BLULOW (All About Living Green)

I was looking around the internet for a recipe for natural air fresheners. Let’s face it; we all have those occasions where we would like to clear the air, if you get my drift.

Rather than using the grocery store aerosol sprays, I would prefer something a bit more natural. Sometimes potpourri doesn’t cut it. Imagine my surprise when I saw the recipe for ‘Air Care Room Spray’ found on the Rainforest Organics site. It calls for ¼ cup of distilled water, ¼ cup of vodka and 25 drops of natural oils.

The instructions say “combine an enjoy.” Hmmm, do I spray it or drink it. Let’s face it, after throwing back a few shots of the room spray, who cares how the room smells?

It’s been a little over a year that I’ve been using homemade laundry detergent. I’ve got to say that overall I found it to be a positive experiment. There are a few tweaks here and there and a little bit of intervention required but all in all I will continue to use the homemade laundry detergent. Here are my general observations:

Liquid Laundry Detergent:

This is the more economical of the two options (here’s the recipe). It makes a much larger batch and can go a lot further than the

powdered option. However, I found that modifying the ingredients a little bit gave me varying results.

Variation 1: Ivory soap.

I believe the best batches of homemade laundry detergent were those made with Ivory soap. For a little extra cleaning power I tried a combination of Ivory and Fels Naptha soap. The only problem was that the Fels Naptha caused the solution to be more gloopy and difficult to stir. It required more stirring and chopping every time I used it (A small price to pay for clean clothes).

Variation 2: Lever Soap

One day while making homemade laundry detergent I realized that I and didn’t have Ivory soap and I was in a pinch so I used Lever instead. Although I liked the smell of Lever, I found that it didn’t quite get rid of some of the odors.

When the clothes came out of the washer and dryer, they smelled good and fresh, but once the clothes came into contact with human sweat, they generated an unpleasant smell. The smell was not overpowering but just enough to realize that your clothes shouldn’t smell like that. I found that the neckline of the t-shirts seemed to smell the worst, probably because it’s closer to the nose than other areas.

Let’s face it, no one smells like a daisy after a workout, but this smell was a different smell and one that I’d rather not have in my clothes.

Powdered laundry detergent

I found the powdered laundry detergent to work best. It’s not only quicker and easier to make, but it seemed to get rid of odors and clean the clothes very well. It costs slightly more than the homemade liquid laundry detergent, but it’s worth the extra couple of cents per load. It’s still much less expensive than store bought laundry detergent.

Downside:

I did find one downside is that there seems to be in accumulating dinginess that occurs with white clothes. It took me a little while to realize the change, but after looking at the white clothes over a period of time, they seemed to lose their brightness. When I first noticed it, I added additional bleach to the wash, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I noticed this more with the liquid than the powdered detergent.

Conclusion:

I will continue to use the homemade laundry detergent using the powdered version more so than the liquid. The liquid one I found to be a great pre-treatment for hard to get rid of stains. I poured the liquid detergent directly on the stain, rubbed it in a little and laundered as usual.

Homemade laundry detergent has gotten us through a year of ground in grass, dirt, mud and geese poop stains on white football uniforms. It also got us through various and assorted construction projects, cheer leading uniforms, gym workout clothes and normal every day wear and tear (not to mention Fido’s bedding).

So far, the homemade laundry detergent has been able to handle 98 to 99% of all the stains. I would recommend purchasing one box of your favorite store-bought detergent to periodically use on white clothes to maintain their bright whiteness.

As far as the cost savings…

I average about 2 - 3 loads of laundry a day six days a week. At two per day, over a period of a year that equals 624 loads for the year (an underestimation).

If half of the loads were washed with homemade liquid detergent and the other half with homemade powdered detergent, the calculations would be as follows:

624 divided by 2 = 312 liquid and 312 powdered

312 times 1 cent per liquid load = $3.12
312 times 3.5 cents per powdered load = $10.92

Total cost to wash 624 loads = $14.04

Do you think the store-bought detergent will get you 624 loads of laundry for $14.04?

