Just Five Minutes

Housework has been hit and miss - actually rather more miss than hit - for the last few weeks. Today I had a free morning and no excuses, so needed to get back on the housework wagon. Inspired by this five little minutes post I grabbed the timer and spent just five minutes in each room. This is what I achieved:

Our Bedroom
Cleared away a pile if clothes (hung up or into laundry basket).
Returned Cherub's pyjamas to her bed.
Cleared a pile of books of the chair.
Cleaned all the fingerprints off the mirrored wardrobe doors.
Put away some receiptes left on my bedside table.

Our Bathroom
Cleaned sink and toilet.
Swished shower tray and shined shampoo and soap dispenser.
Hung up towel left on floor.

Star's Room
Finished putting away accumulated clothes heap.
Threw out empty toiletries.
Put away a jumble of jewellery, hair stuff and make up.

Main Bathroom
Cleaned sink and toilet.
Put away jumble of foam letters and other toys abandoned in the bottom of the bath.

Angel's Bedroom
Changed bed linen.
(Pretended not to see mess!)

If I was in the middle of something when The timer went I carried on until I finished. Overall this all took me about 40 minutes. I also scooped up a load of laundry and threw in bath and shower mats.

Summer Flowers

In my annual fit of gardening enthusiasm - which, I confess, sometimes only lasts as long as it takes to make a trip to the garden centre and peters out before actually planting the luckless plants - I bought some petunias and impatiens at the beginning of the month. Spurred on by an enthusiastic Cherub and the idea that it would look nice to have something flowering in the garden for Cherub's birthday party we managed to put them into pots and tubs. There was a slight hiccup as I randomly grabbed a bag of multipurpose compost rather than proper potting compost - but hey! Compost is compost, yes? Or at least, the wrong compost is surely better than being abandoned to die slowly (or quickly) in a tray. I hope.

Some of the petunias are a beautiful deep pink - deeper than it looks in this picture - and seem to be surviving my inadequacies (three warm, sunny and waterless summer days, despite several mental notes along the lines of "must water flowers"):

In the interests of full disclosure, the purple petunias are drooping sadly:

And these poor sunflowers, grown from seeds Cherub planted at playgroup, are barely hanging in:

Fortunately the impatiens get a little more shade, and are not doing so badly:

I'm sure you will be glad to hear I watered them before writing this post, although writing first and forgetting to water them later would be more typical of my approach to gardening.

Beauty in the Home

I often read blog posts and marvel at the beauty the authors have created in their homes. There are different styles of beauty - like Lucy's crochet and colour at Attic 24, or Mary's simple spaces at Evlogia - but the end result is the same: an inviting, attractive and beautiful home.

I can't do it. Or, at least, maybe I could do it if I tried hard enough, but I don't. Why, I wonder? Partly, I think, because I don't have a style. Now I don't mean that it is essential to have a particular style to make a beautiful home, but I think if you do then it becomes easier to put things together, to get ideas for those little nooks and corners, to see immediately what would give a lift to an uninspiring area.

Also, I don't have the creative imagination it takes to highlight the beauty in everyday things. It would never occur to me to put a bunch of buttercups in a jamjar like this, for instance. I don't have that gift for putting things together on a whim. It takes thought and effort.

And there I run up against laziness ... or perhaps inertia is a better word. I start well, then run out of steam. Take fresh flowers, for example. I love them, but I rarely think to buy them. When I do, I can never achieve more than a stuffed-in-vase effect. I admire them for a day or so, then forget them until they are so far past dead they are half way to mummified. Even then it often takes a couple of days after noticing they are dead to get round to throwing them out. And let's face it, dead flowers are not a good look. 

A quick glance round the sitting room and I can see three examples of my inertia problem. Behind me on the wall is a sun handprint craft I made with Cherub a year ago. Seasonal again now, but it was up there through autumn, Christmas and Easter. The rest of the walls are bare, missing the pictures that got taken down when we decorated and never replaced. Then to my left is a small liturgical year display, still stuck firmly in Mary's month of May with pictures, statues and a rosary (though as I didn't put it there until the middle of May, perhaps it is only fair to keep it there longer?). Lots of good intentions, poorly implemented. On the bright side, I did get rid of two vases of dead flowers yesterday.

