Family Cloth

When looking at your average family's monthly budget, the idea of toilet paper is pretty much a given. You have got to have TP, right? Maybe not. There are other options out there. Some, like a bidet, may not be in your budget. However, "family cloth" is one of those out there ideas that might not be so crazy after all.

Almost two years ago now I was given some reusable baby wipes as a shower gift. I had never considered using reusable wipes, even though we planned to use cloth nappies. After a brief check of the interwebs to find how people use them (we go with a simple solution in a spray bottle), I was on board. The longer I used them, the more I liked them. I got some cheap baby wash cloths to add to the stash. I made some wipes out of scrap flannel. I cut old stained t-shirts into nice little wipes. Basically, the more I used them, the more that I loved them. The Little Girl's tushy was so clean and pampered, and it really did not take any extra effort since I was already washing the cloth nappies. It was just one more thing to toss into the bin next to the changing table.

Then, we went from breastmilk poops to solid food poops in those nappies. It was definitely a difference. I quickly came to the conclusion that we needed a different system. The poops needed to be flushed, and taking the nappy from the changing table in the bedroom to the bathroom and back again was a pretty risky endeavor. A second bin for the bathroom was going to be needed.

I had heard of the idea of family cloth, but I was not sold on it. However, when that second bin made its appearance next to the toilet, I figured that I could give it a test and see. By day number two, I was all in and not going back. You have no idea how nice your tush can feel when you clean it with actual cloth and a bit of water. I now am sad any time that I have to use ordinary TP. It is just not the same. I cut up a few more stained t-shirts to make up for how many more wipes were going to be used before washing, and we are blasting forward.

I am not, however, unreasonable. We will probably always have ordinary TP on hand for guests who are less adventuresome. As of now, we will have it on hand for an unconvinced husband too. If you are ever a guest at our house, I invite you to give it a try for yourself. It is ok. No one else has to know.

Jams and Jellies

It has been a busy summer for us here on our urban homestead. It is really astounding how much time and energy is required for gardening and food preservation. Things have slowed down considerably as of late giving me time to catch up on all the things around the house that were ignored all summer. While many would probably question my spending hundreds of hours doing this, they do not know what they are missing.

There was a time in my life when I thought nothing of purchasing jam from the grocery store. That was before I started to eating homemade. This year our dining will feature strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, and mixed berry jams as well as dandelion jelly. All were picked at the peak of freshness and quickly processed to preserve maximum flavor. Cost of supplies figures to about $1 per half pint jar (if you are reusing jars - add another $1 or so for a new jar). That obviously does not include the hours required to make the jam or can it. However, we will be enjoying jam all year that tastes considerably better than even the fancy stuff from the store.

You can go buy your "locally sourced" stuff at the farmers' market. We will stick with our even more locally sourced and produced version.

Earth Day

Today, pagan Gaia worship reaches its annual pinnacle. Millions of school children will "celebrate Mother Nature on the holiday that has been set aside for her" by making craft projects and chanting "reduce, reuse, recycle." A few members of the Religion of Earth Savers will be interviewed on TV bewailing Climate Change. (A few years ago, it was Global Warming. Within my lifetime it was Global Cooling.)

Every year, I mark (not celebrate) this day. Previously, I have made a canvas tote bag emblazoned with "Vegetarians are eating the Rainforest," burned an empty plastic bottled in the front yard, ate about a pound of meat for breakfast (eggs, steak, bacon, sausage - and a belly ache that was totally worth it), and chopped down a tree. This year, I will be setting traps for the bastard bunnies who try to eat up my garden. 

Wailing for the Trees

While this video has been around for a while, I keep going back to watch it again and again. It is a bit like watching a train wreck - you can not look away. Moonbats in their Temple of Gaia doing performance art. I suspect that they have scared away all of the wildlife for a half mile with their racket. Some of the noises that they are making sound a lot like what you would hear in the labor and delivery ward at your local hospital.

Seriously? How could they possibly expect anyone to take them seriously when they are doing this? Watching this makes me want to take a chain saw or an ax out into the woods. 