I love nature just as much as the next person but there are a few things that really work my nerves. The insatiable hosta munching deer is one of them, second only to flower box and yard destroying squirrel.

There are several ways to deter deer from eating your plants (they seem to love hostas). There are store bought deer repellents, but I prefer to use a natural deterrent. A friend of mine uses hair. She takes hair from her brush and spreads it around her plants, sort of like decorating a Christmas tree. I guess the individual’s scent is enough to deter the deer from eating the plants.

That works well as long as weather conditions leave the hair in place. A few windy rainy days means re-decorating the plants with more hair.

If hair is a scarce commodity in your home like it is in ours (we keep our hair very short), you might have to choose another method. Just like with hair, I’m using a substance that is plentiful. As a matter of fact, I’m 100% sure that every household has this commodity and it’s 100% natural. Deer don’t like urine. Yep, every day ordinary pee.

Last year we didn’t have a deer problem because we allowed Fido to pee wherever he chose; the front yard, side yard or back yard. It didn’t make a difference as long as it wasn’t in the house. It was a wonderful natural deer deterrent.

The upside is that the deer didn’t eat the hosta plants; the downside is that the yard looked like it was a battleground for a serious intergalactic conflict. The dog pee created a plethora of burn spots in the grass.

This year we decided to improve the looks of the lawn and trained Fido to pee in one spot. Our lawn has improved, but the deer have decided to return. So, keeping with the urine theory, we decided to sprinkle urine on the plants.

Wait, it’s not as gross as it sounds. All you have to do is keep paper cups in the bathroom. Once every few days, fill one of the cups and sprinkle the urine over the outdoor plants. It will deter the deer.

The only downside is that the urine gets washed away every time it rains so you’ll need to ‘pee’ on your plants after a good soaking. For some reason kids love this deer repellent method…go figure.

Word of warning, do not store urine. Urine has a tendency to develop muscles over time and you may not be strong enough to be able to withstand the odor. Urine is an abundant commodity. Why not put it to good use?

Yet another use for white vinegar. Pour some on your pesky weeds, give them about a week and watch them dry up, turn brown and whither away.

I poured white vinegar on some of the weeds that always grow in-between the bricks on my patio. A few days later, look at the difference. The one with vinegar is drying up. Once they’re dry, they’re easy to pull up.

Untreated Weed

4 Days after Vinegar

I’m hesitant to use this method on weeds that are mixed in with viable grass. It might kill the surrounding grass as does the chemical products sold in home supply stores. Who knows, maybe I’ll try it on an inconspicuous portion of the lawn and report my findings.

In the meanwhile, I’m thrilled to be able to use a natural product to remove the weeds from the patio.

One word of advice…use a funnel or something that will aim the vinegar to just the right spot. I attempted to pour it straight from the bottle into the cracks of the patio and got more on the bricks than the cracks.

I’ve been on vacation, so I haven’t posted any additional blulow tips for a while.

Here’s a quickie to hold you over until I get back:

White Vinegar - a staple for a blulow household.

Here are some uses:

1. Laundry softener. Use it instead of your regular softener. No, it does not give the downy or snuggle fresh smell, but it does remove the excess soap that causes hard laundry. Honestly, I use it in the wash, and use ½ of a softener sheet in the dryer because I want the fresh scent (Some folks mix ½ vinegar with ½ liquid softener. I haven’t tried that as yet, but it is on my to do when I get back).
2. Great as a window cleaner (see earlier post ). One tip, for streak free windows is to use distilled water. I’ve found that over time, regular water will leave a mineral film.
3. Removes spots from dishes cleaned in a dishwasher (after using your homemade dish detergent).
4. Add a little to your water to clean your coffee machine reservoir. It removes the mineral deposits that are making your coffee taste less than perfect.

For other great vinegar uses check out House Clean the Green Way: Practical Uses for White Vinegar and The Vinegar Institute. They’re chock full of great tips.