Make your own eco-friendly dishwasher detergent.
Make your own laundry detergent and fabric softener.
Make your own toilet bowl cleaner.
Make your own household cleaner.
(Can you tell that I’m on a D.I.Y kick? Actually I’m just fed up with paying so much for detergents and cleaners that pollute the earth and cost a fortune. I’m going to try some of these recipes and see how they stack up to the expensive poisons.)
Three ways to use vinegar on your hair.
Lasagna cupcakes are brilliant! Can’t wait to make these. (Via Crush Party)
Trifle in a jar at make grow gather. (Via Not Martha)
Love this post about interior uses of barn doors at Apartment Therapy.
Howe’s Brown Cow: One Family, One Cow, One Year. Love this family blog.
Blog Crush! That Kind of Woman is the best tumblr blog I’ve ever seen. Loads of inspiration. (via Crush Party)
These D.I.Y. Vertical Garden Panels at Flora Grubb Gardens knock. me. out.
Of course I discovered miette while I’m on a diet. If you’re lucky enough to live in San Francisco you can have their cakes, like the Vanilla Tomboy pictured above. The rest of us can order meitte’s cookies and confections online. After we lose ten pounds.
Fascinating article about a study that fed curry spices to cows and sheep to reduce their methane gas emissions by up to 40%.
Honey Bee Mittens. love (1,000,000)
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been making my own general purpose for a few years now and really love it. It’s SO much nicer to my lungs which seem to get irritated more easily and I love that it’s nicer to the environment too. I put 1 teaspoon lime essential oil, 1 tablespoon borax and 2 tablespoons vinegar into my spray bottle and fill with hot water. Shake to dissolve and you’re good to go. I use this almost every where.
I haven’t found a dishwasher detergent I am happy with yet. Either it gets glass clean and leaves an icky scum on the plastic or it gets the plastic clean and leaves icky scum on the glass. If you find a good one let me know!
My knitting possé has been using soapnuts after hearing about them from a knitting podcast. They seem to like the results and use them for everyday cleaning, handknits and laundry. I haven’t tried them yet because I have to test anything with the word “nut” in it. Here’s the link for more info – http://www.buysoapnuts.com/
I’ve been making my own laundry detergent for about 6 months now, and I’ll never go back. My recipe is 1 cup washing soda, 1 cup borax, 1 grated bar of Ivory soap. Use 1-2 tablespoons per load, and it gets clothes clean without heavy perfumes. I do a LOT of laundry for my big family (a husband and 4 kids aged 6-17), and this saves so much money, and it really works! (Oh, and I just fill the softener dispenser with white vinegar to soften the clothes. Extra bonus: the vinegar cleans the gunk out of the pipes, too!)
I’ve been making my own laundry detergent for a while. I just grate a bar of castile soap (I usually use Dr. Bronner’s lavender), mix with roughly equal amount of baking soda, and then add about 3 tablespoons to every load. You can also use liquid castile soap- in that case, just squirt about 1.5 Tbsp into the washer then add the same amount of baking soda. This gets my clothes very clean and they always smell great. Some people rinse with vinegar, but my clothes are soft enough without it.
But I’ve tried a few dishwasher recipes and none have ever worked at all. They leave gross residue or just don’t clean. Let us know if you can find one that works!
I’m right there with you on the DIY cleaning products. I started using green cleaning products from the grocery store because I couldn’t stand to think of all the chemicals I was using in my house and then having to live in, sit on, and breathe them in every day. The only problem is that green products tend to be expensive. I’m going to start trying to use some of these “recipes” you listed.
Addendum: to my recipe for detergent (a couple above), I only use 3 teaspoons (which equals 1 Tablespoon), not tablespoons. That would probably be too much.
Don’t forget “make your own dishwasher soap”
http://homesteadrevival.blogspot.com/2010/07/homemade-dishwasher-soap.html
I’ve used homemade laundry detergent for quite some time. There are a couple things to know about it. If you have hard water, you will end up with soap scum in your machine if you use actual soap. (Like Dr. Bonner’s; the Ivory that one commenter mentioned is a detergent bar, not soap, so no scum from that.) To help combat this, I use white vinegar as a softener. The other thing to know is that whites will get more dingy and grey. This is because there aren’t any optical brighteners in homemade stuff. A nice workaround is to add some extra borax when you’re doing your whites. Or go all out and boil your whites in a borax solution, like my grandma used to do. ~_^
the mittens are KILLING ME!!!! xov
I love these Honey Bee Mittens….
I just love your Probably Something You Would Like posts. They let me see the coolest things the internet has to offer. Thank you and keep posting them!