Swiffer Cover

In keeping with my "Cold Sheep" pledge, I whipped up a swiffer cover so that I don't have to throw them out all the time!  It works pretty well, but I adapted the pattern a little by doing fewer circles across the top so that it would fit over the Swiffer.  I also have  a wet jet, so I wanted the places where the water comes out to be clear (though they're not totally).  Next time, I'll probably do chains that can tie across the top to make it easier to keep the liquid jets from just drooling into the cover.

Ravelry Project

Sea Salt Soap

I'll be finishing up with the last two Christmas posts this week and next on Wednesdays, so hopefully by the time that's over, I'll have something new ready to post about!

This week, we'll take a look at the soap that I made my mother-in-law, who can never ever get enough of the beach.  Having made my father-in-law some wonderful Adirondack soap, I decided to make her some sea-salt soap-scub bars.

After doing some research, I ad-libbed the recipe, and came out with some beautiful bars that I really love (and I hope she does, too!).

Ingredients:

• 6 oz water
• 2.75 oz lye
• 12.75 oz coconut oil
• 1.875 oz castor oil
• 1.875 oz cocoa butter
• 1.875 oz olive oil
• 1 lb Celtic Sea-Salt
• a pinch of yellow coloring
• 15 drops each of Rosemary and Citrus Fresh Essential Oil

I measured and melted the oils as usual, added my yellow coloring, created my lye base, and brought the mixture to trace in about 3 minutes, at which point it turned a nice sunflower color.  After a two hour cook, I added the Essential Oils and Sea Salt and stirred vigorously, before pouring the whole mixture into the mold.

As predicted, the sea-salt made the bar crumbly and difficult to cut.  After letting it sit for about 40 minutes, I took the whole bar out of the mold and cut off the two (now solidified) ends, revealing a slightly mushy center.  Since the edges were hardening fast and the center was still liquidy, I let it sit for a few more minutes, and then I cut another slice off each end.  I repeated this process all the way through, always waiting until the center was just barely hard enough to not droop out when sliced before going ahead, since the edges were continuing to harden and crumble.

Over all, I'm pretty pleased with the results.  I might have to make myself a batch!

Brantingham Pine Soap

As you've probably noticed, after moving to weekly posts, I've been able to keep up, but the posts can often come quite a bit after the actual project has been completed.

On that note, I'm still posting about Christmas gifts in the end of January.

Next on the list is a mini-batch of soap that I made for my father-in-law.  They have one of the most beautiful cabins in the Adirondacks I have ever seen, perched serenely atop a hill the plunges into the cool lake waters of upstate New York.  It's been in the family for three generations, now, and it is Dad's favorite place in the whole wide world to be.

Unfortunately, it's not heated, and so there's no chance of getting up there in the winter.

In light of this, I got some lake water and pine needles this summer, and boiled them together into a pine-needle tea, which I used as the water-base for the soap.  I cooked the soap using my usual recipe, and after trace, I added Pine and Cedarwood essential oils, as well as green and brown coloring.  Because the coloring was added after the cook, it was blotchy and perfect for the pine-needle-strewn calico ground surrounding the cabin.

Over all, I'm really happy with how this came out.

DIY Essential Oil Rack

Everyone has a comfort food.  I have two.

Firstly: Kraft Macaroni on Cheese.  In the box.  Beautiful.  It tastes like motherly love and warm, cozy winter evenings bundled in blankets.  Of laughter that starts on your insides like a warm tickle and follows your soul out through your mouth.

Secondly: Crunchy, Nutty, Granola-y Cereal.  Hard work and persistence in a box.  With skim milk.  It tastes like early mornings, silently bonding with dad, preparing for a day of hiking or building a tree-house.  Of making things happen.

Three lines of Kraft; Glueing the second cereal box

And when I'm having a hard time, these I stick to.  Every morning starts with cereal, and (almost) every evening ends with Kraft.

Right now, I'm having a rough time.

I'm also in need of some place to store my essential oils!

Trimming edges in step 2

Back in January, I began my journey into Young Living essential oils, and though I haven't worked out all the kinks yet, I've certainly seen how valuable they are in my daily life.  Since I only use a few drops at a time, and Young Living has lots of free promos, I have, pretty quickly ended up with a decent collection of oils.  But what to do with them?

For a while, I have them lined up in alphabetical order on my dresser, but that didn't work.  They made quite a nuisance quite quickly.

Then I tried stacking them in an old YL box by the mirror.  Same result.

