Self-sufficient households; help!

[Hellvagirl]

Just thought I'd share this website with those of you who are looking for homemade cleaners,laundry soap,etc.....

www.recipegoldmine.com/house/house.html

They have recipes for almost anything you can think of.

Lisa

 

[2dream]

We were notified last week that our power bills will be increasing by 28% effective on our next bill. The power company was kind enough to notify everyone by putting the notice in the newspaper.
Since I don't take or read the paper normally it was just a fluke that one of the guys at work brought a paper in and left it laying on the break table. I just happened to spill coffee on it. LOL
Anyway, I almost fainted when I saw that article.
DH and I put up a "Solar Dryer". Hanging cloths out in the sunshine makes up for the washing powder not having a scent. I still dry some things in the dryer but, now instead of the perpetual wash and dry on the weekends it is just a few things that are almost dry already thrown into the dryer for a few minutes. NOTE: Dryers us lots of energy to heat up. So I make sure if I have more than two different types of loads of clothes to dry that I have them ready to run back to back so the dryer only has to heat up one time.

 

[Mom 2em All]

I just wanted to tell you all that may be having a hard time finding the Fels-Naptha, that I found it today at Meijer' but they didnt have it with the detergents. It was in the same section as regular bar soap- you may want to try looking there if you cant find it.

Thanks for this recipe. I am going to share it with my mother and my two grown daughters.

 

[MandyH]

Well, the homemade washing power ISN"T getting my clothes clean, nor does it smell good when I take the clothes out of the washer. I guess I'll have to go back to the $20 bottle of tide.

 

[dirtdoctor]

No one has still answered my question? what is the cost factor for home made laundry soap? If you can get it Cheap on sale by frugally cutting coopons.(oh chicken lingo sorry), then i would save money that way and take the savings to plant or raise some thing that will put meat on your table and help provide for your family. Thats why i dont grow potatos, they are soo cheep (chicken lingo) and why should i waste my garden space growing somehting that is so cheep to buy, so i save my money and buy feed for the feeder cow, or goats or _________fill in the blank for your own sufficiency needs.

I Never knock anyone trying to be self sufficeint, but i didnt hear of a SHORT SUPPLY of laundry soap. I thot it was regually avaialble. (i might be wrong, i have been wrong on many other occasions).

At the MExican market (this is not a RACIAL SLUR), they sell some laundry soap by the 20 pound and 50 pound bag, $10-20+/- dollars.

anyone know a good recipe for Chicken? id like to make chicken jerky, after all they all got throw away parts to process, gizzard, kidney, heart,,,,etc..... I hates to waste them good parts, but i hate to fill my freeze with them too, jerky might be a better use for them pieces.
Jack's Roo Jerky!! Any thots on that?

Best to you all
Jack

 

[Cassandra]

Quote:
Jack, I absolutely agree with you. But not every self-sufficiency decision is about saving money. Granted, for ME they almost always are, but not always.

For example if I can get one bar of soap and 3 cardboard boxes of powder to make laundry detergent equal to 5 jugs of laundry detergent, I've just replaced a bunch of plastic for a little paper in my trash. (I have not actually done the carbon footprint math, this is just an example.)

Cost wise, it seems like it will save me a little money making my own detergent. Bottom line for me. Because MOST of the time, I am not willing to spend a whole lot of extra money to go "green" and self-sufficient. I know there is a lot of cheap detergent available out there, but IME, it doesn't work worth a poop. It just doesn't get clothes clean. So I end up buying a mid-grade variety when what I really want is Tide because I know it works, but just can't bring myself to plunk down that money on it. So, if what I am getting works better than the cheap stuff, but cost a lot less than the expensive stuff--it works out for me.

Right now, at the beginning of my self-sufficiency career, I find I'm putting down a big initial investment. I spent $300 on chicken coop materials, for example, and put in a lot of sweat plus money for chickens and feed. It's going to take a LOT of eggs to make back that initial investment.

I like home grown onions WAY better than store bought ones, but the store ones are so cheap to buy. Same for a lot of things.

These days, I'm actually looking for things that I can not buy at all--where can I cut out expenses altogether? It's slow going.

Cassandra (storm coming... got to go get eggs & close up everyone before the bottom drops out--I can hear it coming

)

 

[Mom 2em All]

I made three batches- and I still have left over Borax and color safe bleach. I purchased four bars of the Fels-Naptha, so I have one of those left over too.

Cost for all ingredients cost me approximately 10 dollars.
I just now washed 14 loads of laundry. (my washer is broken, wanna know how much it cost me to go to the laundry mat? 35 dollars. AND I lugged over half the clothes/towels home to dry them).

Fourteen loads of laundry (family of six, sometimes seven) and I barely made a dent in my home made laundry detergent.

(Okay, I dropped the box in the parking lot and I was scrunched down scraping it all back into my box).

I priced the cost of one box of laundry detergent (Tide) same size as the empty box I filled with home made detergent. Cost was 15.79. If I had used it for my 14 loads of laundry, the box would either be gone, or close to it. Homemade detergent only makes sense.

 

[Beekissed]

With my liquid recipe, I can make 80 loads for under $1....if you can show me a cheap, effective detergent that doesn't smell like cheap cologne and is great for my septic system, for that amount of money, go ahead! It takes me all of 10 min. to make this stuff, it smells wonderful, is great for all our greasy work clothes and keeps all those plastic jugs out of the landfill. I feel pretty good about all that. Now, if I had to order these ingredients online and I wasn't saving money, I wouldn't bother!

 

[FloridaChickenChick]

Quote:
Try the liquid rather than the powder! I absolutely love it. Inexpensive, pretty to look at (I used Zote instead of Fels Naptha because it's what I could find), and I think it smells great. Plus the stuff comes out of the dryer very soft. We don't have a clothesline yet, but from what I've heard, even line dried clothes are soft with this stuff.

 

[okiemommy]

Well, the homemade washing power ISN"T getting my clothes clean, nor does it smell good when I take the clothes out of the washer. I guess I'll have to go back to the $20 bottle of tide.

I wasn't terribly impressed with it the first time, so I tweaked it a little. I use a 1/4 cup which is 4 tblsp. (i measured out my tblsp Intomy 1/4 cup measuring cup), and I also decided to soak the clothes for a little bit. They came out great. I pre-treated some really bad stains by rubbing the mixture into the stain and let it set for about only 5 min. That lightened the stain a lot. Previously I hadn't been able to make a dent in those stains with the spray and wash treatment setting for about 30 mins.

Nope it doesnt smell like tide, It doesn't really have much of a smell at all, but it's healthy and it's cheap, and it's worth it to me....as long as hubby isn't alergic!!

I'm not sure, but if you have hard water that could be affecting the results. We do, and I don't know if that was the cause, but once I tweaked it, I was happy with it.