Grocery Budgeting

Last weekend, Gwyneth Paltrow was all over the interwebs for taking a Food Stamps Challenge by living on the $29 per week (per person) that they estimate a person on SNAP receives, and she posted what she got for her $29 at the grocery store. Of course, everyone on the web lost their ever living minds over the amount of food and her choices.

Before I go further, attempting to see how people in less financially fortunate circumstances live is commendable. I do not judge her harshly for it. 

A lot of people have weighed in on how difficult it would be to eat for a week on so little and how doing so week in and week out is not reasonable. In my experience, it is actually much more difficult to do for a single week than it is over an extended period of time - we stock up when things are on sale, so we can stretch our dollars much mo. We live quite comfortably and healthily on a budget that is equal or less to this and have been for years. Oh, and yes - we eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

First of all, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a staple and are on the menu for lunch almost every day. Buy bread at a bakery outlet (we pay 80 cents a loaf for whole wheat bread most of the time but sometimes can get 2/$1 depending on the day) and stock up on peanut butter when it is on sale (maybe $2 per week total). I make homemade jams and jellies, so the PB&Js are not such a deprivation (and the jams are cheaper than purchasing it from the store). It takes a fair bit of time and energy, but it is worth it. Apples, oranges, and bananas are less than $1/pound (bananas come in less than 40 cents a pound at our local gas station). Lunch for a week runs about $2-$3 per person. For the week. If we're splurging, I will get a bag of Aldi's brand chips for less than $2, and it lasts over a week.

Breakfast is an inexpensive meal. Eggs on sale run about 99 cents a dozen. Otherwise, we are looking at $1.29. Two eggs (about 20 cents or less), a couple of slices of toast (12 cents) and a piece of fruit, makes a healthy breakfast for $3-$4 per week per person. For a change up, oatmeal is filling and an even better bargain.

We have breakfast and lunch covered for easily less than $10 per person. Now, we've got about $20 each for a week for dinners. There are plenty of websites that have recipes that you can make for $5 to feed 4 people. (This generally means 2 meals for us). If we are eating those strictly, it costs us less than $10 per person for the week. That leaves an extra $10 at the end of the week for any additional items that we might need and to allow for stocking up on sale items.

Garden Preparations

Last week

I have a track record when it comes to gardening. I grow weeds. I have never had success getting the things that I want to grow. I am not satisfied with things staying that way. Therefore, I have sought out a mentor. Basically, I have a master gardener who is willing to work with me as a low (ok zero) skills apprentice. Last weekend, I started working on my first assignment in the west garden. (Yes, we have two.) The space was filled with dead leaves and crab grass. Last weekend, I raked out all the dead leaves and started turning over the soil. You can see in the back corner where I started. Then, it rained pretty much all week. Since it was pretty soggy, I did not get out during the week to do any more work.

Today

Today I was back out at it turning soil and raking the dead grass out of the lawn to use on the garden. Most of the area that will be used for planting vegetables this year has been turned. The part that remains is very slow going as it has a lot of crab grass that needs to be pulled out. This will be completed this next week.

Next week, I will be finishing raking the dead bits out of the rest of the lawn. I will also be beginning work on the east garden. It is in a lot worse shape than the east. 

The Year 2000

I grew up in the 80s. The Cold War was in its final stages, and the future should have been as bright as the neon clothes that everyone was wearing. Instead, we got a steady stream of gloom and doom about environmental catastrophism. Let me give you a quick look at some of what elementary school children were told 25 years ago about how things would look by the year 2000 for those of you who have forgotten or who are too young to know:

• Landfills would be full
• Fossil fuels would have entirely used.
• Rainforests and their bio-diverse ecosystems would be wiped out.
• The ozone layer would be completely gone causing blindness in wild animals and anyone who did not wear sunglasses.
• Smog would be make it difficult for people to breathe anywhere in the world.
• Global warming would result in it being too hot for people to survive at the equator, and the sea levels rising would have wiped out coastal regions and all of Florida.
• In short, the Earth would likely be so damaged that we would need to live on colonies on the moon or other planets. 

