Autumn is well upon us, and people who have been struggling to stay afloat in this lousy economy all year are now faced with the prospect of the coming holiday gifting season. Which can be daunting in the best of times, but can be positively depressing for those not used to not having cash or credit for the consumerist frenzy. This post is about helping to trim the gift list if you haven’t done so already, plus how and where to find gifts for loved ones that they may cherish forever, help maintain and spread the joy of the season, and not cost an arm or leg.

Previous Posts:
Christmas in a Depressed Economy
‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas

1. Analyze your gift-giving habits, trim the tree.

In our free-wheeling consumerist culture the Christmas shopping season represents half or more of retailers’ annual intake and an average middle class family’s greatest expenditures on unnecessary items for the year. If your family is struggling, the credit cards with their usurious interest rates have already been cut into small pieces and thrown away, consumer loans have been paid down or frozen in place, and promises to self not to spend more than you’ve got have been made. Don’t change a thing just because the holidays are coming!

If you have a lot of friends and extended family for whom you’ve bought gifts in years past, networking with them early is a good idea. See if doing something other than gifting this year could be a thankful relief to them as well as you. Pot-luck holiday get-togethers are fun, and no one person has to provide all the food and drinks. “Re-Gifting” parties can be great fun too, where you give some trinket you got from someone else in the past (it’s been just taking up room in the closet or on the shelf ever since) to someone else. Chances are someone will remember who gave Fred that hideous tie he’s never worn and laughs will ensue. The holidays are for fun, so have some!

If you’ve got children, find out what they want most instead of just gathering their wish lists of every toy they’ve seen advertised on TV. For children old enough to know Santa isn’t Bill Gates, one big gift can be better than ten little ones. Items like bicycles, roller blades and other sports equipment can be purchased second hand and refurbished, maybe personalized with glitter paint and trim. Go for things they’ll really use and enjoy, stay away from basic junk.

2. Seek out mainstream and even obscure second hand, consignment and/or junk outlets in your area.

There’s nothing like serious holiday shopping among the hugely varied items at a resale outlet, where the perfect something for someone on your list could be found. Often area churches, animal rescue outfits and civic organizations host thrift shops. In many places there are great private resale shops that offer amazing items from art to furniture, crockery to costume jewelry. Don’t overlook those even if you also plan to shop at Goodwill or Salvation Army.

I’ve found beautiful handcrafted chess sets and boards, totally unique hand-whittled puzzle boxes, antique glassware and china, beautiful jewelry boxes, hand-crafted doll houses, etc. in some unlikely haunts. Sometimes something just needs cleanup and a couple of touches, sometimes you can put a lot of yourself into it with a new paint job or fixes, and again you can always personalize. Commercialized junk doesn’t tend to become someone’s most treasured keepsake. Remember it’s all about the thought and effort, not about the price tag.

3. Know your local resources.

If your area has a Freecycle club, think about joining. You can get rid of some of your closet-clutter and maybe get items for gifting. Great for baby furniture and accessories, bicycles and such, often tools, household items, yarns and needles, fabric and sewing machines, books, clothing, home repair and building supplies, etc. All free.

Keep up with your area’s want ads and garage/yard sales as well. Spending Saturdays thrifting and bargain-hunting can be both fun and rewarding as you add to your collection of things “perfect for…” whoever will most love that gift. Your time and effort adds to the value of any gift you give!

4. Think Creatively!

Many people don’t know that you can make a wonderfully colorful and snuggly warm blanket out of a stack of old sweaters. They make great stuffed animals too, if you’re handy with a sewing machine. Purses out of old jeans, sparkled up with some craft store jewels and studs are always welcome presents to the teen set. For younger girls a box full of sparkly costume jewelry is great, as is a laundry basket chock full of fancy dress-up items (including high heels and hats!). For already-creative young’uns, a bunch of items from which they can salvage feathers, beads, trims, etc. may be just the thing. Art supplies can often be found second hand in areas where artists are, I always buy up as much paint, brushes, pastels, pencils, charcoals, canvases, sketchbooks and whatever else as I possibly can.

