Vinegar can do THAT???

Okay, so I need to be quick, b/c I promised myself I'd get to bed early tonight...but I just HAVE to tell you about my cleaning discovery yesterday! I told you before about how I'm trying to use less chemicals, and I've heard over and over that white vinegar is great for cleaning...but I'm so skeptical about stuff like that. I mean, how good could it possibly be? Especially when the recipes I've seen call for you to add only 1/4 C. or so to about a quart to half a gallon of water.

Was I ever wrong!! So, I added 1/4 C. white vinegar to about 24 oz. water (b/c that's how much my spray bottle held), and I added some grapefruit-peppermint essential oil, to make it smell wonderful. I started by using it to mop the floors. I tried something else new, too. Instead of using the regular rag-mop, which I hate, b/c I hate working with a heavy bucket of dirty water, I picked up a pack of 18 white washclothes for a little over $3 at Wal-Mart this week. I put one on my regular Swiffer dry mop and just pushed the wash cloth corners into the little holes where you usually push the swiffer pads. It worked GREAT!! (This was a tip from my sister, Karen!) And they scrubbed the floor wonderfully - honestly, they are so rough, I don't know how anyone could possibly use them on their bodies!! So, anyway, I sprayed the floor with the cleaning solution, then mopped it with my washcloth-Swiffer dealie, and it worked wonders! Grease spots - gone. Spit-up spots - gone. And instead of having to ring out a dirty, nasty mop, all I had to do when the rag was dirty was flip it over and use the other side, then switch it out for a new rag (seeing as I have 18 of them and all!). Piece of cake!! And my house smelled great too!

But I didn't stop there. I decided to finally tackle the white railing along the top of the loft. It was still gross from when we moved in - dusty and covered in dirty handprints from the kids who lived here before. Spray and wipe - unbelievable - the black handprints came right off!! So then I decided to try it on the black handprints on the white walls near the staircase - spray, waited 20 seconds, wiped (didn't even scrub!) - gone! I became a believer!! I then used it to clean the bathroom sinks and faucets, and let me just tell you how easy it was to clean my bathtub - you know that nasty, stuck-on soap ring you get from the bubble bath - yep - spray spray, wipe - gone! Unbelievable! Seriously - why did I ever buy chemicals from the store??? Now when the babies are crawling around on the tile floors slurping up dust mites, I have no worries about what random chemicals they are sucking on!!

And, before I head to bed, here are some of the lovely aprons I am admiring...some are from sewing sites I visit, some from etsy, some from www.kaboodle.com. Seriously - don't they just make you wanna be like martha??? So so so cute!!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Weeks One and Two...I'm gonna call...a success!!

So, as I've said, one of my new blog loves is Simple Mom. One of the things I LOVE LOVE LOVE about her is that she's totally inspired me to get organized...in so many areas...menu planning, cleaning, paperwork, etc.

So, two weeks ago, I started menu planning. I decided to go with a generic weekly plan, as she did. So, our generic weekly plan looks like this:

Mondays - Salad
Tuesdays - Mexican
Wednesdays - Italian
Thursdays - Stir-fry or Leftovers
Fridays - Homemade Pizza
Saturdays - Something New or an Old Favorite
Sundays - Grill night

This made it SO much easier for me to plug in meal plans, having a basic framework - otherwise I found myself getting overwhelmed with just too many recipes to choose from. Anyway, I started by looking at what meat and fish we had in the freezer (which, we happened to have just about everything, due to some major good buys recently), and started plugging in meals based around that. I started off by planning 2 weeks worth of dinners, and used her printable grocery list to check off everything I needed for the recipes.

Then, also at her suggestion, I set up Google Calendar and plugged in my meals for each day. One great thing about Google Calendar is that you can set up many different calendars in one - so I have a "menu" calendar, an "events" calendar (for events/appointments), a calendar for Darrell's days off, etc. Each of those uses a different color for the text, and I can turn them on/off as I please - so I can see them all together, or each separately, as I wish. Then, I set up reminders for each meal - one email reminder, to be sent 12 hours before dinner, and one pop-up reminder, to be given one hour before dinner. That way, when I get online in the morning, there is an email in my inbox, reminding me what's for dinner - this is my reminder to get the meat/fish out of the freezer so it is thawed by dinner time. Then, the pop-up reminder kicks me into gear if I get distracted online - which I tend to do!! Also, I print out my menu calendar and keep it with my household organization binder to have a handy paper reference as well.

And I have to say, it really does alleviate a lot of stress not having to worry about what's for dinner. It's great to not have to worry about it, or get to 5:00 p.m. and be standing in front of the refrigerator trying to figure out what to fix, like I used to. The worst part, of course, is the clean-up. I love cooking; I hate clean-up. But hopefully I will get past that!! :)

The other tool from Simple Mom that I've been using is her Daily Docket. Oh, my, this is a wonderful tool!!! The way I've been using it is to print off enough for the whole week on Sunday. I fill in the meals then, as well as any appointments I already know about. I also developed, this week, a weekly cleaning plan, and I write in my cleaning tasks for each day on the daily dockets. I am a person who LOVES checking things off a list - so this works great for me!! Then, each night before bed, I look at my daily docket for the next day. I determine my 3 MIT's (Most Important Tasks) - these are not just another "to do" list - but TRULY, if I ONLY got those three things done, my day would be a success. Things like...spending quality time with Anthony, or making Darrell feel special on his birthday, or spending time with a new friend. Or following up with the incompetent medical equipment company who has left us without a working apnea monitor for Makayla for THREE weeks now!!! (Don't get me started or my blood pressure may spike a new high!!) I've found that the daily docket really does help me keep on track during the day!

