spot, but in comparison to what I knew they were going to re-sell the items for I was extremely disappointed in the amount they paid me. Aside from that, they wouldn't take everything I brought because they had too many of those items already, BUT I could donate those items.........and then they would sell them anyway!
Seriously! I went in to sell, and donated all of my son's denim shorts (they all had his first name last initial for daycare), but they said that they already had too many of that particular size, would I like to donate them to a local charity, sure. I went back looking for the two sizes up, he had grown a lot that winter, and guess what I found in the wrong spot? Hmmmmm......denim shorts with my sons first name and last initial in my handwriting! When I confronted the lady at the register she looked at me like I was crazy, from that point on I was done with that garbage. For about six years I wouldn't even go into a re-sale store that bought on the spot because I felt like I was enabling the owners to rip off innocent parents. I had yard sales instead, what didn't sell I would donate to a real charity, either Goodwill or Salvation Army.....but I knew I was losing money! What could I do to put some of that money back into the budget to get new, correctly sized clothes?
Unfortunately the answer came to late for most of my boys clothes, but while I was pregnant with our last little nudger, finally a girl, I found Just Between Friends!!! While standing in line waiting to make my next appointment with my midwife I saw a post card with pictures of baby items, clothes, toys, etc. It said it was Texas' Largest Consignment Sale. When I got home I immediately did some research, checked everything out and got to work. I LOVED that I got to put my own prices on the items for sale and that if I volunteered I would get more of the profit. I was due in November so I started going through all of the girl clothes I had been collecting that would be seasonally incorrect and started tagging items. I ended up having over 125 items to consign, in combination with some of my younger sons outgrown winter clothes.
I signed up to volunteer 8 hours so I could get into the pre-sale, and waited. The sale was right after school started in August, not knowing what to expect I volunteered to set up, not a great idea for a pregnant lady, but they found jobs for me anyway. Everyone was so friendly and it was exciting to be a part of something so big and well organized. I came later that evening to do 'drop off', and again was amazed by how well organized the whole thing was. I could not believe how many things I saw. I wanted it all. At the time out boys were 14 and 10, so it had been a LONG time since I had any baby stuff, and we were starting all over. I saw bassinets, play pens, toys, clothes galore, high chairs, strollers, car seats (we had already gotten our stroller/car seat combo and high chair), bottle warmers, breast pumps, cloth diapers, disposable diapers, home decor, furniture and SO MUCH MORE!!! I couldn't wait too shop.........and boy did I shop! I bought a crib set, winter clothes in sizes from premie (we were told our baby girl has Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction and would be about 4-5 lbs at birth, boy were they wrong!) up to 6 Months. I bought shoes, hairbows, and so much more. I spent under $300.00, and earned over $400.00 on what I sold!!!! This is by far the BEST consignment sale EVER!
I have participated in every one of JBF Fort Worth's sales since, and we just completed my forth with awesome results again! I spent $270.00, and got my LadyBug (who is now 16 months old) a Cozy Coupe car, a Little Tykes Shopping Cart, a Fisher Price Farm with animals and accessories, 50 outfits in three different sizes (will get her through the summer and early fall), 4 dress up skirts, FOUR swim suits and two cover ups for LESS than one suit at Target, 6 pair of shoes, several books for all the kids, coat hooks for her room, a drying station for drink cups, and MORE! I also MADE $486.25!!!!! AND almost all of the clothes I purchased are Calvin Klein, Baby GAP, GYMBOREE, and other top brands!
Now, like MOST financially conscious parents, I have tried the little chain re-sale stores, Once Upon a Child, Finders Keepers, and such, and I have always left a little put off because I felt like I was getting ripped off. Yes, they paid me cash on the spot, but in comparison to what I knew they were going to re-sell the items for I was extremely disappointed in the amount they paid me. Aside from that, they wouldn't take everything I brought because they had too many of those items already, BUT I could donate those items.........and then they would sell them anyway!
Seriously! I went in to sell, and donated all of my son's denim shorts (they all had his first name last initial for daycare), but they said that they already had too many of that particular size, would I like to donate them to a local charity, sure. I went back looking for the two sizes up, he had grown a lot that winter, and guess what I found in the wrong spot? Hmmmmm......denim shorts with my sons first name and last initial in my handwriting! When I confronted the lady at the register she looked at me like I was crazy, from that point on I was done with that garbage. For about six years I wouldn't even go into a re-sale store that bought on the spot because I felt like I was enabling the owners to rip off innocent parents. I had yard sales instead, what didn't sell I would donate to a real charity, either Goodwill or Salvation Army.....but I knew I was losing money! What could I do to put some of that money back into the budget to get new, correctly sized clothes?
Unfortunately the answer came to late for most of my boys clothes, but while I was pregnant with our last little nudger, finally a girl, I found Just Between Friends!!! While standing in line waiting to make my next appointment with my midwife I saw a post card with pictures of baby items, clothes, toys, etc. It said it was Texas' Largest Consignment Sale. When I got home I immediately did some research, checked everything out and got to work. I LOVED that I got to put my own prices on the items for sale and that if I volunteered I would get more of the profit. I was due in November so I started going through all of the girl clothes I had been collecting that would be seasonally incorrect and started tagging items. I ended up having over 125 items to consign, in combination with some of my younger sons outgrown winter clothes.