I would like to do better. But how?

I think I'll have to ponder that for awhile.

40 Trash Bag Challenge: Weeks 6 and 7 Update

Heading into the final straight of the  40 Trash Bag Challenge ... nine more bags over weeks 6 and 7, making a total of 30 altogether. In theory last week should have been week 8 and the final push, but it didn't happen. Ten more bags to go to reach the target, which I'm hoping I can achieve over this week and next.

11 bags of books

2 bags of old magazines, catalogues and papers

9 bags of clothes

1 bag of old shoes

3 bags of toys, games and puzzles

4 bags of bedding

Star's Room Makeover

Star is my design minded daughter and knew exactly how she wanted her room. For the colour scheme she chose a deep red and white. The longest wall was painted in Roasted Red, and the rest of the walls are Apricot White.

The highlight for Star of having her room done was getting this new Ikea day bed. The section with the storage drawers pulls out to make a double bed for sleepovers, and she can use it as a sofa during the day. The duvet cover came from Argos (a bargain, reduced from £14.99 to £4.99), as did the red rose canvas.

This is the other end of the long wall. She already had the curvy mirror, but it looks much more of a feature on the red background. Like all the other furniture in the room, it came from Ikea.

The shelf holds her penguin collection - Cherub had taken the largest, softest penguin for a walk, so there is a gap at one end - and her piggy bank collection is on the desk (nicely in the way, but she insisted that was where she wanted it!).

She kept her existing white curtains, but has plans to trim them with red braid and tassels. The furry bean bag was a Christmas present a couple of years ago.

... and back to the beginning. The photo frames are still waiting for pictures to go into them. A friend gave her a photo collage that needs to be hung on the red wall, and she is looking for a white wall clock. 

40 Trash Bag Challenge: Weeks 4 and 5 Update

Steaming ahead now with the 40 Trash Bag Challenge ... five bags of books in Week 4, and five bags of clothes in Week 5. Past the half way point with 21 bags of stuff out of the door.

9 bags of books

1 bag of old magazines and catalogues

7 bags of clothes

1 bag of old shoes

3 bags of toys, games and puzzles

40 Trash Bag Challenge: Week 2 and 3 Update

Running a bit behind on my 40 Trash Bag Challenge (week 2 was not a success!), but I managed to get rid of another six bags over weeks 2 and 3, making a total of eleven:

4 bags of books

1 bag of old magazines and catalogues

2 bags of clothes

1 bag of old shoes

3 bags of toys, games and puzzles

40 Trash Bag Challenge

 

Inspired by Willa, I am trying the 40 Trash Bag Challenge from Simply Catholic.  Here are the rules:

1. Pick what size of trash bag you want to use.

2. Each week day for eight weeks fill one bag (or equivalent).  It can be a bag of stuff, toys, clothes, papers – anything,  a box of books, an old TV.  Anything that you can count as clutter is fair game.
3. Update on your blog how it goes.
4. Have fun.

I started last week, and managed five bags between Monday and Thursday.  I am behind on this week, as I was away on Monday and succumbed to a cold yesterday, but I'm hoping to catch up by Friday. I am using large supermarket carrier bags - the home delivery ones that are bigger than the standard checkout version. Not as good as the big black sacks would be but more realistic, and big enough to make a dent in the clutter.

My scores for the first week:

2 bags of books

2 bags of old and outgrown clothes

1 bag of jigsaws. 

Pink Cupcakes

Cherub was in no doubt about the colour she wanted for her room. Pink. She is the most determinedly girly of our children, and would live in a totally pink world if she could.

It was a very bright morning yesterday, and I think the camera overcompensated a bit for the sunlight streaming through the window, giving an extra pink glow to the room.

Above the bookcase are a couple of wall shelves, full of books and teddies (mostly inherited from Angel and Star, but my childhood teddy is up there too).

 

The other end of the room has a cupboard and her dollshouse (also inherited from the older two), that I repainted pink. It was a rather bright blue, which would have stuck out like a sore thumb in pink-world.

The cupcake bedding came from Next, who always seem to have nice little-girl stuff. The duvet is a bit over large for her cotbed, but later in the year we are going to shuffle beds around and she will get a full size one.

