It’s Like I Had No Idea I Even Looked Like That

That is NOT what I look like…..is it??

Well this is just great.  Now I have to look at myself.

In the process of scrubbing the bathroom last week, I stumbled upon a great glass cleaner.  Considering that I’m (as usual) about a week behind on my Mother Nature’s Maid Service Challenge, this sounds like a wonderful godsend of a discovery, right?  Sure, if you really want to look at yourself in the mirror.  I, however, have been suffering from horrendous cold and allergy symptoms the past few days, which causes a stuffy nose, which causes me to sleep (so adorably) with my mouth wide open, which causes my throat to go raw, which causes me to get absolutely NO sleep, which causes me to wake up looking like the dead in my bathroom mirror.  Ain’t nobody wanna see that.

I don’t know who invented bathroom mirrors, but I’m not a huge fan.  It’s not that I don’t like mirrors; I love mirrors.  I have this obsession with my hair and will go to great lengths to turn just about any reflective surface – from the bottom of a soda can to a doorknob – into a mirror.  The reason I have a particular aversion to bathroom mirrors is because having one basically ensures that my sleep-deprived, sandy-eyed, drooled-on face is always the first thing I see in the morning, and it’s honestly enough to give me a heart attack some days.  I don’t know who invented bathroom mirrors, but they must have been a morning person.

So now we have this sparkling clean bathroom mirror, and I have to look at myself every morning.  What a nightmare.  I preferred when our mirror was covered in dust and soap and hairspray and toothpaste, so I only ever saw a blurry outline of myself and could just assume I woke up looking like Jane Bennet, beauty of Meryton.  But, to get to my point, what’s my new Windex?  Get ready for another surprise, because one’s about to fall on you like a ton of bricks.  Vinegar.  That’s it.

I know, I know – I’ve been trashing vinegar lately, because it won’t stop following me around.  Since I started using it to clean the bathroom, I feel like I have this lingering vinegar scent wherever I go, like I’m in some sort of vinegar dust cloud.  It’s not amusing or attractive, but I do have to admit the stuff has cleansing properties.  I discovered it’s Windexing power by accident when I sprayed it on the mirror just to see what would happen.  Wouldn’t you know it cleaned the darn thing.

I use the vinegar basically the same way I would use Windex – spray, wash, wipe, buff.  And I don’t buy anything fancy for my cleaning supplies – just cheapo white vinegar.  It’s simple and effective – everything I love in any sort of homemade product.  Give it a try and see if it cleans your mirrors as well as it did mine.  The only downside is that now you’ll have to look at yourself.  Good morning!  Good morning!  Good morning!

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

The agony of victory, and the thrill of defeat

Mother Nature’s Maid is very much in need of a win.  Our cable went out last week and cost nearly $50 to fix.  The AC in my Volvo seems less-than-prepared to work this summer.  Our backyard is already completely overgrown with ivy.  And I’ve been followed around for about a week by a lingering vinegar scent.

Sound like first-world problems?  Wait til you hear this: My dryer balls don’t even work!

Everything I read in my research about these homemade dryer sheet replacements said they would actually cut down on drying time.  Did I believe that?  Absolutely not!  MNM believes nothing until it has been run through a number of proven, thorough, and exhaustive testing processes before my very own eyes.  And, you can trust me – I have 20/20 vision.

So I stirred up my very own experiment to determine the effectiveness of my dryer balls.

1. Strip your bed and wash your sheets
2. Put a fitted sheet in the dryer, alone without dryer balls
3. Dry the fitted sheet for 10 minutes, then remove
4. Put a top sheet in the dryer, with dryer balls
5. Dry the top sheet for 10 minutes, then remove
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until one sheet comes out completely dry
7. Record drying times

Easy enough, right?  Wrong…here are a few steps I left out:

1. Realize that fitted sheets and top sheets are not at all the same size
2. Ignore this information and proceed anyway
3. Take a book down to the basement while you wait
4. Take your dinner down to the basement while you wait
5. Swipe Gargantua off your ankle and chase him around the basement
6. Clothesline yourself with an actual clothesline in your basement
7. Drown Mother Nature in defeat

I spent a total of about 45 minutes alone in my basement with no one but Gargantua and his poor dead prey for company only to find out that my homemade dryer balls do not, in fact, shorten drying time whatsoever.  Turns out the fitted sheet (dried without dryer balls) took about 20 minutes to dry, while the top sheet (dried with dryer balls) took more than 25 minutes to dry!  Explain that, hippie bloggers!