You think that I am exaggerating these claims? In science class (multiple years no less) during the lead up to the eventual opening of Biosphere 2, we were given the assignment of designing moon colonies. (My mom may still have a completed project or two stashed in a box of my class projects somewhere.) The traditional 3 Rs of Reading 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic were replaced with Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. There were stories about people protesting excessive packaging in cereal boxes by leaving the box at the grocery store and taking the inner bag with them when they finished at the checkout lane. McDonald's started making the benches at their playgrounds out of compressed styrofoam packaging from Big Macs. People who used plastic bags instead of paper ones were practically evil incarnate.

We are now 25 years down the road and 15 years past the due date on these predictions. None have happened. (Paper bag usage at the grocery store is now more evil than plastic. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) You want to know why people do not believe in Global Warming (or Climate Change, or whatever it is called today)? You want to know why folks are skeptical about your dire predictions? This would be it.

Laundry Soap

Before I got married, I never really gave much thought to laundry soap. I grew up in a Tide home, but after graduating highschool and venturing into the brave new world, I just bought whatever had a good price on it when I needed to buy more. The Greenie Weenies raged around me about how it is better for the environment to purchase the eco-friendly (and super expensive) stuff, but I have always been too broke for that stuff. I just bought my super econo-friendly stuff and went about my life. This probably would have continued for years if the Dread Pirate Roberts did not have very definite thoughts on laundry soap - one brand and only one type within that brand. All Free and Clear. My laundry detergent world was rocked.

Now, All is not the most expensive detergent out there, but it is definitely not the cheapest either. The best price per load comes on the big giant bottle.....advertised as 114 loads for about $12 (about 10.5 cents per load). Watching sale prices closely, I could maybe save a dollar per bottle, but this is a whole lot of work watching the weekly sales at Target, planning extra money in the budget to stock up, and then finding a place to store all those huge bottles of soap - and it was still over 9 cents a load. (I have not done a tally to see if I actually got 114 loads out of a bottle. I suspect that it is less than that based on how often I need to replace the bottle. As such, the cost per load is likely higher. We can use their number for today.) 

Why do I care about 10 cents per load of laundry? It is only a dime, right? Wrong. For our family of three, I do about ten loads of laundry a week plus extra a few times a year for washing blankets and comforters. That is over $50 per year on laundry detergent. The thrifty part of me chafed at this number, but I had no idea how to do anything about it.

Then a friend of mine told me that she had made her only laundry detergent.

I was intrigued.

I went to the interwebs to learn all about the world of homemade laundry soap, and there is a ton of options out there. I spent more time than I would like to admit researching the different recipes as well as the pros and cons in the liquid vs. powdered debate. (I went with team powdered. It is less messy to mix and takes up less space to store.) 

After deciding on a recipe, I went to Target. I bought a box of Borax for $4 (enough to make 9 batches of detergent. I can probably find a better deal online for the next time that I need to purchase it, but I hate waiting when I get inspired.); I could not find washing soda, and I was too impatient to order it online, but a quick search of the interwebs informed me that I could make washing soda from baking soda. (You can in a pinch. It is a pain in the tush and does not really save any money. I would recommend just ordering it. Then you can have year round Christmas when the package arrives on your doorstep.) Normally washing soda runs about $4 a box (estimating enough to also make 9 batches). I did not need to buy a bar of soap for the project because the DPR has been saving his soap stubs in the linen closet for me when he gets a new bar of Irish Spring. I won't have enough stubs to make a whole batch the next time that I need it, so I will need to use some fresh bars of soap too. *insert mental math to determine cost of soap* I figure it will cost about $1 per batch for me to get the soap that I need between fresh bars of soap and the stubs going forward.

Here is how it breaks down. Each batch makes enough for 32 loads of laundry. (Possibly a bit more. We will use the low number for this though.) I can make 9 batches worth of laundry detergent for $17 which should wash 288 loads of laundry. This calculates out to just under 6 cents per load. 

Verdict: Win! 

