Laundry Theft? What's with that?

Did everyone see this story a while ago about how thieves were stealing thousands of dollars of name brand laundry soap? I have a hard time believing that is real - especially when you can make your own laundry soap for just pennies a load.

You'll remember from my post last year that I was shocked and amazed that making your own laundry soap actually works. But what I didn't expect was how much money I saved. And how I couldn't go back to store brand laundry soap.

All you need to make your own laundry soap is a bar of Fels Naftha soap, Washing Soda, and Borax - I found all of these item at the local (and hated) WalMart. In fact, they were all neatly lined up on the same shelf next to that high dollar stuff. As I marched down the extra-scented aisle of various bottles of chemical soup I wondered just who among my fellow shoppers were willing to go to jail for stealing something they could make for pretty much all the change they had in their car or in their couch cushions.

I did my last laundry soap post in May last year but I had been using home made soap since about January. That's when I first bought all the ingredients. It wasn't until last week that I needed to buy more Washing Soda and Borax. You read that right - two of the three ingredients lasted over a year!!!!  Sure I need to buy a bar of Fels for every batch but that cost me exactly  $0.97 each time.

Here are the itemized costs from my receipt:

Fels Naptha:      $0.97
Borax:               $3.38
Washing Soda   $3.38

Total:                $7.73

But wait - don't say, "Wow! That's a lot!" Because... that's for all the ingredients and aside from the Fels.... that lasted me a year!  I usually had to make a new batch every other month... so my real costs for doing all our laundry for over a year was about $12.58. At our local store a big jug of Tide costs over $17.

If the savings don't get you....then check this out.... It is a fact that last month I fell off the wagon and bought a jug of All Detergent from our local Dollar Store for $4. It lasted a week. And then I noticed that the kitchen towels were...well..... weird. I couldn't seem to dry my hands on them. It was like drying my hands with waxed paper. I just didn't work. I even had to do the thing where you wash your towels once with vinegar and once with baking soda just to wash the gunk out of them.

So nope, I'm not going back to store brand laundry soap. And next time I get lazy I'll just read this post and remind myself that the $4 I'm spending at the Dollar Store for a jug of detergent just isn't worth it.

Got a bucket? Got $8? Then run right down and get the fixin's to make your own laundry soap and save yourself about a million bucks!

Happy Monday everyone! Prevent crime and make your own laundry soap!

How to Make Savings.. I mean.. Bread

How to Make Savings.. I mean... Bread!

This is for my pal DM who is kinda in a pickle right now. Being a smart and capable gal I know she is going to be just fine...and a little bread baking could be just the thing to help her out.

And you too – read about the farm-o-nomics of making bread here. You'll see that making bread yourself is a great way to make savings.  Hang in there, DM, and... go bake some bread and have yourself an egg salad sandwich...you'll love it!

I learned how to bake bread from the Farm Master...a lurker here known only as Bourbon Red. His instructions came in kind of a loose format so I'm documenting “how to” here with pix of the loaves I made a couple days ago. If you want to learn from folks who can explain all the science and nuances of 'how to' you can check out The Bread Bible, or A Year Of Bread Baking, or a thousand other foodie blogs.

As for me, I tend to glaze over when they start talking about glutens and autolyse … so I just do what works for me.  And frankly I don't really care to take the magic out of it so no technical explanations here. If you really want to find out how its done, run don't walk, to get a copy of Marcella Hazan's exceptional cookbook: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Marcella knows how to get 'er done...and she does it old school with no apologies. Its also a great book for folks who garden as she emphasizes fresh ingredients that can stand alone.

But first, a word on yeast. I used to buy those little three-envelop packages of yeast from the store. They usually cost a little over $2 each..and this would only be good for 3 batches of bread. Then the local bulk foods shopkeeper changed my life with... Saf-Instant yeast. It comes vacuumed packed and for $3.95 I have more yeast than I could use in a year! Just store it in the fridge and let the baking begin. I found it online here  but check around. Seriously, it worth the effort to find it.

Onward.

Ingredients:

Sponge:
Buttermilk, flour (whole wheat and/or all purpose), water

Dough:
The starter
4 cups of flour (whole wheat and/or all purpose or bread flour)
1 teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoons salt
a bit more water as needed

The basic steps are easy:
Make the starter
Mix the dough, knead it
Let rise
Shape, proof, then bake

But for really great bread you need more of an explanation. So here goes..

How to Make Savings - Part 2: Farm-o-nomics

How to Make Savings – Part 2 Farm-o-nomics

In our last installment of “How to Make Savings” we talked about some big picture ideas  – how reducing expenses to the point where one or both of you don't have to work is a real possibility and how doing things yourself creates tons of savings. We left the discussion here:

“Want to make real savings? Then make your food, raise what you eat, eat what you grow, and do it in a self sustaining way......

…..We make most of our food – and we don't just make our food.. we MAKE our food by growing it. We grow 95% of meat, all of our eggs, a good chunk of our veggies, and most of our dairy. Pretty much we have the lowest grocery bill in the county. Our grocery bill, less dog and cat food, for most of the summer was about $25 a week.”

Yessiree...you did read that right. A lot of people just plain ol' can't believe it. And I tell you the truth – we aren't suffering at all. Now to be fair, from time to time we do a trip to Sam's Club to get paper products in huge quantities and we'll do a $100 grocery trip every couple of months.   

But pretty much we just stop in for bits and bobs of things at the grocery. As we are walking thru the store our favorite thing to do is ask each other “Hey do we need eggs? Ham? Milk? Cheese?” and then laugh laugh laugh about how we don't have to buy any of that stuff. I swear we are giving the meat counter guy a complex from pointing and laughing at his ham.

How to Make Savings - Part 1

How to Make Savings

One of the best tools to make your homestead or farm more effective and efficient – and to keep it from being an expensive hobby –  is learning how to “make savings.”  Making savings is somewhat along the lines of the old Ben Franklin adage that “a penny saved is a penny earned.” But making savings actually gets you further ahead then just keeping that penny in your pocket.

Making savings means:

a) keeping money by not wasting it on things you don't need; and
b) not spending money and still getting what you need anyway by doing it yourself.

Its a way of 'creating' income by not spending money thereby eliminating the need for additional or a second income. Think you really need two incomes? Nope.

Here's how it goes:

The first way to make savings is by not spending money on stupid stuff – and then using that saved money on something you really need. There are tons of resources on how to reduce your spending, avoiding money drains, and staying away from financial black holes. Do some research and figure out where you are hemorrhaging money and then stop doing those things.