I started looking online, and saw many beautiful ideas for storing them vertically (which I had by now realized was optimal), but they were all expensive or required nailing something into the wall, which I couldn't do in my apartment.

Finally, it dawned on me.  I don't need a long term fix; I need something that will last me a few years while I continue to jumble from apartment to apartment, until I move back East for good.  And I need something cheap.

And so I made one out of old Kraft and Cereal boxes.

Adding the second cereal box

1. The process was pretty basic.  I cut most of the Kraft box off, just leaving about 3/4" of box left from the bottom.  I tried doing this with other boxes, too, like rice or spaghetti, but soon discovered that they were all ever so slightly differently sized and it would be better to just save up the Kraft boxes.  I also cut up the side of a cereal box and lay them it flat.
2. Using a glue gun, I attatched the Kraft boxes on their skinny sides, making three sets of four boxes.  Three oils pretty much exactly fit in each box, so that worked out nicely.  Then, I glued the first line of Kraft right on the edge of where the cereal box curled up.  I worked upward, adding the other two lines to make three shelves.  Then, I trimmed the edges to be even with the Kraft, and discovered that it didn't really stand up on its own.
3. At this point, I cut up the side of another cereal box, and glued it to the back of the first one.  I glued the edges over on the top and bottom, and bent the box up on the sides and glued it to the edges of the Kraft rows, and then trimmed the excess.

I really like the result!  Look at all those pretty oils in a row!

I'll probably paint it or cover it in wrapping paper or something later, but for now, I just need some organization.

Look at them all nicely in a row!  I love it!  And I had just enough room at the end to add a bottle of my own blend (LLP) and the promo packets.  Oh, and that box you can barely see on the left edge?  That's a box of extras/replacements!

What do you think?
Does anyone else have any other suggestions for Essential Oil storage?

Homemade Power Scrub (ie Comet)

I saw this tutorial over at DIY Natural a few months back, and have been waiting for my bottle of Parmesan to be empty to make it.  Well, this week was the week.

You will need:

• 1 cup of Baking Soda
• 1/2 cup grated bar soap
• 15-20 drops of essential oil (I used Melaleuca/TeaTree, Lemon, and Eucalyptus)
• Jar with shaker lid
• Food Processor/Blender

I doubled the recipe and used 10-13 drops of each of my chosen essential oils.  The next step is to blend it all together in a food procession, but I don't have one, so I tried to use a blender instead.  It didn't really work.  The soap gummed up the blades as I tried to run it, almost breaking the blender.  I had to keep turning it off and re-starting it, and several times I had to just stir it by hand to get the clumps out.  Not ideal

As a cleaning agent, though, it works great!  Once your mixture is all powdery, you simply transfer it to a receptacle of your choice, preferably a shaker-topped jar, and use.  I have a shower that doesn't drain very well, combined with hair that sheds like a dog in July, and bi-weekly egg, mayo, and honey hair treatments that get left all over the shower floor.  Needless to say, I'm always looking for a better, more long term cleaner, and I think I've found it.

It was super easy to use!  I just sprayed a bit of water in the tub, sprinkled the powder in, and then massaged it around with a wet sponge until it easily coated the bottom.  I left it on for about 20 minutes, and then wiped it off with clean water, and I had the most beautiful sparking tub!  It even stayed that way after two showers, and it wasn't until the third that it started to get scummy again!  Horah!

I highly recommend this.  It's super easy to make, pretty cheap, and works great!

I, however, wasn't able to fit the plastic top onto any of my glass jars, so I just left it on the Parmesan plastic.  I probably should label this in case someone gets hungry!  Good thing I don't have any kids!

Homemade Disinfecting Wipes

Getting on the Simplicity wagon means doing things for myself, being in charge of my own home, and being able to simplify my consumerism.  It also means using fewer processed foods and cleaning supplies to keep my body on simple, wholesome nutrients.  And therefore I bring you home-made Disinfecting Wipes!

I started using these a few weeks ago, and I'm here to report that they work wonderfully.

The recipe I use right now comes from DIYNatural.com, but I have been experimenting with other combinations and I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!

You will need:

• 1 large-ish glass jar
• a decent amount of rags or cut up t-shirts
• 1/2 c water
• 1/2 c distilled white vinegar
• 15 drops of lemon essential oil
• 8 drops of lavender essential oil
• 4 drops of bergamot essential oil

Directions:

• Pour water, vinegar, and essential oils into a cup.  Swirl the contents to mix them.
• Squish as many rags or squares as you can into the jar, and pour the mixture over them.  Tighten the lid to store.
• As needed, pull out a rag and clean a surface.  When you're done, put the rag in a "dirty rag" box or basket, and then just throw them in the wash next time!