We couldn't resist the matching rug and cushion ...

 

I took some "before" pictures, but managed to accidentally delete them before they made it onto the computer. Think mauve and rather more cluttered.

Preparations

We are gradually getting ready for Christmas. We put the tree up last weekend, and Little Cherub has been enjoying herself stripping the ornaments off and lining them up - in the evening we round them up and put them back, having decided it simply isn't worth becoming the Tree Police and that she will eventually tire of the game (hopefully before January 6th!). Yesterday we made Christmas puddings and there is a batch of mince pies in the freezer. Presents are bought and wrapped. I am having an untypically efficient year with leisurely stress-free preparations.

I am feeling so organised I am almost tempted to try this Provencal Christmas Eve tradition ... Les Treize Desserts. Yes, that's right, thirteen desserts. Dorothy makes it sound quite do-able. I would need to adapt to my families less adult tastes, but I think it could be done.

The Daily Grind

Getting back to normal after the summer holidays has left me pondering the daily grind ... the washing, cooking, shopping and cleaning that keep a household running. Once a week I come home from the supermarket with what looks like enough to feed an army and wrestle food into every last inch of our not-big-enough fridge. A few days later the fridge is bare. Our poor, sad, something wrong with its programming washing machine, labours constantly - at up to four hours a load, it really does seem constant - and produces a weekly ironing mountain. And no, I am not one of those people who irons everything, only those items that would look obviously crumpled if left unironed get into the pile. My pathetic attempts at cleaning (I hate cleaning!) just about scratch the surface. (And Dorothy, the only reason my cooker looks so clean in the post below is because it is quite new. And having bought it, I hate it. It's too small and my favourite baking trays won't fit. Grrr!!!!)

I digress. My pondering has been about how my daily grind compares to a housewife's workload in my parents' and grandparents' day. After a conversation with my mother, these are our combined thoughts.

Laundry: Compared to Mum's days with a young family (1960s), not a great deal of difference. If anything I have more laundry to plough through as we seem to have more clothes. I wonder if this is a result of relative affluence, or simply because we buy cheap, lower quality clothes that show marks more and need washing more often. I haven't replaced my dead tumble drier, so we are quits on that one - Mum didn't get a tumble drier until the 1970s. She used to send sheets and table linen to a laundry, which collected them dirty and delivered them pristine. Not an option these days. As it is, I wash daily (or more). She didn't. Back in grandma's / great-grandma's time, washing meant hand washing and a weekly "wash-day". Again there was less stuff to wash - certainly no daily changes of clothes then - and it was physically much harder work. However, if I added together the time spent on washing, hanging, folding and ironing laundry over a week, I think it would easily fill a whole wash day. Not that my washing machine could handle it.

Shopping: Probably most changes here, we thought. In a typical week, I have an organic fruit and vegetable box delivered, milk left on the doorstep by the milkman, do a large supermarket shop, and pick up a few oddments from the convenience store or the supermarket. I have at times done my supermarket shopping online, which is obviously very different and both time and labour saving. Now Cherub is a little older and the girls are in school I am back to doing it myself. In the 60s my Mum didn't have a freezer, which meant it was necessary to buy bread more frequently than I do. The supermarket was relatively small, and used for non-perishables. Bread meant reasonably frequent trips to the bakers, meat was delivered by the butcher, and milk by the milkman (no change there), and fruit and vegetables were largely bought at the market. My Dad's cousin ran a village grocery, and "Uncle Bob" used to deliver an order weekly. That meant her supermarket purchases were more of a top-up than a main weekly shop. Overall, we felt the time commitment was similar, though her shopping involved two or three shorter trips compared to my typical one large and one short. I do, however, have the option to spend a little more and choose the online shopping shortcut.

In the 1930s supermarkets were non-existent. Bread came from the baker, meat from the butcher, fruit and veg from the greengrocers, and pretty much everything else from the grocers. Food shopping was done daily rather than weekly. Even though the daily quantities were not great, it could be quite time consuming as there was no self-service. There could be quite a long wait to be served if there were several customers ahead of you. Plus, obviously, the walk too and from the shops added to the time and effort involved. In the War it was worse - Mum remembered having to walk a four mile round trip to a farm to collect milk after school each day.

