Part II. Homemade.
Where does the time go? Going homemade.
About a year ago, I swapped over to homemade clothing detergent. I also started using apple cider vinegar in place of fabric softener. Overall, it's been good. I'm honest with myself. It isn't as reliable a stain remover as Tide (powdered or liquid). I have to be more attentive to stains before it goes into the wash. About two months ago I started adding OxyClean to boost that cleaning power. I'm not sure of it's success. And after one load of color bleeds I'm awfully concerned about using it - so it only goes in the whites now. I'm very happy with the vinegar, though. It works as well as the fabric softener, it's very cheap, it doesn't contain perfumes, and there's no lingering vinegar smell. This last round of mixing up the detergent I used the food processor to grind the soap. It was fast and far easier than doing it by hand. However, I've discovered that the soap isn't breaking down the right way so I'm going to have to take a different approach.
Over the summer, I left the dryer off and started using the clothes line. I got down to running the dryer about one load a week. No one tells you how long it takes to hang the laundry, though. Yes, the clothes to have a certain "crunch" to them. I came to find that the towels this way were great - unbelievably absorbent. I'll miss that this winter.
I also played with a lot of different homemade bread recipes. I've found a place on the counter for a bread maker. It suffers from all bread maker problems, creating an awkward shaped loaf. But it was great over the summer. No need to turn on the oven. No babysitting. Just put everything in and let it do everything. Also, it's a much different texture of bread. Still, bread making isn't always convenient or produces the loaf we're looking for. We've actually cut back on our bread intake overall, eating the bread when available and not missing it too much when it's not.
I'm still shifting into more homemade, more consistently. It comes easy, in some ways, because so many of our meals are made from scratch already. So I have to be more aware of opportunities to make this part of our daily lives.
Oh, and on one random note (semi-related): We used bubble wrap last year as window insulation and it worked great. Large bubbles work best. We ordered a $30 roll online and didn't use it all. Plus, most of what we did use last year we were able to save for reuse! I was astonished at how effective it was. I need to go back through the house this year and reapply all the wrap. I'm a bit behind, but we had a very warm day last week and took down a lot of the wrapping to open the windows. For large windows, old windows, or simply drafty windows, order some bubble wrap and build your insulation levels. It really does work.
Winter is sneaking up on us. The leaves are all falling. The temperatures are teasing us with frost. It was a good Summer. A quiet Winter is up next.
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