A few hints:

• If you mix the liquids in the jar itself, then squish the rags in, it would be best to store the jar upside down for the first few days to get all of the rags wet.
• The lid will be nearly impossible to get of the first time.  You might need two people.  If that's a problem, use some tinfoil or cling wrap that's secured tightly with a rubber band instead.
• I have a bog pile of rags that I've cut up and I just squish in as many as I need.  Don't worry about folding or rolling them.
• Use a jar with a wide enough opening that you can get your hand in to grab the rags.

Best of luck!

Shampoo Bar Soap

While I was on a soap-making spree, I came across this recipe from Frugally Sustainable.  Since I had been looking for an alternative to commercial shampoo, I jumped right on it!  Here's the finished project.
Here's the problem.  It doesn't work.  It leaves a greasy residue in my hair and makes it tangly.
Has anyone else had this experience?  What did you do about it?  Commercial shampoos dry out my ends, while my roots grease up every day, and I'm hoping to switch, but I'm at a loss!  Advice would be appreciated!

Homemade Soap - How and Why You Should Make It

Last year, I got into Soap Making.

If you've never made soap before, this may sound a little strange.  Here are some basic misconceptions about making soap at home:

1. It's difficult.
Soap-Making is pretty simple!  It basically involves knowing three parts, and you just make sure to combine them at the right time!

2. It's expensive.
This one is also false.  Homemade Soap is a fraction of the cost of store bought soap.  There will be some up-start costs, and if you choose to use exotic oils in your soaps, then yes, it will be a bit more expensive, but even then, buying exotic soaps in the store would cost more, too.

3. The soap is bad quality.
Again, this is not true.  Like any hobby, soap making takes practice, but with time, beautiful, high quality soaps can be made at home.  The soap you make is also NOT less effective.

4. It's dangerous.
There is a little bit of truth to this.  While making soap, you are working with Lye and very hot oils.  Use basic chemical precautions and keep animals or small children away from chemicals and soap-making.  However, when done with care, this can be a safe and easy hobby.

Now that we've expelled some basic misconceptions, lets go on to explain other reasons why you should make soap at home!

1.  It's cheap. Very cheap.
2.  It's easy.  You make a batch and it lasts for a while.
3.  If you like it, you can experiment.  Add scents, essential oils, color, oatmeal, whatever!
4.  You control what goes into your soap.

Let me say that again.

4.  You control what goes into your soap.

Why is that so important?

Well, first off, there are tons of chemicals in store-bought soaps that are harmful to your body.  They seep in through your skin and can affect your mood, your homeostatis, and your brain.

But there's another reason.  Lets say you live in a family of five.  There's a baby with dry skin that needs gentle soap.  There's a teenager with acne.  There's a child whose skin gets little bumps from not being exfoliated enough.  There's a grandma with soft wrinkles.  There's a parent with dredlocks.

When you make your own soap, you can tailor each batch to a certain person.  No need to go to the store and buy expensive dredlock shampoo --  you can just make a soap with extra beeswax and jojoba oil instead of olive oil and they can use it as shampoo.  Soaps with oatmeal or coffee can exfoliate.  Some oils are more moisturizing, some are harsh, some are gentle, some are fairly typical.  You can learn the properties of each oil and each superfat and you can adjust to your loved ones, refining each batch a little more.

Store bought products might say "for dry skin" or "for blackheads," but each person's skin is made of different chemicals, and so it might be dry for different reasons, and what helps one person might make another worse.  When you make your own soap, you can avoid this trial-and-error with expensive products that just go to waste.  Make a small batch.  Does it work?  Great!  Make more!  Is it not the best fit?  Use it until it's gone, or bring it to the kitchen, or donate it, or shred it to make homemade laundry detergent.  Make another one!

Do I have you yet?

If so, read on, and I'll explain the basic idea of soap making.  If not, read on, and see how easy it is!

No matter which soap making process you're using (more about that later), there are several basic ingredient categories.

1. Fats.  These are usually oils, and any combination of different kinds of oils can be added in here.  Some recipes call for beeswax.

2. Caustic. Usually lye, every recipe needs a caustic.  Basically, this chemical interacts with your fats and chemically produces soap.  This process is called saponification.