So...my cleaning plan. You know I HATE cleaning. It is definitely my weak point as a wife and mom!!! But I am determined to turn over a new leaf in our new home. I feel so much better when our house is clean and organized, and I know Darrell does too. So, here's what I came up with, so that I don't end up spending huge chunks of time at any one point during the week.

Monday - grocery shopping, clean out frig, clothes laundry, swiffer kitchen
Tuesday - vacuum upstairs, dust upstairs, launder bedding
Wednesday - clean bathrooms, launder towels, vacuum stairs
Thursday - vacuum rugs downstairs, mop downstairs, dust downstairs
Friday - file paperwork, pay bills, tidy up, clothes laundry
Saturday - Darrell does the lawn work
Sunday - menu planning, print daily dockets, grocery list

This means that by the end of Thursday, the entire house is clean for the weekend, which is nice, and leaves more time to spend as a family on the weekend. This was the first week doing this, and it seemed to work out okay. I mean, yes, I'm tired, and yes, when the kids go down for a nap, I'd much rather take a nap too! But intead, I take some B-12 and drink some Emergen-C, and get busy cleaning so I can try to have my chores done before they wake up. I tried to get most everything done during the twins' morning nap, so that I wasn't dreading my chores all day. Certainly it's harder when we have play dates or outings to go on - then I'll have to do my chores during the afternoon nap. And I'm praying too, that God will help change my heart so that I don't dread it so much anyway!!

So...this morning I've been able to sit with my laptop and linger over my cup of coffee (after I got the kiddos fed and the girls put down for their morning nap, anyway). It's been nice, not feeling like I SHOULD be up cleaning! (I mean, there are, of course PLENTY of things for me to do - still many boxes in the garage - but you know what I mean!)

I'll keep you updated on how it all continues to work!!

Crunchier with age?? And a bit more frugal...

So...wanna play 20 questions? I dare you to guess what I made yesterday afternoon. Something homemade. Nope, not something yummy to eat. Nope, not a cute scrapbook page or card or anything else with paper. Nope, not anything for my craft room. Nope, not anything for the girls' room. Not a storage item. No curtains or pillows. No candles. Figure it out yet?

Before I give it up, let me back up a bit. I am ashamed to admit that it's taken me a really long time to start thinking about green stuff. Not money green, not color green - you know, stuff like recycling, the environment, how much STUFF we consume, that kind of stuff. We JUST started recycling like a few months ago...yes, I'm hanging my head in shame... Anyway, lately, it's been on my mind, and so I've been pondering different ideas and reading about different ideas, getting my head churning.

Several things have been creeping into our lives - I've been trying to buy more organic produce, especially as far as baby food goes. For some reason, it seems easier to put pesticides into MY body, but not so much when I think about the babies!! I've also looked into the diaper situation; I just can't bring myself to do cloth diapers, yet it does bother me that we are putting loads of plastic-filled (read: will not break down in thousands of years!) diapers in the landfills. A nice alternative I found, which I was interested in, are gDiapers, and I would LOVE to be able to use them...but they are simply cost-prohibitive for us at this point. Isn't that sad? They are at least double what we pay for pampers/huggies. :( However, for those of you who can swing it, they do seem like a more environmentally-friendly way to go!!

I've also been researching a bit on how to reduce the amount of chemicals we are using in our house. Which is hard for me, b/c I really like products that are fast and easy - wipes, sprays, etc., that make life simple - but a lot of those are really harsh and the materials really damage the environment. I did find some awesome Method brand bathroom wipes that smell lovely and are biodegradeable and FLUSHABLE - which is REALLY nice!!

Which leads me to what I made yesterday. I found a list of recipes for more earth-friendly cleaning products, and at first, I was not interested at all. Until one thing caught my eye. The price tag. How much do you spend on laundry detergent? I know we get a big thing of Gain liquid detergent, and it probably costs at least $12, and lasts for a couple months, if that? It's a 1.3 gallon bottle. Yep, I made laundry detergent!!! And you wanna know how much I spent on it? I made 2 gallons of it for about 65 cents. Yeah. As in, 6 dimes and a nickel. The instructions say to use 1/2 C. per load, but let's say even if I end up using a full C. per load - at 32 C. per batch, that comes out to about 2 cents a load!!! Seriously - how can you beat that???

If you had suggested to me, maybe 5 years ago, that I would even CONSIDER making my own laundry detergent, I'm fairly certain I would have laughed you out of the room! Seriously! Crunchy, I tell you!

At any rate, the recipe is remarkably simple, and from start to finish - including set up, cleaning the old bottles, grating the bar soap, cooking it, mixing it, pouring it, and clean-up, it took me 50 minutes. And as a bonus, my house smelled quite lovely at the end of the process, too!! :) I actually used Pink Zote bar laundry soap, as I couldn't find the specific bar laundry soap listed in the recipe (though it also says you can use regular Ivory bar soap - the Pink Zote was less expensive). Also, I could not find "washing soda," sold as such; however, washing soda is sodium carbonate (note - this is NOT sodium BIcarbonate, aka baking soda) - which is also sold as a pH-riser for swimming pools. Alas, I found it as such in the pool chemical section of the store!! The borax was easy to find in the laundry aisle. The Pink Zote has a nice lemony scent, and I also added a bit of lavender essential oil at the end, and it turned out to have a wonderful scent. The final test - I had to wash something!! I decided to do a load of towels, figuring that was pretty safe. I didn't really notice any difference from my old commercial detergent. The real test will be when I have a load of the girls' puke and poop-stained clothes!!!

There are lots of other cleaning recipes on that website, too, if you are interested. I haven't tried any of them myself, yet, but another mom I know tried the dishwasher detergent and liked it. Let me know if you try any of the recipes!!!