Cooking: Again, the main difference is the level of choice we have. I could, if I chose (and if my finances allowed), buy a lot of pre-prepared food and ready meals which would significantly cut both the amount of cooking and clearing-up time. I could also use the freezer to cook ahead, but mostly I don't. As it is, I cook largely the same way as my Mum did. I don't have a great deal in the way of labour saving devices that she didn't. The microwave would be the main one, but I am not a big microwave user - it mainly gets used for reheating. Overall I probably have the edge in terms of spending less time in the kitchen because I do use more convenience foods than she did. Back to her childhood, and then were a few differences - no electric kettle, toaster, mixer and so on. I forgot to ask, but I imagine also no fridge. But still, there isn't much difference in the effort involved in cooking a shepherd's pie or a roast chicken then and now.

Cleaning: Much the same between the 1960s and today, we felt, with no revolutionary new time-saving devices. The vacuum cleaner was a biggy - my grandmother didn't have one in the 30s. Also in the 30s floors were scrubbed on hands and knees, which I only do if mine reaches the stage of looking atrocious. Otherwise it gets a quick swish. My cleaning efforts are sadly handicapped by the level of mess created by our 21st century clutter. We definitely have more stuff around and in the way than my Mum did in the 60s (and she is most certainly not a minimalist!).

So there you have it ... my ponderings on the daily grind, then and now. Overall, we felt there probably was not a great deal of difference in the time and effort required in the 60s and now. Even the tasks that can be sub-contracted have not changed that much - I can do online shopping or buy convenience foods, my Mum could phone through an order to the local grocer for delivery and send out laundry. Having someone come in to clean has always been an option for those who could afford it. In the 30s, the effort involved in tasks was greather, but the amount of stuff involved very much smaller. Whether this evened out I don't know. I would guess not, and that both Mum and I have had things easier.

ToodleDo

I accepted some time ago that I am a failed FlyBaby and do better with the Motivated Moms planner. I downloaded the page-a-day option for 2008 ... and drowned in a sea of paper. In the end I decided I needed a simple to-do list rather than my paper ocean.

I use and love Google Calendar, but unlike iCal they have no to-do function. After bit of rooting around the internet I found ToodleDo ... and I love it almost as much as I love Google Calendar. It is the final piece in my organising jigsaw.

ToodleDo is both simple and flexible. To-do items can be allocated to dates and folders, given priority levels and set to repeat. I entered my Motivated Moms tasks for a couple of weeks, set to repeat daily, weekly or biweekly as appropriate. Then each month I look through my Motivated Moms checklists to add any extra tasks. I now have my own personalised housework checklist. The calendar feature on ToodleDo allows me to see the tasks I have lined up for each day. If things don't get done, it is easy to reallocate them to a future date.

But the absolutely best thing from my perspective is ...

ToodleDo works with Google Calendar

Once a connection to your Google Calendar is set, a little check box appears for each day. Click on the check box and it gives a dropdown ToodleDo menu, which makes it possible to both check off and edit tasks directly from Google Calendar.

It gets better. There is a slim version for iPhone / iPod Touch, which means I can manage my to-do list from my Touch as well as from both the desktop and laptop computers. And I notice there is now a new iPhone application that will allow me to use ToodleDo offline while I am out and about. Other options include Twittering your tasks, emailing reminders to yourself (be your own FlyLady!), linking to iCal, adding ToodleDo to your Google home page, and adding it to the Dashboard on a Mac (this is the one feature that wouldn't work properly for me).

And one more advantage ... it is free. There is a Pro version with additional features, but the free version is working fine for me.

Shopping List

You may find this the most boring post ever, in which case, feel free to move on ...

Lucy of Our Very Own Little House posted her itemised shopping bill for a week as a snapshot in time record and inspired me to do the same. Mine breaks down into three: meat (bought monthly), organic fruit and vegetable box (delivered weekly) and a weekly run round the supermarket. I usually shop on Thursday evenings, so this is my grocery list for the week beginning Thursday July 3rd.

Conversions - 1 kg is around 2 pounds, 1 litre a bit less than 2 pints, and the exchange rate is roughly $2 to £1.