Maybe the explanation is that top sheets are actually larger than fitted sheets and naturally require more time to dry.  Maybe the explanation is that more than two wool balls are required to really cut down on drying time (sorry, but I was not about to employ the blue fart balls again).  Maybe the explanation is that my experiment was not at all proven, thorough, or exhaustive and actually had a number of scientific faults (do we call those variables?).  For example, I could only dry one sheet at a time, which means that both sheets had amounts of time to air dry independently of the dryer.  The list could go on, but I won’t bore you with my scientific facts (or lack thereof).

The basic point is that Mother Nature got herself a big, fat TKO in this experiment.  Whether it’s really my fault or hers, I guess we’ll never know, because I’m not about to spend another evening in the basement with Gargantua just to correct my ragtag experiment and prove, once and for all, that dryer balls really work.  Still, I’ll probably keep using my wool balls in place of dryer sheets, because they seem to work great for static.  But, for now, let’s just bask in Mother Nature’s defeat.  She’s such a tyrant; it’s nice to see her knocked down a few pegs.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

Turn down for bathroom cleaners!

How I feel when I have to clean the bathroom

I can see where this is going: I’m going to have to clean the bathroom today.  I’m not really a fan of cleaning, but sometimes you just have to do it.

For example, you do it when your mother is coming over to visit.  Or, you do it when…well, actually, I can’t think of any other reason why you would clean your bathroom.  Maybe if you’re bored and you can’t get an appointment for a root canal?  Nah, I think I’d keep pressing for the root canal, rather than tackle the bottom of our toilet or our clogged bathtub drain.

But today we tackle them both.  Is my mother coming over?  Probably not (unless it is to drag me back to the country in case more rioting erupts in Baltimore in the next few hours).  So why go digging through the toilet bowl tonight when I could be catching up on Preacher’s Daughters?  Because Mother Nature is a slave driver, that’s why.  Apparently, it’s not enough that I have to suffer through making her products – she wants me to do work to test them out!  How is that fair?  I’m trying to do her a solid by cutting out chemicals, and all she does is make me clean the bathroom.  She’s ungrateful – full stop.  But tonight, I press on anyway, probably on all fours on the bathroom floor with a sponge in my hand.

Last week, I tackled all-purpose cleaner and scouring powder; so, basically, I tackled bathroom cleaners.  And, as I’m beginning to realize, the only way to test a bathroom cleaner is to actually put on your giant clown gloves and clean your bathroom, and, so, I prepare.  The all-purpose cleaner, which should take the place of a Lysol-type product, is made from a recipe I found on Learning Herbs.  It is basically vinegar, dried thyme, and (I added) some tea tree oil.  The mix makes a natural disinfectant, anti-microbial, anti-bacterial surprise and can, supposedly, be used on just about anything – from the windows to the walls.  Clearly, I listen to Lil’ Jon while I clean; talk abut inspirational!

The scouring powder was a bit more difficult to make – and by difficult I mean way, way easier.  I thought these herby mixtures from The Nerdy Farm Wife were just the bees knees (probably because she puts them in cute jars with ribbons on them), so I decided to mimic it in my own style, with the addition of Borax and dandelion flower.  It could be the easiest concoction I’ve ever made.  But will it clean?  We shall see.

I’d actually be really excited to try these out, if only cleaning the bathroom could be more fun.  Maybe I’ll turn out the lights and put on our psychedelic, colorful showerhead, and it’ll be all like, “turn down for what” in there.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

Get Ready for Business

Dishes collect some nasty stuff.  Sitting in our dishwasher right now are multiple pieces of dinnerware, saucepans, and utensils that are covered in dried yogurt, crusted oatmeal, mashed potatoes, pasta sauce, burnt cheese, peanut butter, regular butter, dehydrated lettuce, cereal, and stuck-on jam.  Clearly, we eat a lot of breakfast foods, and we need to pre-rinse our dishes a little better.