5. Have Kitchen, Will Travel.

Consider pouring your heart into food for family and friends this year. Make batches of yummy fudge, lots of Christmas cookies, try your hand at hard candies, etc. Such things are always most welcome during the holidays even if they don’t tend to last long in a crowd! If you have to go to the company party and are expected to bring a gift, fudge always works even better than some cheap soap or cologne or tie, and you don’t have to worry about whether you’ve drawn a man or a woman’s name from the hat.

6. Gift of your time and talents.

Have a friend or relative working two part-time jobs, barely getting by and who could really use a night out? Know a caregiver who is stressed to the max? Stumped for something for the teenagers? You can make some beautiful cards (post on that upcoming) and include ‘tickets’ for babysitting, house or pet sitting, a home-cooked meal (at their convenience), even a movie night in your den using your big-screen TV and DVD player. To be redeemed later.

Whatever your talents are or time you can spare, it can be gifted. If you sew, you can gift that. If you cook, gift that. If you have a vehicle, you can gift chauffeur duty. If you paint or craft, you can gift those too. There’s no reason to spend money you don’t have on things to give away to others who may not need or appreciate them just because it’s the holiday season. If you plan wisely and aren’t shy of new adventures, this could turn out to be the most holiday fun you’ve had in years! Even better, once the real spirit of the season infects you, it’s hard to get rid of even when the economic situation isn’t so tough any more.

So start planning, see how much fun you can turn this into by involving your kids, your spouse, your friends!

The news these days is chock full of dramatized street theater as the “haves” fight about ridiculous things like super-bonuses for AIG grifters, amazing world-class ponzi money-laundering schemes, and how we on the low end of the totem pole get to pay through the nose (as usual) to bail these crooks out. At this point it’s not even a partisan fight, it’s just rich versus poor. As usual. We who have been actually harmed by these interminable games of economic Risk are just trying to survive with the basics – food, clothing and shelter.

While I hope that anyone who regularly reads this blog has already bought their seeds and planted their ‘taters, there are things we usually have to purchase – or trade for – because we don’t produce our own at home. Sure, it doesn’t take more than a quarter acre of yard to keep a fresh milk goat or half a dozen chickens who give us eggs for free, but often people will be unable to even do that much. Keeping that goat fresh requires breeding once a year, and then you’ve got to either deal with a smelly billy goat or transport to where the smelly billy goat is standing stud. And what about the kid? That’s something my family could never quite conscience (these youngsters, if not also female, are usually slaughtered for meat). And don’t let anybody fool you. Those chickens CAN fly (sorta). At least to get over the fence into your neighbor’s yard.

If you are lucky enough to still have a roof over your family’s heads, there are ways to save a great deal on foods you can’t produce in your garden but need to keep everyone healthy and satisfied. Nothing makes us feel wealthier than a truly fine and healthy diet. Plus, that alone can save us multi-thousands in chronic diseases we really don’t have to get in the first place. The first of these is to join a local CSA. With this membership, which is critical to purchase right now if you can, you get a portion of the crops and products of local farmers near your home. Even if you garden, this can help fill out the take so you’ve got more to work with. Buying local directly supports your local farmers, and helps them to purchase the seeds and equipment they need to keep on producing.

Even better, many CSAs also keep bees for honey, cows and/or goats for dairy, chickens for free range eggs plus poultry, and some even raise pigs and steers for later slaughter so you can purchase a “share” of those as well. When I was young – it was a large family – my mother always purchased a half a steer every year to freeze in the chest freezer, along with as many chickens as she could get locally. Not only are these animals raised humanely and fed on pasture and hay that they’re naturally designed to consume for maximum health, they were always locally slaughtered so that even the ground beef came from just those steers raised on that farm. Nowadays when ground meat from the supermarket may contain the remains of as many as 100 animals, some of whom were no doubt very sick when they went in, this is vastly preferable.

But what I want to talk about in this post is dairy. Not just milk, but also cheese, yogurt, butter, sour cream and other dairy products we use on an almost daily basis to add protein to our diets and keep the kids happy. The reason to avoid store-bought dairy is more than just the fact that big dairy farms often pollute their milk with genetically engineered hormones and such, it also avoids the mass mixing of milk from farms far and wide that must be mass-pasteurized and have much of its useful ingredients neutralized. So that you end up paying $4 or more for a pound of butter, $2 or more for a few ounces of yogurt or sour cream, etc. We can save a great deal of money – and learn a lot about how food works – if we do this sort of thing for ourselves.

