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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

some of my changes

I posted a while back about some changes I want to implement in our family. Are you wondering how I'm doing with them?
Great!
One of the biggest changes I have made is the way I do laundry. I used this tutorial to make homemade powdered laundry detergent. It was so easy!! I grated the soap with a cheese grater, and then ran it through my food processor to grate it finer. It was pretty clumpy when I mixed in the borax and washing soda, so I ran the entire mixture through the food processor again and it mixed it into perfect laundry detergent. It took about 15 minutes to make and all the ingredients cost me about $12 (I found everything at Fresh Market), but they will last for over 150 loads. Do the math if you're interested in seeing how that breaks down!
Another big change I've made in my laundry routine is line-drying at least one load each week. Basically, throughout the week I pretreat anything that the girls stain and toss it in the washing machine. On laundry day, I add our jeans, towels, and sheets, and that becomes our "line-dry" load.
Why do I line-dry?
It's better for the environment and I feel like I am doing my part.
It only takes 5 minutes longer to hang clothes than to toss them in the dryer.
The laundry smells sooooooo good when it's dried outside!
The natural power of the sun does wonders to stains.
It saves money, even if it's just a little bit!
I love looking out my kitchen window and seeing a line of laundry!

4 comments:

Caroline @ The Feminist Housewife said...

I can't wait to line dry my clothes!!! We are moving out of our apartment into a house in two weeks. Just one more thing to look forward to!

Candi said...

I miss clothes lines. I hope they come back in style someday, but in the meantime I'm glad to see you doing your part. Now I'm going to go contemplate getting my own. Yes, I definitely need one.

Anonymous said...

I love that you are doing this and I love your blog, I wanted to say just because I have been so torn about it...the Fels Naptha soap can be dangerous when prolonged exposure occurs, it is petroleum based...ie oil, i did a bunch a research, you can even look on their website and it tells you, i recently thankfully found though that organic soy based oatmeal soap is highly effiecent for laundry use...just wanted to let ya know:)

Sew Much Ado said...

Thanks for linking to my tutorial!