3. Carrier/Liquid.  You'll need a liquid -- usually water, but sometimes milk or tea -- to dissolve your caustic.

Okay, so now that you've got an idea of what you'll need, lets learn about how to combine these ingredients.  There are two main processes for soap making -- hot process and cold process.  There are others, but they are more obscure are are better done with practice.

In both processes, first, you weigh out your fats.  Using a lye calculator, you can determine how much lye you'll need.  Always use a lye calculator.  Different oils have different amounts of fat, so your lye amount can change.  You usually leave a certain percentage of fats left un-reacted, called a superfat, as a buffer.  Too much lye can burn the skin!  Too much fat just makes it mushy.

Once you know how much lye you'll need, you can dissolve it into your liquid.  Always put the lye in the water, not the other way around.  If your oils are solid at room temperature, melt them, and combine them all together.  Then, you add the two mixtures together and stir them to trace.  Trace is a big spiffy word for "it looks something like pancake batter."  It means everything is mixed up.

This is where the processes differ.  In cold process, you pour your mixture into a mold and you let it sit for several weeks.  Then, you can use a spiffy tool to check and see if all of the lye has reacted.  If so, cut and use!

In hot process, you pour the mixture into a crockpot and basically bake the lye out.  There's a certain look it gets when it's done. (I suggest you google a picture).  At that point, you pour it into the mold, let it harden, and as soon as it's hard it's usable.

Soon, I'll post about some of my favorite recipes.  Stay tuned!

Has anyone else made soap at home before?  What are your favorite techniques and recipes? Which process do you like better?

Wool Dryer Balls

While I was on my homemade laundry products spree, I started looking for a way to make homemade dryer sheets and they all seemed really messy and complicated.  I just wanted something I could throw in the dryer to make my clothes smell good and to keep them from getting staticky.

That's when I stumbled across this DIY Wool Dryer Balls Tutorial.  As a knitter, I immediately was in my comfort zone.  Felting?  I can felt!  I had almost purchased dryer balls at the store the other day, but I was glad I didn't!

So, for those of you that aren't familiar with felting, here's the way it works.  It's actually pretty easy.  Have you ever had a wool sweater that you weren't supposed to put in the washer, but you did, and when it came out, it was smaller, tighter, firmer, and fuzzy?  You felted it.  Felting is where you take non-washable wool, usually in the form of yarn, and throw it through a washing cycle to shrink and bind it together.

So basically, to make these balls, I pulled out some old balls of feltable wool yarn I had left over.  You can use an old shirt, too, but just unwind it, and make sure it's non-washable wool and that it hasn't been washed before.  You make them into balls, tuck in the ends, and tie a small knot.

Here comes the fun part.  Take some old pantyhose and slide your first ball down to the toe.  Tie a knot in the pantyhose right around the ball, or, alternatively, tie some yarn or string around it.  MAKE SURE THIS YARN IS NOT FELTABLE, otherwise you'll have a caterpillar when you're done.

Add all the other balls in the same fashion. You can see my caterpillar here on the right, after it's been through a cycle.  (Look at the fluff leaking out from the felting process.)

Then you throw your caterpillar in with a normal load, through both the washer and the dryer.  Undo your caterpillar and take a look at the balls.  Can you undo them?  If you run your fingernails across, do the strands move?  If so, repeat the caterpillar cycle, but if they're not budging, you have successfully felted your wool dryer balls!

The next step is just to throw them in your load!  They bounce around, fluff the clothes, and reduce drying time.  You can also put a little bit of essential oil in the wool balls right before you throw them in the dryer; this will scent the clothes naturally as they get fluffed!  During this cycle, I was washing some sheets, so I used Bergamot and Petigrain, which help fight insomnia and anxiety, both of which keep me up!

Has anybody else done this?  How did it turn out?

Homemade Laundry Detergent

When I moved to San Francisco, I moved into what had once been my husbands bachelor pad.  During the time before our wedding, he continuously expressed his interest that I would "hurry up and graduate so I could make this place a home and not just a place to sleep."  Well, needless to say, when I got here, there was quite a bit to be done!

One of the things that my husband did was buy a box of laundry detergent.  Because he'd been using it for six months before that, it had about ten loads left by the time I got here.  As someone who's always been on the "do-it-yourself" edge, I decided that while we were waiting for it to finish off, I would research making my own laundry detergent and fill the box up with my own concoction when it was empty.