If you’ve a CSA with a dairy division, or a local dairy farm, you can often purchase raw milk on the sly (the government is trying hard to close this loophole). This gives you the raw material to work with to produce your own high-protein and full-fat food ingredients. My family once had a friend up the road who got a fresh goat in payment of a debt, a guy who didn’t drink much milk. That goat gave 2 gallons a day, so I did the calligraphy for his craft catalog in exchange for a gallon a day of fresh goats milk. Which he delivered! Now, you need a mechanical separator to get cream out of naturally homogenized goat milk, and I didn’t have one, so we just drank it. Cow’s milk is much easier to work with…

Raw cow’s milk naturally separates just by being left to separate. Cream rises to the top, the regular milk settles below. You should always pasteurize what you have, meaning that before you drink or use it, go ahead and boil for 5 full minutes. This can destroy some of the natural caesins in the milk or cream, but is definitely worth it to avoid any sicknesses that might result from raw. Just separate the cream first, and what’s left after pasteurization makes fine butter, sour cream and rich cheese. If you’re working with goat’s milk and don’t have a separator, make the butter first since this will serve to separate. Just keep it refrigerated or frozen for longer term storage.

To make butter, just fill a sterilized quart jar half full of whole milk or cream and shake it. This will take some time, but is definitely worth it. The cream component will tend to coagulate and this is what you want. It also floats atop whole milk so is easily scooped out. Accumulate a pound or so of this thick butter, fold in a little salt, and it can be used immediately or frozen in wax and plastic for later. It won’t be yellow, but that’s just another coal-tar dye. Who needs it?

To make yogurt, a spoonful of ‘live’ yogurt is added to a jar of milk and well-shaken, allow it to set overnight (shaking occasionally). By morning it should be thick, stir again and refrigerate. Add sugar, honey, spices, flavorings, whatever, and spoon in liberally on your burritos or use it as dip for pita (which is also easy to make). Yogurt is a bit like sourdough, in that your refrigerated starter can last for years. A single purchase, you can turn it into whatever you like! It freezes fairly well, so you can make a lot when you get your local milk and it’ll last a long time.

Cheese is a bit more labor intensive, but worth it if your family gets most of its animal protein from milk products. There are both natural and genetically engineered rennets on the market, go for the natural if you can. These can also be salvaged from commercial, natural cheeses and added. Cream makes the best strong cheeses, but this takes some time. The internet has sources for the necessary ingredients, or perhaps your CSA can help you with that as well. Be choosy – local food is a growing movement as things in the dollar-based global economy fall apart, be on the forefront of making sure you can do as much for yourself as possible!

This sort of knowledge – how to grow, preserve, obtain and stretch food for your family – is not knowledge that ever really “goes out of style.” Who knows what will happen to those jet-setters and politicians who whine endlessly about pieces of paper or mere bits and bytes of information that grant their wealth – so much greater than We the People who are just trying to survive? Do we really care? If we can do for ourselves, they don’t seem so important anymore, and our personal worlds expand locally to include all the things we really need.

Perhaps in the end that would be the greatest lesson any of us could ever teach our children as well as our erstwhile ‘masters’. We’ll be okay, thanks. When you’re hungry, we’ll talk about it…

So get busy, folks! Find out where your CSAs are, start making some friends in the farming community, see if you can turn that shed into a goat barn, and figure out how many chickens you can host in your back yard without compromising the garden. We can live through this, maybe come out the other side more confident than ever that we’ll never be helpless again!

Links:

Local Harvest: CSA
Dairy CSA
Cook for Good: Yogurt
Homemade Cheese
Cheese Making & Supplies
What’s Cooking: Homemade Cheese

As we move into 2008′s extended holiday period, more than a few families are wondering if there will be a Christmas this year. Sure, some retailers are going all out to stay open long enough to see if anybody’s buying this year, but with consumer credit at a virtual standstill, international trade languishing on the docks and jobs being lost by the thousands every week, it’s a no-brainer that this Christmas isn’t going to be ‘the usual’ consumer spending orgy of Christmases past.

Presuming that your family still has a home, can heat it, and enough income to put food on the table, there are ways to have a festive, meaningful Christmas without going further into debt and without ending up with cheap Chinese junk that nobody really wants or needs.