Now, I know all that stuck-on food sounds concerning, especially if you remember that I gave up commercial dishwasher detergent this week.  Yikes – sounds like a tough cycle for our little Whirlpool, not to mention my Petrified Lemon-Soda Dishwasher Detergent Tabs.

A dishwasher detergent tab is a small amount of solidified dish cleaner that fits directly in the soap receptacle of your washer and slowly dissolves throughout the cycle.  Sounds kindof difficult to make from scratch, right?  I definitely thought so, but thanks to these wonderful recipes from the Happy Money Saver and  Pins & Procrastination, the homemade dishwasher detergent tab became a piece of cake.  Here’s the recipe I worked up for myself:

• 1 Cup Super Washing Soda
• 1 Cup Baking Soda
• 3-4 packets Unsweeted Lemonade Mix
• 1/2 Cup Kosher Salt
• 2 Tbsp Water
• 1/2 Cup Vinegar
• 1 tsp Castille Soap

Basically, you just mix all the ingredients together and then knead them gently and thoroughly into an ice cube tray. I filled the tray up all the way to top, but this made the tabs too large for our dishwasher, so I’ve had to cut them in half.  The tabs are fairly easy to chop up, but if you want to avoid this whole dance, just don’t fill the ice cube trays up so far.  After you let your mix cement for about 24 hours, the tablets will slip right out of the trays in dried-up, formed cubes.  Chop them up, put them in a container, and you’re ready to put on your blazer, because it’s business time.

Wondering what business time will look like with Petrified Lemon-Soda Dishwasher Detergent Tabs?  I was, too.  I woke up early one morning before work, specifically to turn on my dishwasher.  Unfortunately, I still had to leave before the cycle was done – I can never wake up early enough!  I got to work and texted Carrie immediately, demanding information about our dishes.  The verdict?  Success!  The dishes came out clean!  Carrie said there were a few particles left behind on utensils (probably something that traditional dishwasher detergent would cure), but that was about it – she hadn’t even noticed that I’d put the cycle through with my homemade tabs!

That’s what business time looks like – clean dishes…with only tiny particles left behind.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

And, just like that, Mother Nature and I are on again

We all have one of those people in our lives.  You know the kind: The on-and-off.  That person that you can’t make up your mind to love or hate.  That person who’s gossiping with you one day and then about you the next. That person who always bails on your dinner plans, but then moves heaven and earth to pick you up when your car breaks down on the side of the highway.  You know who I’m talking about – that person who’s the best and the worst friend all at the same time.  For me, that person is Mother Nature.

Consider this – just last week, Mother Nature had me agonizing over the gassy wool dryer balls.  Then this week, she turns around and bends over backwards to make dish soap the easiest effort of my life.  It’s like being back in middle school and first period is a pop quiz and second period is a Bill Nye The Science Guy special.  Talk about an emotional roller coaster.

So I got this dish soap recipe off of the Hillbilly Housewife.  I was looking for something pretty simple and, with only three ingredients, this one fit the bill.  Here we go:

• 2 cups Castile Soap
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1 tsp white vinegar

I mixed all the ingredients together and put them in a spray bottle.  Both Carrie and I are happy with the way this recipe cleans our dishes, but when I mix it again, I’ll definitely make some tweaks.  No, I’m not a glutton for punishment and fixing something that’s not broken.  I’m just taking a perfectly good recipe and changing it a little so that… Ok, I’m a glutton for punishment, but I honestly think I could make this recipe just slightly better for our needs here at the cottage.

Last summer I spent a week in San Francisco and stayed in a hostel run by a bunch of hippies.  The dish soap provided in the kitchen was mixed with water in a squirt bottle.  Totally cheap and ineffective, right?  Wrong.  Turns out regular dish soap is incredibly concentrated, and squirt bottle soap works great, even when mixed with a large amount of water.  About a month ago, I instituted the practice here at The Newport House, and it went over like a pack of chocolate chip cookies in our cupboard; the only difference is that the soap lasted way longer than any cookie ever has a chance to do.

