A New Spin on Laundry!

I have been watching a lot of house cleaning and decluttering videos lately.  I noticed several vloggers have been using their own homemade laundry detergent. I decided I wanted to give it a try and make my own laundry detergent.

I did a little reading to find out what exactly goes into making your own laundry detergent. The recipe I decided on is not my own; it was from another blog and I thought it was perfect timing since we are talking about TikTok hacks on the podcast. I am happy with the results and recommend this recipe from The Spruce if you want to try it out yourself.

The recipe makes about 5 cups of detergent, so I purchased a tight-sealing container that was the right size to store it in. What I was not planning on was having extra ingredients leftover. I will have to go back and get better storage containers for the back stock, and I will explain that later. Here is a breakdown on what the recipe makes:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of Borax
• 2 Cups of Washing Soda
• 1 Cup of shredded washing Soap 

1 recipe yields 5 Cups of detergent which comes to approximately 80 Loads in an HE front load washer by using 1 Tablespoon in the wash (two tablespoons for non HE)

Cost:   $13.97 after taxes

I probably spent more on the plastic locking container that I have it stored in. I also wound up with more leftover ingredients  than what the recipe called for; I could probably make at least 2 more batches. To be conservative, let's say that I get 240 loads from the supplies purchased…I am looking at about $0.05 per load! With the standard liquid laundry detergent, I was spending about $21.59 after taxes on the 100 load size container. This cost me roughly $0.22 per load, which can really add up. For my family of three, we generally have about 10 loads a week, therefore, we were spending about $115 on laundry detergent a year! With this homemade detergent, we could save about $89 on detergent per year. 

Other factors

Not only can I save money by making my own detergent, I can reduce the plastic waste that I create. All three products come in cardboard boxes, which can be broken down and recycled.  The boxes, however, are not great for long term storage because they are not sealed well. I had noticed that they were leaving powder behind wherever I stored them, and little sprinkles would spill out when I moved them around. I took the contents out of their boxes and put them in labeled Ziplocs to make sure they are airtight. It is very humid here in North Texas, and my washing machine is in the garage, so I want to make sure my supplies last. If the detergent gets clumpy, it will not dissolve in the wash and will leave residue on the clothing. Another thing to factor in is time. The bar of soap does need to be grated, but it took no time at all, and it seems like it will be a very long time before I need to grate more because I have more than enough ready to use. 

Although I am a lover of all things fragrant, I have been enjoying the light smell of the shredded washing soap. It is not an overbearing scent. I have thought about trying out other recipes and possibly other alternatives to enhance the scent because I do miss the smell of Tide from time to time. If you are wondering if my clothes are coming out clean, the recipe only recommended 1 tablespoon for my high efficiency. I was a little skeptical that my clothes wouldn't come out clean with such a little amount of soap but I am not finding any clothes that are not coming out clean from the wash. Travis does come home with stains set in stains on some of his work clothes and so I still have to use a stain remover on those to spot clean. 

The Final Product

Let me know what you think! Would you ever use a homemade laundry detergent or cleaning supply? Let me know if you try out the recipe above and if it worked for you. 

TikTok Made Me Do it

It’s 2022. I hear this phrase all the time: “TikTok made me do it.” As I made my annual work gift sacks this year, I thought about that over and over. Last week, I was randomly scrolling on TikTok and I ran across this video “Gingerbread Latte” pour-overs by OneSweetMama and thought those would be the perfect gift to give my coworkers this year. Boy, I was wrong.

On the podcast this week, we are talking about handmade Christmas gifts. Every year, I make gift sacks for my coworkers. I put a lot of thought into making them, catering to each coworker. Last year, I bought a bunch of mini Christmas mugs from the store and filled them with different things such as snacks, mini lotion, and hand sanitizer. This year, I thought I’d take a step up and make the latte pour-overs for everyone and pair them with my annual pumpkin spice cake cookies. 

We mentioned on the podcast that sometimes handmade gifts can be more inexpensive to make than buying something. Generally, baked goods are not too expensive to make. The most expensive part of the pumpkin spice cookies that I make is the Lily’s® less sugar pumpkin spice chips that I use. However, I didn’t take into account everything it took to make these TikTok latte pour-overs. 

For starters, I had to buy a gingerbread silicone mold. While at Michael’s™, I also bought Sweet Tooth Fairy® vanilla candy melts. The recipe also called for a gingerbread spice blend and recommended one to buy online. However, I decided it might be cheaper to make my own (it wasn’t). The recipe also called for cinnamon (which I had) and instant dark roast coffee. I had only ever worked with candy melts a handful of times and every time I had, I usually burned them. So, I was very careful to get the melts to the right consistency before adding the rest of my ingredients to them. Working with a rack of silicone molds was difficult and I ended up making a mess getting the mixture into them. 