Meat
I buy and freeze meat once a month from Waitrose. It is more expensive than Tesco, but better quality and I believe their animal welfare standards are higher. I came to the conclusion that organic meat, particularly chicken, is simply beyond my budget so this is a good compromise. This is the meat I expect us to eat this week ...

1 large chicken - £3.90 (1/3 off as I bought it on the sell by date and froze it)
1 x 500g minced beef - £1.75 (2 for £3.50 offer)
2 x packs of 8 chicken drumsticks - £3 (another multibuy offer)
lamb and redcurrant sausages - £2.99

Total cost = £11.64

Organic Produce
I have a medium size organic vegetable box and an organic fruit box delivered weekly, paying £21.10 for the two. This week the contents were:

Bag of new potatoes (1.5 kg)
Bag of carrots
4 onions
2 green peppers
1 red pepper
3 courgettes
Red cabbage
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Lettuce
Bunch of wet garlic
6 large apples
4 nectarines
Small punnet of strawberries
10 plums
5 bananas

This is not enough for us for a week so I top up at the supermarket, usually with non-organic produce - trying to balance ethical shopping and budget here!

Groceries (from Morrisons)
I didn't buy much last week, so this was a slightly larger than average trolley load. I usually aim to spend between £50 and £60. I am very much a bargain hunter and will shop partly to my menu plan and partly according to what is on offer - particularly for snacks and things to throw into lunch boxes.

4 packs granary rolls @ 19p - 76p
pack of 6 teacakes - 25p
pack of 3 eccles cakes - 29p
4 cheese twists - 50p
1 x wholemeal loaf - 29p
(all these were heavily discounted as they were on their sell by date)
6 tortilla wraps - £1.09
1 x white sliced loaf - 65p
5 chocolate eclairs - £1.24 (for Angel's French picnic at school)
Small pick and mix salad tray - £1.39 (late dinner for Angel)
300g medium cheddar cheese - £1.71
2 x 250g butter - £1.80 (multibuy offer)
300g houmous - 87p
2 small sticks garlic bread - 58p
4 pints organic semi-skimmed milk - £1.65
2 x 4 Dairylea Dunkers @ £1 - £2 (special offer)
Muller "One" Yogurts 4 pack - £1.10 (special offer)
Egg mayonnaise sandwich filler 400g - £1.09
12 medium organic eggs - £2.61 (special offer)
Strawberry Crisp cereal (store brand) - £1.28
Cookie Crisp cereal - £1.65
Pack of egg noodles - 79p
500g bag 'value' pasta - 19p
500g bag wholemeal pasta - 78p
3 pack tins sweetcorn - £1.08
1 tin Campbells condensed tomato soup - 52p (for making BBQ sauce)
1 kg sugar - 84p
Dried yeast - 99p
Box 480 teabags (store brand) - £2.48
Bisto gravy browning - 91p
750g jar mayonnaise (store brand) - £1.35
Small bottle brown sauce - 31p
2 cans baked beans (store brand) @ 31p - 62p
12 pack French Fries
+ 12 pack Walkers Squares (both = potato chips) - £1.98 (BOGOF offer)
2 x Jacobs Hi Fibre Cream Crackers - £1 (multibuy offer)
2 x 5 Hob-Nobs Flapjacks - £1.25 (BOGOF offer)
2 x 5 caramel Rocky biscuits - 92p (BOGOF offer)
2 x Elkes Cow Biscuits - 69p (BOGOF offer)
3 x 1 litre cartons fresh orange juice @ 65p - £1.95 (special offer)
2 x 1 litre cartons cranberry juice @ 69p - £1.38
2 x 3 packs individual orange juice @ 62p - £1.24
4 x Muller "One" smoothies - £2 (BOGOF offer)
2 x 2 litre cola max + 2 litre lemonade - £1.09 (multibuy offer)
2 packs of 4 cod fishcakes - £1.50 (multibuy offer)
1 bag frozen sprouts - 58p
1 bag McCain oven chips (= fries) - £2.19
2 boxes of 6 vegetarian sausage rolls @ £1.29 - £2.58
2 cheese and tomato pizzas - £2 (multibuy offer)
490g parsnips - £1.12
2 x cucumbers @ 72p - £1.44
6 tomatoes - 69p
Bag small apples - £1
10 bananas - 99p
500g carrots - 45p
Honeydew melon - £1
2.5kg bag potatoes - £1.39
1 pack 6 rolls 'value' kitchen towel - £1.58
Eco-friendly washing-up liquid - 89p

Total cost = £66.67

My budget is £400 for the month and my total spend for the week was £99.41. We also get 4 litres of milk delivered by the milkman each week, which costs £3.02.