• Save over $20 per year on laundry soap. 
• No more worrying that I will miss the week that detergent is on sale. 
• No more trying to find a place to store half a dozen huge bottles of detergent

For the Greenie Weenies out there - this method also uses a lot less packaging and is therefore eco-friendly in addition to being budget friendly.

Slow Drains

No worries Mama!

The reason that I normally shower instead of taking a bath is that all the dirt that was on you is now soaking in the water. This is why I get so completely grossed out when the tub is draining slowly, and you end up standing ankle deep in whatever filth you were trying to remove from your body. Yuck.

So, the other day, the drain in our bathtub was slow. It had probably been getting slower for a while, but I noticed it all at once. Normally, this would result in a trip to the store to figure out which bottle of caustic and very expensive sludge was the one that would make the water flow nicely again followed by another trip to the store because the three treatments in the first bottle did not do the trick. (Ultimately, there was usually a partial bottle that needed to be stored somewhere - but where do you even keep stuff like that?) At some point, I would panic because the stuff dripped on something, and then I would wonder how many more times I could clear the drain before the pipes had holes in them and were leaking into the basement. When the drain was finally flowing again, I would need to run about 100 gallons of water down it to convince myself that it was all gone, and there was no longer a danger of chemical burns on my feet. Frankly, a slow drain has always been a high stress all day project for me. This time though, I said enough is enough. There HAS to be a better way.

There are a LOT of suggestions available on the interwebs. The trick is to find one that actually works which takes trial and error sometimes. It could not be any worse than my normal method, so I figured that I did not have much (if anything) to lose. After looking at a few sites, I decided that this website gave instructions that looked the most likely to produce successful results. 

I did add a few steps and make some modifications. For starters, they did not mention removing fur balls first, but I unscrewed the catch thing on the drain and using a needle nosed pliers pulled out a dog colored hairball about the size of a guinea pig. You would think that she was never brushed. The water was still draining slowly after that, so I continued with the instructions from the site.....big pot of boiling water down the drain, half a cup of baking soda, let it sit while I worked on other projects for a bit, microwaved a mix of one cup water and one cup vinegar for a couple of minutes before dumping it down the drain, put another big pot of water on the stove, and dumped it down the drain when the water boiled. 

It worked.

The first time.

No special trip to the store for supplies since I had vinegar and baking soda in my pantry.

I spent less than $1 for the fix instead of at least $10 for a bottle of drain cleaner.

I do not have a nasty bottle of caustic sludge that needs to be carefully stored out of reach of small children and pets.

I took a shower and did not worry that the skin was being dissolved off my feet.

Spring Time

Freshly picked dandelion greens

It is spring in Wisconsin. The snow is melted; people are preparing their gardens; and the outdoor farmers' markets will be starting soon. I love buying fresh vegetables directly from the folks who grow them and talking to them about their wares. Not many people will wax poetic about heirloom tomato plants, but your best bet to find one is by strolling through your local market. The prices are often much better than the supermarket since the overhead is lower, and the growers can help you to learn about how to spot the most flavorful produce. There are a lot of things that are hard or impossible to find at the supermarket. (Kohlrabi and ground cherries come to mind when thinking of those delicious gems.)

You want to know the major drawback of the farmers' market? It is the same as one of the major pitfalls of shopping at the co-op. The members of the Food Worshiping Religious Order of Earth Savers. If you do not know what I mean, you might be one of them. They are the ones who insist that all their food be organic and hyperventilate if their hummus touches gluten. Their purchases are carried around in a canvas bag purchased off Etsy, and the back of their Prius has "Buy Local" and "Namaste" bumper stickers on it. These folks use their disposable income (and often consumer debt) to salve their burden of guilt about something....everything. 

Now, I love to have food that is locally sourced and not chemical laden. (I will even forage for wild berries and dandelions for a fresh meal.) I have some reusable totes (with logos advertising whatever company gave me the bag for free). I want to be a good steward of the world; I do not believe that throwing money at the problems that we face is the solution. We are going to need to actually get our hands dirty to make a difference.