The point is, we’re used to watered down soap, so the 2 cups of Dr. Bronner’s in this dish soap is a little strong for us.  It may depend on which Castile soap you use, but Dr. Bronner’s is pretty concentrated, so I think even a 2:1 ratio of Castile to water would be more than enough suds for us.  So the next time I make this soap, I’ll cut the Castile in half and at least double the vinegar to get a cleaner that’s cheaper but still strong.  Win-win!  After my difficulties last week with the dryer balls, I can barely contain my excitement about the dish soap success!  Talk about an emotional roller coaster.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

The place where sustainability and trepidation meet

Up until a few days ago, I’d only been brave enough to try my homemade laundry detergent and homemade dryer balls with loads of sheets and towels.  It’s not that I don’t trust myself, but after last week’s tiny hiccup with the gaseous wool dryer balls, you can understand why I had been waiting to throw my whole wardrobe into a homemade cycle.  As with every natural experiment I conduct, I knew there was going to be some horribly negative side effect, and I just had to wait for it to present itself.  After the passing of the gassy blue wool balls, I knew I had landed safely away from the smelly and the nasty.  At least I hoped so, but I had to press on anyway.  Despite turning my underpants inside out, Febreezing the pits of my shirts, and wearing sweatpants and a blazer to work several times, I eventually did run out of clean clothes.

With much trepidation, I did a load of laundry that contained more or less everything in my wardrobe.  The wash cycle was a huge success, but I wasn’t fazed; I still had to deal with the dryer balls that smelled like….well, you know.  Luckily, the purple dryer balls didn’t seem to present signs of gas, so I only used those and set the odorous blue ones to the side (probably never to be touched again, regardless of how their open-air recovery goes).  Lo and behold, my clothes came out of the dryer fresh and clean and without any lingering intestinal air scent!  I know it may not sound like much, but I’m going to take it as a win.  For even more freshness, I’m going to add a few drops of essential oils to my yarn balls next time.

The second plus for dryer balls – aside from sustainability – is that they are supposed to drastically cut down on drying time.  Unfortunately, I have no conclusive evidence of that at this time, but I plan to conduct one of my good, old-fashioned, not-at-all-doomed-to-fail experiments to test this theory, so there’s more to come on that front.  But, in the meantime, I’ve found an even better way to cut down on dryer time – something still cheaper than dryer sheets and more sustainable than yarn balls: Air.

That’s right, I’ve gone 100% old-fashioned, grandma’s podunk backyard and hung a clothes line.  I put two on our back porch and strung one down the basement, in case of rain…or winter.  Of course, nothing’s as soft as the dryer, so everything comes off the line stiff as a board – especially towels – but after dealing with No Poo hair and homemade deodorant, wooden laundry is a cake walk.  So far, I love air drying – I just can’t wait for summertime, so my clothes will have that sun and cut-grass scent!  At first I did feel a little exposed with all my unmentionables flapping in the breeze for the entire alley to see, but as Albert Einstein said, “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, showing off your bagged underpants from Target comes easy.”

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

fART

The end:

When I opened up the dryer to pull out my laundry, an overwhelmingly foul scent immediately escaped.  It was the scent of a dinosaur passing gas.

How we got there:

I researched how to make wool dryer balls on DIY Natural.  A sustainable alternative to dryer sheets was the second project in the Mother Nature’s Maid Service Challenge, and these dryer balls promised to be just that.  So away I went.

I made a special trip to my local Jo-Ann Fabrics for some 100% wool yarn.  Apparently yarn is a very important material for serious crafters, because I was bombarded with two aisles and approximately 200 brands of it.  I checked what must have been 150 labels (probably more like 10…) before I found Patons 100% wool with a sheep on the front.  Sold to the gal wearing homemade deodorant!

I bought a purple spool and a blue spool, just to make things more fun.  That night, I twisted up my yarn balls and wrangled them into an old and dilapidated nylon stocking to ensure that they would felt correctly.  Felting is basically how dryer balls are made – you roll them up, stick them in a stocking, run them through a hot/cold laundry cycle, and then blast them to hell and back on your highest dryer setting.  If they felt correctly, you should be able to run a fingernail across the surface without loosening the yarn.  Then you’re free to toss them in your dryer at will.