LOAFing Again

My attempts to become an ethically-responsible consumer have plateaued since the last update on my LOAF plan. I'm still doing a lot better than I used to, but also have some way to go to reach the level I would like to achieve. Reading Small is Still Beautiful has given me a nudge which I hope will tip me further in the OA direction - organic and animal-friendly. Schumacher-Pearce (where does one stop and the other begin?) waxes eloquent on the evils of industrial scale farming ... animals produced in "factories", genetically modified crops, oversized fields, narrow base of breeds and plant varieties, mechanically intensive, dehumanising, unhealthy ... the list goes on.

All my instincts agree. As the daughter of an old-style farmer, my personal experience of farming is grazing animals, traditional field rotations (crops ... grazing ... hay meadows), natural fertilizers (as a child I spent a lot of time up to my ankles in noxious substances!) and everything on a human scale. I know, on a deep level, that this is how farming should be. But these days, the only way such human, animal and environmentally friendly methods are economical is when they are used on organic farms that can charge a premium for their produce.

There is the rub. The price premium and the lure of cheap food. My heart and my conscience wants to buy organic. My budget doesn't. Which is why I have prevaricated. Yes, I get my organic fruit and veg boxes, and the occasional organic beefburgers or minced beef if they are on offer as a token nod in the direction of organic meat. But chicken? Ugh! The price of free range chicken is scary, and the price of organic chicken is enough to make me stick my head in the shopping trolley and sob!

How to square the circle? Budget more carefully, and eat less meat. This Lent I am eating vegetarian, and I am gradually increasing the number of vegetarian recipes in my repetoire.
While I don't intend to stay vegetarian after Easter, I can cut down the amount of meat I eat quite easily - if the budget will only run to organic meat for two-and-a-bit, I can eat a vegetarian option with Star. Also I have found a couple for new veggie recipes that Tevye enjoys, which I can use to cut down our meat requirements without leaving him feeling a deprived carnivore. Then squeezing out waste elsewhere will allow me to increase my meat budget. Hopefully between the two that circle can be squared.

Knitting Frenzy Meets Economy Drive

I've found myself contemplating crocheting Swiffer cloths.

Seriously.

Is this whole knitting-crochet thing getting out of hand?

Laundry: Part 4

Am I obsessing? Possibly. I promise that after this post I will move on.

I was intrigued by a commenter who had heard that homemade laundry detergent had harmful chemicals, so I thought I would do a little digging (a.k.a. Googling) out of curiosity. The strongest chemical in the mix is borax. Like virtually every other cleaner, natural or synthetic, borax (sodium borate) has an element of toxicity. This article makes it sound quite scary, but ultimately recommends simply keeping it away from food and rinsing clothes and surfaces. However, it is widely recommended as a non-toxic alternative to commercial cleaning products, and can be used in dishwasher detergents, scouring powders, toilet cleaners and a variety of other home made natural alternatives. Essentially it is important to remember that "non-toxic" is a relative term when it comes to cleaners and detergents. As one website I found puts it:

This page offers non-toxic cleaning recipes for a safer home and cleaner environment. Non-toxic cleaners are cleaners that you can use relatively safely, as compared to other commercial cleaning products (which range from fairly safe to extremely dangerous). This does not mean that you can safely eat non-toxic cleaners or spray them in your eyes. Always label your home-made cleaners and keep them out of the reach of children.

In other words, borax in laundry detergent (or even dishwasher detergent) is fine ... but non-toxic is relative. Don't eat the stuff! And make very sure your children can't. That aside, it is safer than commercial products and also ecofriendly, with no nasty phosphates.