The best thing you can do for your family is Make Your Own, and involve the kids! We save old Christmas cards in a box in the closet, pull them out around Thanksgiving and use them, plus various saved papers, made papers, trims, sequins, glitter, buttons, studs, etc. to make brand new Christmas cards for the people in our lives. Scissors and glue, a paper cutter, maybe some cutsey hole punches and lots of odds and ends, these cards inevitably get saved by every Mom, Grandma or other friend/relative who gets them! And kids are especially creative in this area. Sure you’ll have to clean up the mess, but a great time was had by all.

There are schedulers, list-keepers, budding writers and artists in just about every family. So another great gift are notebooks, journals, sketchbooks and schedulers you can make or buy. My friends over at Casual Keystrokes have compiled a worthy list of the best of the best journals, notebooks, sketchbooks and schedulers available online, some of them offer great deals and discounts.

If you really want to put some ‘self’ into it, the ideas and designs of some of those items Keystrokes suggests can be used as models for do it yourself gift projects. My grandson learned how to make leather bound notebooks in school, has really turned it into an art form. He collects old used leather jackets from Goodwill and other thrift shops, and recycles that leather for bindings. The neatest looking ones are patchwork of different kinds of leather, bound together with leather glue (can be purchased at a craft supply store).

Paper can be bought or made, but making can be fun. Did you know that you can make fine paper from collected dryer lint? Frugal Living offers the recipe and details on how to do this. Fine handmade paper bound in a fine handmade leather bound book can be the most delightful gift under the tree for anyone who loves to write, doodle, or keep meticulous notes.

You might be surprised at how useful that dryer lint can be to the dedicated crafter. PlanetPal offers recipes and instructions for how to make lint paper mache and lint clay as well as lint paper. And if there are very young ones on your Christmas list, there are some great patterns and instructions for how to make stuffed animals and dolls, and that dryer lint makes great stuffing too!

There is also the tradition of “Hobbit Presents” that some families find so fun. This is the practice of re-giving a previous year’s gift to someone else. When it’s unwrapped, the family can remember where it came from, who has enjoyed it, and who gave it to whom. These sort of gifts need to be more substantial than cheap plastic stuff from China, but quality items handmade with skill and care make great Hobbit Presents. Pride in craftsmanship is something children miss out on too much these days. Teaching them, encouraging them and helping them learn to value such things from themselves and others won’t hurt them a bit.

So it’s November. Get busy!!!

Links:

‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas
Casual Keystrokes
Making Paper from Dryer Lint
Lint Craft Recipes
Stuffed Toy Patterns

Part 3: Discouraging Bugs, Treating Boo-Boos

In this last installment of the series examining inexpensive and natural alternatives to the many household products people spend so much money on through the year, I want to look at the basic summertime first aid kit.

My family lives in the “deep woods” that Deep Woods Off^TM was invented to de-bug. We have lots of company during the summer season, adults and children. There’s not much one can do about nasty encounters with aggressive poisonous snakes (copperheads are much more aggressive than timber rattlers, who live in the area but are hardly ever seen) or bone breaks or serious puncture wounds or cuts. Those just have to go to the ER, best thing to do is make that happen as quickly as possible. But there are a host of lesser injuries and situations that can be treated adequately at home, without the fancy, expensive products that contribute so much to a weekly grocery bill.

In the first installment of the series I listed the basic ingredients to purchase – brand name or generic (I get generic, but brands aren’t that much more expensive) borax, baking soda, rubbing alcohol, white vinegar, basic soap flakes (or liquid soap made from your disintegrating bath bars), and added ammonia. In the second installment I gave some recipes for laundry soap, kitchen and bath scouring powders, drain cleaner, surface disinfectants, etc. Now, using the same ingredients (plus a few things from the garden) let’s make the first aid kit and general insect management substances…

Insects In The House, Yard and Garden

Chances are your area has its share of mosquitoes, biting gnats, ticks, chiggers, bees, wasps and yellow jackets during the summer. The best thing to do is avoid them altogether, or at least discourage them from taking up close residence.

Mosquito/Gnat Repellant

For some people simply splashing some rubbing alcohol on exposed skin and allowing it to dry will deter mosquitoes and gnats, who are attracted to white clothing, carbon dioxide exhaled by breathing, and the scent of humans. Anything that disguises or (temporarily) eliminates the scent will help repel.