I signed up to volunteer 8 hours so I could get into the pre-sale, and waited. The sale was right after school started in August, not knowing what to expect I volunteered to set up, not a great idea for a pregnant lady, but they found jobs for me anyway. Everyone was so friendly and it was exciting to be a part of something so big and well organized. I came later that evening to do 'drop off', and again was amazed by how well organized the whole thing was. I could not believe how many things I saw. I wanted it all. At the time out boys were 14 and 10, so it had been a LONG time since I had any baby stuff, and we were starting all over. I saw bassinets, play pens, toys, clothes galore, high chairs, strollers, car seats (we had already gotten our stroller/car seat combo and high chair), bottle warmers, breast pumps, cloth diapers, disposable diapers, home decor, furniture and SO MUCH MORE!!! I couldn't wait too shop.........and boy did I shop! I bought a crib set, winter clothes in sizes from premie (we were told our baby girl has Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction and would be about 4-5 lbs at birth, boy were they wrong!) up to 6 Months. I bought shoes, hairbows, and so much more. I spent under $300.00, and earned over $400.00 on what I sold!!!! This is by far the BEST consignment sale EVER!
I have participated in every one of JBF Fort Worth's sales since, and we just completed my forth with awesome results again! I spent $270.00, and got my LadyBug (who is now 16 months old) a Cozy Coupe car, a Little Tykes Shopping Cart, a Fisher Price Farm with animals and accessories, 50 outfits in three different sizes (will get her through the summer and early fall), 4 dress up skirts, FOUR swim suits and two cover ups for LESS than one suit at Target, 6 pair of shoes, several books for all the kids, coat hooks for her room, a drying station for drink cups, and MORE! I also MADE $486.25!!!!! AND almost all of the clothes I purchased are Calvin Klein, Baby GAP, GYMBOREE, and other top brands!
Monday, February 11, 2013
How to (QUICKLY) clean Silver
SO, I made a booboo.....I took off my wedding ring, earrings (both gold and white gold with diamonds) and my silver right hand ring and put them all in my Connoisseurs® Jewelry Cleaner before I got into the shower.....and I forgot to get them out.....till the next morning! The instructions clearly state 'Dip for up to 30 seconds', but I frequently leave my wedding ring in while I hop in the shower, I figure it gets REALLY dirty with all my house work and Mama chores I do on a daily basis so 10 minutes isn't going to hurt too much, but 8 hours did hurt, at least the silver ring. When I took them all out the next morning my silver ring was a tarnished goldish color. AGH! (my wedding ring and earrings were just fine, by the way. Extra sparkly diamonds! WooHoo!)
I have to say, I freaked out a little. The ring in question was my mother's day present in 2011, right after we found out we were prego with our third Love Bug (totally unexpected since our boys were 14 and 9 at the time). I love this ring! We bought it large enough to be a right hand thumb ring, but it annoyed me and caught on everything, so I wear it on my middle finger, EVERYDAY. I went online and searched everywhere for a solution to my silver ring turned gold, and tried three different things that DID NOT work. So, I did as every girl should and called a family member. I was informed of an AWESOME solution that worked so fast it blew my mind, and I am going to share that with you.
Bowl
Aluminium Foil (large enough to fit into base of bowl)
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 C HOT water (microwave for about 2 minutes or bring to a rolling boil)
Jewelry to be cleaned
(You CAN use this on larger pieces, just increase ingredients accordingly)
I have to say, I freaked out a little. The ring in question was my mother's day present in 2011, right after we found out we were prego with our third Love Bug (totally unexpected since our boys were 14 and 9 at the time). I love this ring! We bought it large enough to be a right hand thumb ring, but it annoyed me and caught on everything, so I wear it on my middle finger, EVERYDAY. I went online and searched everywhere for a solution to my silver ring turned gold, and tried three different things that DID NOT work. So, I did as every girl should and called a family member. I was informed of an AWESOME solution that worked so fast it blew my mind, and I am going to share that with you.
Bowl
Aluminium Foil (large enough to fit into base of bowl)
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 C HOT water (microwave for about 2 minutes or bring to a rolling boil)
Jewelry to be cleaned
(You CAN use this on larger pieces, just increase ingredients accordingly)
Ingredients, ready to start.
Place aluminium foil into the bottom of the bowl. While heating the water in the microwave measure out 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking soda into the bowl.
Ring to be cleaned (I haven't worn this since high school)
Adding the hot water causes a chemical reaction to the salt and soda, fizzy.
After stirring the mixture till the salt and soda dissolves (mostly), place your jewelry into the solution.
Within seconds your jewelry will go from tarnished.....
To freshly cleaned SILVER again!
Final results!
WOW, what a difference!
ALSO!!!!
This solution PREVENTED my ring from re-tarnishing! I put my original ring back into my Connoisseurs® Jewelry Cleaner and left it over night again, when I took it out this morning it was still bright and shiny SILVER.
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