Last Updated & concluded: Nov 6 2010
Step One: Order sample of soap nuts & stain bar to test. *Done*
I ordered two sample bags of soap nuts from the first Canadian supplier I found online(Greener Living). Called them and asked a few quick questions and she suggested I try out a stain bar that she said would work on the old food grease stains on all our clothes. Worth a try. Click to see pictures Soap Nut Trial Pack & Stain Bar
Step Two: Wait for order to arrive at house. Order is in transit. Should be here this week or the middle of next week at the latest. *Done*
Results: Order received on Friday October 29th 2010. *Success*
Step Three: Test soap nut on the stinkiest thing I own; Susie's harness. Nothing seems to get the doggy smell off her nylon harness. *Done*
Results: According to myself and two of the four children I had smell the harness before and after cleaning(two of the four refused to participate in after sniffing) the harness now smells like nothing. Update: Once dry the harness & leash still smell a little but that may be because of drying it inside laying flat rather than out in the sun or in the dryer. I will call it conditional since it does smell better and even detergents didn't do better. *Conditional Success*
Step Four A: Test soap nuts out on our daily laundry. Daily laundry sometimes includes pee accident bedding.*Done*
Results: After using the bagged soap nuts I found everything was coming out clean. On a lark I did a test wash with nothing in warm wash cold rinse and the clothes came out clean as well ... I have to wonder if we really need a cleaner in with our clothes at all but I will still use one. I will say this is a success but will make and sue liquid so i can switch back to cold wash cold rinse. *Conditional Success*
Step Four B: Also test stain bar on old food grease stains.*Done*
Results: After washing grease stains appear to be gone. I am waiting for item to come out of the dryer to confirm...t-shirt was still stained but failure may have been on my part as I did not completely follow directions. *Conditional Fail*
Will continue testing stain bar on daily laundry.
Results: Tried on another load of laundry. Following directions this time. Stains still there - the search continues for something to get laundered in grease stains out of my clothes. *Utter Failure*
Step Five: If soap nuts pass steps three and four I will order a larger bag for further testing.*Done*
Results: Found closer supplier of soap nuts and picked up 1 KG bag on Nov 3rd. *Success*
Summary of first phase: Susie's harness still a little funky. Stain stick a complete failure. Soap nuts appear to work fine on laundry.
End of first phase of testing ... next home made soap nut liquid. Liquid testing will include; hand dish washing soap, all purpose cleaner, hair and body foam and how long does it keep anyway? This section will also include my adventures in canning to preserve large batches of soap nut liquid.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Look! It's October!
Yup, it only took me until the middle of the month to come back on. The weather has been fantastic but I think the biggest and best change has been for the last month and a half I have been keeping up with the housework!
I remember doing this before ... I even Blogged it but I don't mention FLYlady. The FLY in FLYlady stand for Finally Loving Yourself and is the basis of a Housework organization system that is free and comes with a good support system of other women that are having the same trouble with keeping on top of things. Last time I was working on this I got the menu planning down and have been on top of that for 4 years and it works great. We average $200/week for food for 2 adults, 3 children, 2 cats and 2 dogs. However that was the only this that stuck.
Flash forward 4 years to a few months ago. I was miserable, feeling martyred and just generally unhappy. While Mom was living with us she took care of the main floor of the house so I had gotten a bit spoiled. Then *poof* my cleaning fairy was gone and I had to do it myself again. Okay not again because I wasn't really doing the housework before she came - I did a lot of not doing my housework and a whole lot of feeling worthless because doing the housework was my JOB and it was the only job I had ever really wanted. Yet there I was not doing it and when I did it I was angry and resentful about having to do it - how crazy is that?
So a month and a half ago I Googled FLYlady again and started over. Step one: Shine your sink. I committed myself to keeping the sink shiny. In my mind that meant committing myself to keeping the dishes done. I said "Even if all I do this week is keep the sink shiny and the dishes done up it will be more than I'm doing now." This time when I did that it stuck - I felt so good about keeping the kitchen tidy(because you know that clean sink turned into a clean counter and so on ...) that I went to work on the rest of the baby step on the FLYlady site. I pulled out my old control journal and wrote out a Morning and Before Bed routine. Another few days went by and I hit a week of keeping the laundry under control ... unheard of! Every morning I can say by 7:30am "My laundry is done!".
Somehow over the last month and a half I have found the mental switch in my head that made me miserable while I was doing housework and switched it OFF. Now when I finish each chore I feel accomplished and happy. Housework may not be fun but I am doing it out of love now rather than out of anger and how everything looks almost all the time is all the payback I need for the work I am doing.