Gingerbread Spice Mix

My molds were also too small for what my recipe needed. The recipe told me to let them sit and harden in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (I waited for 20) and because the molds were smaller, they were also deeper, so, my test gingerbread bomb fell apart. The second one, I let sit overnight and I tried it the next morning. Man, was it strong!

My takeaway: working with candy melts is hard but practice makes perfect. The latte pour-overs in the small gingerbread molds came out sugary and strong. Next time, I will get larger molds. However, the flavors were amazing. If you use the small molds, I suggest eight ounces of hot water instead of six. The process was not as time-consuming as I thought it would be; however, it is a bit costly if you make your gingerbread spice from scratch. If you are looking for something inexpensive to make for your coworkers, I do not recommend this. If you are looking for a gift to give someone who loves coffee, I recommend this.

Finished Product

I want to hear from our readers. What handmade gifts do you like to give for the holidays? Have you ever tried making latte bombs before? How did it go? Let’s continue the conversation below!

Recipes linked below:

Gingerbread Latte Pour-overs

Gingerbread Spice Mix

Please check out our Downloads For Our Readers page for a PDF of these recipes.

Can Relaxing Videos Really Be Relaxing?

I’ve been spending a lot of time wasting time lately. I blame it on stress. Whenever I have a deadline, or I feel too much pressure, I just have to escape into something mindless and unproductive to let off steam. I always feel guilty about it, but I shouldn’t. After all, it’s a form of self-care, and self-care is not selfish.

Over the years, the things I do to “waste” time have changed. Coloring, doodling, crocheting, even finding solace in mundane household chores (have you ever scrubbed the grout on your shower or pulled weeds in your yard?) can be a soothing way to ignore (or procrastinate) less desirable or more stressful tasks. It’s a great way to let go of what’s going on in the outside world and be fully absorbed in something very simple. It can be a meditative process. 

In the age of the internet, those time-wasters have turned from more physical distractions into passive ones like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and other online entertainment. That’s what we’ve been talking about this week, and if you listened to the podcast yesterday, you heard us mention several different things that we watch or listen to. Obviously, we barely even touched on the many resources that are now available on the world wide web, but I can’t decide if the technology helps or makes things worse. Does our addiction to soothing videos make us need to self-soothe even more? 

I have been an avid reader my entire life. Before the internet, before cell phones with Google and Instagram, I had books. I kept a book handy and would read a page or two whenever I needed a break, and then maybe a few pages more before I turned in at night. Over the years, I’ve read less and less because Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have absorbed those brief moments, leaving only my bedtime ritual for my books. But lately, I haven’t even done much of that. Over the last several months, I have been far less engaged and, dare I say, downright DISINTERESTED in reading. When I settle in for my evening routine, it’s not my book I turn to, but my iPad or my phone. And then I spend an hour, two, or sometimes even more scrolling through my Instagram feed. Mindless. Pointless. Numb. And the more I scroll, the less I want to stop.

Last night was a great example. I was tired and had planned to turn in early, but a family situation kept me up very late, so when I finally went to bed, I was so tired I didn’t think I would comprehend much if I tried to read. So, I started scrolling through Instagram instead, knowing that soon I would be relaxed enough to fall asleep. Except I didn’t. An hour and a half later, when my husband, Mark, finally came to bed, I was still scrolling, and as he turned out the light on his side of the bed, I promised that I would shut everything down shortly. But I didn’t do that either. I just kept scrolling and scrolling until sometime quite a bit later, Mark tapped me on the shoulder to tell me I was asleep and snoring while I was still scrolling! Even then, I didn’t want to stop. I just had to get in a few more posts before I finally closed the app and rolled over to sleep.

So, what is it that makes social media so addictive? I can honestly say, I don’t know. I generally scroll right past 80% of the posts, even from the hashtags I follow, and I only very rarely stop and watch the whole video or read the entire post. And ever since Facebook took over Instagram, there are so many ads that they almost outnumber the real posts. Even so, there is something that makes me keep scrolling, anxious to see just one more post, one more reel. It really is an addiction, and I’m starting to believe it’s not all that relaxing, either. Maybe it’s time to go back to my books….

Tell us what you think. Are you addicted to social media? Do you find it relaxing or stressful? Do you have any favorites? Comment below, or join us on our Facebook group, MMC Chat.