The very next night, I excitedly threw my dryer balls into the washing machine with a load of sheets and towels.  They came out unscathed, and I tossed everything in the dryer to finish them off.  I nervously waited.  Then came the buzz: It was time.

I ran down the basement to collect my (hopefully felted) yarn balls.  When I opened up the dryer to pull out my laundry, an overwhelmingly foul scent immediately escaped.  It was the scent of a dinosaur passing gas.  I stuffed my head in the dryer – in search of the odor – and buried my nose in my sheets, horrified that they would emit this gaseousness.  But there was nothing.  My sheets and towels didn’t smell like anything.  How were they unscathed?  The source had to be somewhere!

And then I turned to the dryer balls.  I picked them up tentatively and smelled them one by one.  Purple 1: fine.  Purple 2: fine.  See that?  It wasn’t the yarn ba– Blue 1: FART.  Blue 2: FART.  I dropped the balls like hot potatoes and shoved my face at our “Cotton Breeze” dryer sheets.  Trust me, it was terrible.  It was as if I’d wrapped the blue yarn balls around hard-boiled eggs or blocks of cheese and then thrown them through the laundry cycle.  I carried them upstairs, holding them as far away from me, my nose, and my sheets as possible, and then shoved them under Carrie’s nose.  She recoiled and threw my yarn balls across the room as if I’d just tossed a bag of thousand leggers at her (which, in the defense of my dryer balls, would have been a way worse scenario, no matter how foul the yarn smelled).

So we’re working now with two dryer balls – the purple set only, obviously.  I’m not really sure what happened to the blue – maybe it was the color, maybe it was the spool, maybe that sheep had a love of beans and leafy greens.  I will admit that much of the odor has diminished since they’ve been left out in the open, but I’m not sure whether I’ll ever be brave enough to try them again with my laundry.  Smelling like homemade deodorant is bad enough, but smelling like a gigantic fart is is definitely above my pay grade.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

MNM’s Laundry List

I have never been more excited to do laundry than I have been these past few days.  In fact, my life has been so laundry-centric, that I haven’t even had time for anything else.

On Monday, I was invited to happy hour and politely declined: “Wish I could, but I have to go home and make laundry detergent.  It’s promising to be a lot of fun, would you like to–” (No, she wouldn’t like to join me, apparently.)

On Tuesday, a friend was stranded on the highway with a flat tire, but I was, unfortunately, unavailable: “I’m so sorry, but you couldn’t have caught me at a worse time.  I’m just in the middle of making dryer balls.”  (Not to worry.  I sent Carrie instead.)

On Wednesday, U.S. Airways called with an offer on a free trip to Dubrovnik, leaving the next day, as a special offer for passengers who had ever felt pressed for leg-space on a previous flight.  Well I certainly fit that description, but: “I’d love to go, but I just don’t think I’ll get the time to pack.  I have to do my laundry tonight.”

Yea, I’ve gone overboard.  Or have I?  This is Mother Nature’s Maid, after all.  I can’t disappoint my five readers.  So I stayed in and made laundry detergent instead of heading to Dubrovnik.  And guess what?  It worked!!

The laundry detergent recipe I used, from DIY Natural, is a powder, made with three ingredients: Borax, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda, and 1 bar of soap, grated.  Easy enough, right?  Sure, when you have a grater in your house.  I had to shred my soap with a vegetable peeler and then put it through the food processor to chop it up tiny enough to dissolve in the wash.  But after the chopping – super simple.  I just mixed all my ingredients in a recycled Cool Whip container, and it was ready to use.

I was slightly nervous to use homemade detergent on my clothes – I’ve been burned by Mother Nature before, and I was not about to let her ruin my wardrobe as well as my hair – so I used it on a load of sheets and towels first.  I was pleased with how they turned out; the detergent seems to work just like store-bought, with the soap providing most of the scent.  With my nerves assuaged, I threw in a load of clothes, and they turned out just as fresh and clean as the towels with no lasting negative effects.  Success!