I have a rather long Morning routine but I have time in that routine to sit and relax. My Morning routine goes from 6am to 9:30am and pretty much gets everything done that needs to be done all right at the beginning of the day. I can then relax until I need to make lunch for the kids. Each weekday I focus on one area or task and on weekends all I have to do is my daily routines and no other extras. This set up has left me with lots of down time and keeps the house looking great all the time - it's almost effortless!
The one exception to keeping on top of things has been the litter boxes - the cats each have one. For the last couple of years I have been using a litter called Feline Pine - it's made of compressed pine pellets and absorbs the cat pee and turns into sawdust, any solid waste can be scooped and flushed and when all the pellets have expanded you can compost it. I love environmentally friendly litters but I hate dumping and refilling the litter boxes and I never kept after the solid waste no matter how may time I said I would this time every time I changed the boxes. So I've switched litters and moved my scooping chore to in the mornings when I am close to each litter box. The new litter is made out of corn, clumps and is flushable. I'll get both solid and liquid waste and I should get to it everyday now.
Once this last task is incorporated into my daily routine all I have to do then is maintain this level for another month and a half. Why that long exactly? Well my reason is that at no time in the past have I kept after the housework for longer than 2 months - after about a month and a half I tend to fizzle out and end up doing a whole lot of nothing again. Then after a while of that I get upset and angry all over again - You see the problem?
So I'll check in in a month and a half and let you know how it's going.
Cass :)
I remember doing this before ... I even Blogged it but I don't mention FLYlady. The FLY in FLYlady stand for Finally Loving Yourself and is the basis of a Housework organization system that is free and comes with a good support system of other women that are having the same trouble with keeping on top of things. Last time I was working on this I got the menu planning down and have been on top of that for 4 years and it works great. We average $200/week for food for 2 adults, 3 children, 2 cats and 2 dogs. However that was the only this that stuck.
Flash forward 4 years to a few months ago. I was miserable, feeling martyred and just generally unhappy. While Mom was living with us she took care of the main floor of the house so I had gotten a bit spoiled. Then *poof* my cleaning fairy was gone and I had to do it myself again. Okay not again because I wasn't really doing the housework before she came - I did a lot of not doing my housework and a whole lot of feeling worthless because doing the housework was my JOB and it was the only job I had ever really wanted. Yet there I was not doing it and when I did it I was angry and resentful about having to do it - how crazy is that?
So a month and a half ago I Googled FLYlady again and started over. Step one: Shine your sink. I committed myself to keeping the sink shiny. In my mind that meant committing myself to keeping the dishes done. I said "Even if all I do this week is keep the sink shiny and the dishes done up it will be more than I'm doing now." This time when I did that it stuck - I felt so good about keeping the kitchen tidy(because you know that clean sink turned into a clean counter and so on ...) that I went to work on the rest of the baby step on the FLYlady site. I pulled out my old control journal and wrote out a Morning and Before Bed routine. Another few days went by and I hit a week of keeping the laundry under control ... unheard of! Every morning I can say by 7:30am "My laundry is done!".
Somehow over the last month and a half I have found the mental switch in my head that made me miserable while I was doing housework and switched it OFF. Now when I finish each chore I feel accomplished and happy. Housework may not be fun but I am doing it out of love now rather than out of anger and how everything looks almost all the time is all the payback I need for the work I am doing.
I have a rather long Morning routine but I have time in that routine to sit and relax. My Morning routine goes from 6am to 9:30am and pretty much gets everything done that needs to be done all right at the beginning of the day. I can then relax until I need to make lunch for the kids. Each weekday I focus on one area or task and on weekends all I have to do is my daily routines and no other extras. This set up has left me with lots of down time and keeps the house looking great all the time - it's almost effortless!
The one exception to keeping on top of things has been the litter boxes - the cats each have one. For the last couple of years I have been using a litter called Feline Pine - it's made of compressed pine pellets and absorbs the cat pee and turns into sawdust, any solid waste can be scooped and flushed and when all the pellets have expanded you can compost it. I love environmentally friendly litters but I hate dumping and refilling the litter boxes and I never kept after the solid waste no matter how may time I said I would this time every time I changed the boxes. So I've switched litters and moved my scooping chore to in the mornings when I am close to each litter box. The new litter is made out of corn, clumps and is flushable. I'll get both solid and liquid waste and I should get to it everyday now.
Once this last task is incorporated into my daily routine all I have to do then is maintain this level for another month and a half. Why that long exactly? Well my reason is that at no time in the past have I kept after the housework for longer than 2 months - after about a month and a half I tend to fizzle out and end up doing a whole lot of nothing again. Then after a while of that I get upset and angry all over again - You see the problem?
So I'll check in in a month and a half and let you know how it's going.
Cass :)
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