I based my version off of DIY Natural's recipe.

Supplies:
-1 (or 1.25) cups of Borax
-1 (or 1.25) cups of Soda Ash
-4.5 (or 5.625) ounces of Grated Ivory Soap
-A container for your finished product

The first step is to obtain your ingredients.  The container was easy, since I was just using an old one.  Any jar or box would work.

I made my Soda Ash by hand the day before, and pulled out some old Ivory soap I wanted to get rid of.  You can use any natural, Castille, or handmade soap in this recipe, which I usually do in my cleaning supplies, but I had some old Ivory bars I wanted to use up from before my soap-making days, and since the recipe said go for it, I did!

Grating the soap turned out to be a laborious process.  I used a simple cheese grater, but I'm sure there are other ways to do it.  The original recipe called for a 4.5 ounce bar of soap, but I found that if I grated two bars until they were just about stubs I couldn't hold anymore, I ended up with 5 and 5/8 ounces of grated soap -- exactly 125% of what the recipe called for -- so I simply added an extra quarter-cup of the other two ingredients and wha-la!

Once you have all your ingredients, the next step is to add them together and stir for five minutes.  Easy enough, right?  WRONG.  I kept having to stop because I was coughing from breathing in all the soap particles.  While you're stirring, the volume of your mixture actually decreases a lot, partially from breaking the bits up more, partially from minimizing empty space, and partially from all the dust it releases into the air.  I highly recommend doing this step outside or in a well ventilated room!

When I was done, the finished product fit nicely in my old box, so I threw a rubber-band around it and put it in the closet.  I can't wait to use it!

For each load, you only need a tablespoon!  That's right, just a tablespoon of the detergent.  I'm estimating there's just over 3 cups of detergent in the box right now, which is about 50 tablespoons.

Let's take a look at the cost:

Box of Borax: $4.29
I used: 1/4
Borax: $1.08

Box of Baking Soda (to make Soda Ash): $1.35
I used: 2/3
Soda Ash: $0.90

Ivory Soap 10-Pack: $4.50
I used: 1.75 bars
Grated Soap: $0.79

Total Cost of Detergent: $2.77

That's about half what the original box of store-bought detergent cost!  Now here's the kicker:

Homemade Detergent: $2.77
Makes 50 Loads
5.5 cents a load

Store-Bought Detergent: $5.50
Makes 15 Loads (as per box)
36 cents a load

Look at that!  You've saved 85% of your cost of detergent!  What's not to love?

Next time, I'll tell you about another way I found to cut costs on laundry.

Has anyone else tried this?  How does it work?  Any tips?  Let me know in the comments!

Freedom in the Air

Something I've been working on recently is being more home-minded.
One of the outcomes of that is that I (finally!) started using my clothesline!  It was warm enough on Tuesday to put my clothes outside!

And then there was a problem.  Tuesday night it got cold again, but I had class and wasn't able to take them down before dark.  Wednesday I was out of the house before it was light for work, and then straight from work to class to a meeting, and then drive across town to tutor for three hours.  During that time, there started to be these flurries of sleet.  Where they came from, I have no idea, but by the time I got home again, my clothes were soaked.

I managed to take in a few articles of clothing and hang them on the one, flimsy, house clothes-rack we have.  And then I changed, went to class, came home after dark, and slept.

Thursday it was windy.  I mean 30-40 mile an hour gusts.  I left the house before it was light, went to work, class, a meeting, went to the library for a few hours, class again, and I got home around 9:00pm, after dark, exshausted.

My housemates were not amused.  "Sweetie," they said, irritated that they, the 24- and 26-year-olds, had to tell me something so basic again, "you need to go get your clothes off the line.  And the bushes. And the trees.  And out of the squirrels' nest."

I stared at them for a minute, and then turned around and went right back out.  It took me almost half an hour to find everything, untie it from the line, and pick it up with my numb fingers in the dark, when the wind was not on my side.  I went inside, threw the heap on the table, and went to bed.

I suck at house-keeping. I told myself. I'll never be able to do it right.  Even that soap...you literally exploded the stove burner...

I sat up, shook my head, and lay down again.

It doesn't matter.  Yes, I'm getting married in December, but I'm not perfect.  It's okay that I don't know everything there is to know yet.  That's what life's about, right?  Learning and living from that and moving on and becoming someone new.

I'll try the line again when it's warm out, and this time, I'll make sure I can be home to take the clothes down.