A couple of other laundry detergent points before I get off my soap-box (groan!) ... home made detergent will not make lots of impressive looking soapsuds. This does not matter. Bubbles do not make things clean; they just clog up your machine. The first few times you use your new liquid it may leave a residue on clothes (this happened to me the first couple of times). Adding some white vinegar to the wash will stop this - I can't remember how much, or where I read it. Alternatively, just persevere and it will go away. If you want an even more non-toxic, non-toxic detergent you can leave out the borax. It should still get clothes at least moderately clean. And finally, for some odd reason soap flakes are no longer available in the US but are in the UK. If you live in the US you have to grate your own soap, whereas we can just pour it in straight out of the packet. I promise not to gloat as I pour.

Laundry: Part 3

He came.

He saw.

He conquered.

Terry-the-very-nice-washing-machine-repair-man replaced the brushes (what brushes?) and the machine is now whirring round making whizzy happy washer noises.

And the cost of the repair was less than the amount I estimate my home made laundry liquid will save me this year.

Laundry: Part 2

What happens when you economise by making your own laundry detergent?

Your washing machine breaks down.

Grrrr!!!!!!

(And no, the two are not connected. Or, at least, I sincerely hope they aren't!)

Thank God for Terry-our-very-nice-washing-machine-repair-man.

And please, God ... don't let Terry be away for New Year!

Make-your-own laundry detergent

Back in the autumn Lucy at Our Very Own Little House experimented with making her own laundry detergent. It looked so easy and economical that I decided to have a go myself. It worked! Then life got in the way and I didn't get round to making a second batch until just before Christmas. I made about 8 litres of detergent, which can't have cost me more than £1 - a similar amount of Tesco's cheapest would cost about £15. It seems to work at least as well as any of the non-biological washing liquids I normally use (I buy whatever is on offer, but always non-bio and always liquid as powder clogs up my machine's dispenser and makes a horrid, yucky mess I loathe cleaning out). Some stains need a squirt of Vanish spray before washing, but then they needed the same when using "proper" washing liquid.

I used the same ingredients as Lucy but varied the method slightly, leaving the liquid to "gel" overnight before decanting it into bottles. Here is my version of the recipe ...

• Add 1 cup of soap flakes to 1.5 litres of water and heat gently until the soap flakes dissolve.
• Add 1/2 cup each of borax and washing soda and continue heating gently until they dissolve. (I think at this stage it had thickened a little but not a great deal.)
• Tip glop into a bucket and add 6 litres of hot water (I used water from the tap, not boiling hot), stirring well after each litre.
• Leave overnight.
• By morning it separates out into thick glop and slimy liquid. Stir very well until glop and slime have more or less merged into something that vaguely resembles laundry detergent.
• Pour into old detergent bottles.

The texture of my liquid is a bit lumpy, but it can still be poured without having to shake the bottle first and hasn't separated out. I think stirring with a hand whisk rather than the old wooden spoon I used would give a more even texture. It took around 15 minutes to make the mixture and then just a few minutes in the morning for stirring and bottling. I bought the soap flakes and washing soda from the supermarket, and the borax from a local hardware store. I love Lucy's idea of adding a scent, but didn't have anything suitable to hand so ours is "fragrance free".

I am still amazed at just how easy, economical and effective this is. Thank you for the tip, Lucy. I would never have thought of it myself.

Back on the wagon

I fell off the Motivated Mom wagon.

I got back on FlyLady.

I fell off FlyLady.

I wallowed in a failed housewife mess for several months. I got pregnant and was ... too ... tired ...

Now I am no longer tired and I am motivated. I have downloaded my Motivated Mom planner for 2008 and I am so very thoroughly motivated I have even started early (I adapted the pages for next December). I downloaded the whole kit-and-caboodle. Daily planner pages with chores, space for a menu plan and even a plan for reading the entire Bible in a year. At only £4 ($8) for a full year of daily plans I don't have any difficulty justifying the expenditure.

I do think I am better suited to Motivated Moms than any other house control system I have seen. I simply don't see what needs to be done ... or if I do see it, I then forget about it. I like FlyLady for decluttering, but I do better with a simple checklist for basic household tasks. I like being able to check one or two items off if I have a few minutes to spare. I can also pick out more toddler friendly tasks as necessary. I just have to remember to look at what I have done and not get demoralised by things I don't get to, or if I have a few bad days.