I've gone green!

Well, that's the trendy way to put it. However, the decision was mostly for the health of my little family (dog especially) and my wallet. I've started on the road to not using chemicals, and I've succeeded on the easy ones so far. It's a lot cheaper, honestly. I still use a little dish soap, febreze, dryer sheets, windex, face wash, and makeup. I've turned to making my own soap, which is really nice. It's mostly waiting, and an hour of work at most. I'll replace dish soap with my olive oil liquid soap I'll be making (adding tea tree oil to make it antibacterial) on Monday. once it finishes settling and evening out in about a week, I'll start replacing. My new face soap's curing in my closet, and it smells lovely. I used tea tree, geranium, lavender, and other oils in a soap made with half lard, half crisco. I'll see how that works out. I put green tea in there to make it prettier, and it has quite a bit of nettle extract.

I wash my dishes with a mix of 2 cups borax, 1 cup washing soda, 1 cup baking soda, and 1/4 cup citric acid. I toss 2 heaping tablespoons in before the wash, and have vinegar in the rinse agent thingy. It took a lot of tweaking, but it works and the chemical fumes don't pour out the vent. My dishes don't smell like they've been bleached, and there's no chemical residue going into my food.

My clothes are washed using my handmade lard and crisco soap plain with borax, washing soda and baking soda. It's about 5 parts borax, 3 parts washing soda, 2 parts baking soda with as much soap as I made crumbled in. I use 1/8 cup (I found a nifty oyster shell that measures that amount) per load or more, depending on how dirty. Vinegar goes in the downy ball. I'll get dryer balls instead of dryer sheets when I can afford them. So far, I've washed dozens of loads this way and it's gotten all the nasty smell from the mold problem at our old house out.

Instead of comet cleanser, I use a water/vinegar mix and a powdered mix of baking soda, washing soda, and a bit of borax with citric acid added. It works like a dream and really bleaches stains out without using harmful chemicals.

Borax, baking soda, and washing soda are all naturally-occuring. While it might be harmful to eat borax or washing soda, they're a lot less toxic than bleach. Citric acid's derived from fruit and is 100% food safe like baking soda and vinegar.

I'm working on a window wipe that works for me, and I'm cheating with windex while that happens.

There haven't been paper towels in my house in nearly 2 weeks, and with a washer/dryer and a healthy collection of rags, I don't really care. I have a few dozen good rags, and I've been using them for everything. The less linty ones I use to drain oily food with, and we've been using cloth napkins. I've been using organic practices with my little deck garden so far since I see no need for chemicals. I empty out old tea bags into the water, and throw out things like corn husks and potato peels into the buckets to feed the worms I put in there after I went fishing.

The real kicker to all of this is that I'm not spending as much money by FAR. Once I get my mop and finish off my swiffer refills, that'll be $10/month I save in those things. I'm not spending $18 for a Costco pack of dishwasher detergent. My average bottle of laundry detergent gave me about 20 loads and was $7. I just made about 100 loads worth of detergent for probably $3.

Borax and Washing soda both come out to less than $3 per box. I get a 13 pound bag of baking soda at Costco for about $5. I buy citric acid at the soap supply store for about $3.50 a pound. Lye's $11 for 2 pounds here, and fats to make basic soaps are very cheap at the grocery store or free if you're willing to render your leftover fatty pieces of meat. Vinegar's dirt cheap, especially if you get the 2 gallon pack at Costco.

I'm working on my own lotions (just need money for wax, mostly) and my own makeup when I master what's on my plate so far. I made my own powder from cornstarch and enough cinnamon and ginger to color it right.

Cleaning and housekeeping's become fun again, for me. If I can do this, just about anyone can. I have less waste now that I'm following a rule of not throwing out things if I can put them to other use. I have a container full of peanut butter jars, jugs, and other plastic packaging that I've been drawing from. I had to store leftovers and instead of a bowl with plastic wrap, I used a leftover frosting container I'd washed. It's a challenge to see what I can reuse for what purpose, and how little I can throw away. I eventually want a compost bin, but that might be a while with my limited space.