A little bit of this, a little bit of that

In an effort to save money and have a greater positive impact on our environment, we have made a few changes around our house. All were easy changes and pretty fun along the way!

1. Felted wool dryer balls

A few weeks ago I found an online tutorial on how to make felted wool dryer balls and it looked like fun, so I decided to give it a try. I stopped using dryer sheets a few years ago due to the chemicals they were leaving on our clothes that were affecting Grayson's eczema, but I'd been using PVC dryer balls and they were working just fine. However, after reading about wool dryer balls and how they're even better for the environment and dry clothes even faster than the PVC dryer balls (since they can soak up some of the moisture from the clothes), I thought it sounded like something I wanted to try. I had to order the wool yarn online (I think I paid maybe $10 to make four dryer balls) but the actual creating of them was kind of cathartic and so far they're working great!

2. Homemade laundry detergent

Since laundry occupies a good portion of my day and I seem to be buying laundry detergent ALL THE TIME, this project was mainly motivated by money---or rather, saving money. My friend Mandy did a post on her blog a couple of months ago about how she was going to give making her own laundry detergent a try, and since I'd already been considering it I decided that it was a sign I needed to do it. I altered my recipe just a bit and have tweaked it since the first time I made a batch. This is SO easy and saves me probably $20 every six weeks on detergent.

Here's my recipe:

2 cups Borax

2 cups Arm and Hammer washing soda

1/2 bar grated Fels Naptha soap

entire half bar (2-3 oz) of goat milk soap (in any scent you like)

*the first three ingredients I found in the laundry aisle at Publix, and the goat milk soap I ordered from here. My favorite scent so far is lavender vanilla. Before I started using the goat milk soap I just used an entire bar of the Fels Naptha. For some reason I feel like the goat milk soap gets the clothes even cleaner, though, and the smell is an added bonus.

I put the 2 cups each of the Borax and washing soda in a bowl, and then put the soap in the microwave on 45 seconds to a minute on high. The soap expands and after it cools, it crumbles really easily. It's much easier to do this than grating it with a cheese grater. After this, I mix the soap with the powders and put them in the food processor to make it an even finer consistency. Finally, I put everything in an old wipes container and keep a tablespoon measuring spoon in the container. I use 1-2 tbsp per load (more for a dirtier load, like Ben's running clothes). Clothes get just as clean as when I used commercial laundry detergent, at a fraction of the cost!

3. We kicked our paper towel habit!

Now, on to our latest transition....using paper towels has long been a habit that I've been wanting to break, but I could never take the leap to cloth. A couple of weeks ago I was organizing the drawers in Whitt's room and stumbled upon a drawer full of burp cloths from all three children. As I sat there thinking about what I could do with all of these burp cloths, it dawned on me that they could easily replace our paper towels. I ran to Dollar General and spent a whopping $7 on 24 dishcloths to use as napkins, and the conversion from paper to cloth was done!

I keep a drawer next to the kitchen sink filled with burp cloths (for wiping down counters, cleaning up spills, etc) and old baby washcloths (great for wiping dirty hands and mouths after meals), and I put the new napkin/dishcloths in a lower drawer that is easily accessible to the kiddos, and it's been smooth sailing. I still need to go out and buy some nicer napkins that are "company worthy" so when we have guests over for dinner they aren't using the ratty Dollar General napkins, but besides that, this was a really inexpensive transition since we had almost everything already.

The only negative so far in doing this is when I need to drain food on paper towels. I do keep one roll in our pantry for this purpose and so far I've only used them once--when I fried squash and used two paper towels to drain them.

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And this has nothing to do with the environment, but adding it to this post anyway...

I've made a few deeeelish recipes this week that are worthy of sharing:

Oven Roasted Potatoes and Carrots with Thyme

I didn't change a single thing. Only thing I'd do differently is make more carrots because we were fighting over them---they were that good!

Fresh Corn Salad

Also didn't change a thing. I've made this several times and it's always one of my favorites. Great the next day as leftovers, too. Go out and get some corn and make it tonight---you'll thank me.

Crock Pot Chicken and Dumplings

This is from my friend Angela's blog (which, by the way, has tons of great recipes!). We ate it tonight and I'm trying hard not to go back into the kitchen and eat some more, even though it's now bedtime. I've made other crock pot chicken and dumplings recipes before but they always seemed to lack flavor and the chicken was always dry. This, however, is fabulous!!!! The only changes I made was using boneless skinless chicken thighs instead of breasts (because I had a package already in the freezer) and I added some chopped celery. Even the kiddos loved it, which is a bit rare these days! :)