I think I’ve found my new laundry detergent, and the best part is that it only cost me about $10!  We’ll just have to get ourselves a grater…I wonder if I could have bought one of those in Dubrovnik.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

Don’t wash your clothes in the woods

Would you trust Mother Nature to wash your clothes?  Of course you wouldn’t!  That’s because she’d probably dunk them in a freshwater lake in the woods somewhere next to a badger carcass, and you’d have to walk around smelling like lake trout and dead badger.  I think even the hippies would be too discerning to befriend you then.  They’d just toss you some patchouli and tea tree oil out the window of their bus and keep truckin’ (because they’re obviously Dead Heads).  Right on.

Now I’m no Dead Head (although I do enjoy a little Touch of Grey every now and then), but I do know a thing or two about tea tree oil, and I can tell you that there is no way it’ll cover up the scent of dead badger – no way, no how.  So it’s best to just not let Mother Nature wash your clothes.  End of story.

But curiosity killed the cat, and it made the unsuspecting hippie smell like yesterday’s un-washed clothes.  So, in that vein, we’re attacking laundry for week 1 – homemade laundry detergent and homemade dryer sheets.  After some internet research, I found some recipes.  Here’s what I’ve whipped up to clean my wardrobe and to (hopefully) not smell like yesterday’s un-washed clothes.

I found both of these tutorials on DIY Natural.  The laundry detergent recipe includes just three ingredients:

• 1 Cup of Borax
• 1 Cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
• 1 bar of soap, grated (I used Dial, but to be extra green, pick Dr. Bronner’s or another all-natural brand)

For a homemade, sustainable alternative to dryer sheets, I’m trying my hand at wool dryer balls, which require just one ingredient: 100% wool yarn.  I couldn’t find a sheep, so I bought some commercial yarn yesterday, so that my dryer balls will be ready for tomorrow’s laundry cycle.  But if I come across a sheep in the meantime, you can bet that sucker is getting sheered.

More Mother Nature’s Maid Service

Let me just finish scrubbing my hippie van

Have you ever looked at your bathroom or kitchen and thought, “how can I make cleaning a little more complicated?”  Neither have I.  But, as is often my habit here on the MNM Blog, I am going to start making my life a whole lot more complex over the next five weeks…all in the name of Mother Nature, of course.

From April 13 through May 18, Mother Nature’s Maid will be tackling an all-new natural challenge: Mother Nature’s Maid Service.  For this back-to-nature experiment, I will be taking on our household cleaning supplies.  Just like the Mother Nature’s Maid and Maid Up challenges, I’ll be tossing out our conventional cleaners – from laundry detergent to air freshener – one by one until I’m scrubbing our house with roadside gravel, water, and an old t-shirt.

Now, the situation will not get that dire (I hope).  I’ve been doing some preliminary research before I dive in (see?  I have learned something since the first challenge), and it seems that natural cleansing materials are not as hard to come by as one might think. Turns out lots of products – like vinegar, epsom salts, baking soda, and my old essential oil friends – all do double duty as household cleaners!  And when you consider that many conventional cleaners we use today contain crazy chemicals that may or may not be linked to cancer, heart damage, respiratory problems, and the creation of superbugs, the roadside gravel doesn’t sound so bad anymore.

Ok, so it may not seem incredibly exciting.  After all, I hate cleaning my own toilet so much that I pretty much only do it for company, so why would you care at all whether I’m using baking soda or Lysol in the thing?  But don’t write the MNMS Challenge off just yet.  Trust me when I say, there are plenty of ways that this challenge could become just as nasty, sweaty, greasy, stinky, oily, and gelatinous as all the previous challenges.  For example: Laundry.

My Week 1 project will be homemade laundry detergent and dryer sheets.  I’m not sure why, but I always end up tackling first those products that could most greatly affect my social life (if you don’t remember, I started the Mother Nature’s Maid Challenge with deodorant).  I guess I just like to make everything a little more complicated.

Wish me luck.  Hopefully I won’t need it (but I think we both know I eventually will).