Avon Skin-So-Soft is a strong-smelling bath oil that works very well to repel biting insects, if you can stand the smell.

Crushing and rubbing mint, lemon balm or basil leaves on the skin is often an effective mosquito repellant.

A few drops of essential oil (eucalyptus, cedar, tea tree, fir, etc.) in rubbing alcohol will extend the useful repellant time of plain rubbing alcohol. Oil of citronella, peppermint lemon balm, cloves, geraniums, fleabane (pyrethrum) or rosemary also work.

garlic oil – available as supplements in gelatin shells you can prick with a pin will work if you can stand the smell, and eating a lot of garlic (or taking good doses of the oil supplements) will give your sweat a garlic odor that discourages biting insects. So does a strong decoction of mint, and the mint smells better. Mix with rubbing alcohol, put it in a spray bottle and use liberally.

Wood smoke dispels biting insects too, I’ve found that keeping the campfire going during gatherings and not sweating the smoke very much tends to keep the main portion of the back yard clear of mosquitoes and gnats.

First Aid for Insect Encounters

Wasps, yellow jackets and bees can produce big, painful welts and can cause serious allergic reactions. Bees will often leave a stinger in the skin – DO NOT squeeze or try to pull it out. Scrape it out with the edge of a fingernail or credit card so more venom isn’t introduced. The best immediate treatment I’ve found is a paste of baking soda and cold water. Apply thickly to the sting site and let it dry, then brush the residue off and apply again. As the soda dries, it will tend to pull the venom from the wound.

A good paste for this purpose is also baking soda and rubbing alcohol, so keep these ingredients close together. The alcohol will not only disinfect the site, it dries faster than water and increases the leaching action of the soda.

For pain, applying lemon juice or vinegar to the sting often helps. Ammonia works too, and can definitely help dispel the itch of mosquito bites. A wet tea bag (black tea) applied to bites will help keep swelling down.

If a guest is unlucky enough to encounter a swarm and sustain more than one or two stings (yellow jackets are bad for swarming, as are hornets and sometimes bees), keep some Benedryl cream and pills handy. If anyone coming to visit has a deadly allergy to bees, you might ought to encourage them to go to the beach instead.

A slice of cucumber applied directly to bites helps to ease itching. A cucumber mush (run peeled cukes through the food processor) with some chunks of aloe is very soothing to apply to chigger bites. Add some salt for rashes. You’ll also want to treat chiggers with alcohol, they’re some of the worst bites when it comes to infection setting in.

First Aid for Poison Ivy/Poison Oak

…and other plant irritations. The cucumber and aloe goop mentioned above is soothing to poison ivy rashes, helps to ease itching. But the best thing to do if someone has been somewhere on the property where they’re just bound to encounter ivy, is to put them into a bathtub with about 4-6 inches of tepid water into which you’ve mixed half a cup of baking soda or a quarter cup of chlorine bleach. Have them wash thoroughly all exposed skin with soap and rinse well.

Alternatives to the above are baths with white vinegar or epsom salt.

A paste of baking soda and vinegar is often better than Calamine for easing the itch. It will foam, but if you mix slowly you’ll eventually get a paste thin enough to spread. When it’s good and dry, rinse off again in tepid, salted bathwater, then apply aloe in rubbing alcohol.

Other Issues

A tepid baking soda bath also soothes heat rashes and diaper rash, sunburn and windburn, and other skin rashes.

Baking soda paste is an excellent whitening toothpaste, and baking soda in water is a healthful mouth rinse. Half a teaspoon of soda in half a glass of water eases heartburn and acid indigestion as well as upset stomach from gas.

A strong, hot water salt solution is a great gargle for sore throats. My father swore by hot salt water, we never kept sore throat medicines in our house – salt water was it, and it worked.

I advise everyone to keep a healthy aloe plant in a big pot somewhere in the house or on the porch to treat sumburns, minor burn-burns, skin scrapes and lesions, dry skin, etc., etc. Mints aren’t hard to grow either, and like Rosemary are perennial wherever you put them. If the mints escape into the yard (as they’re entirely likely to do), just mow them when you mow the grass. Makes your fresh-mowed lawn smell absolutely heavenly, and you’ve plenty of mint for making teas, stomach-soothers, bug repellant, etc.

If readers have more money-saving recipes and hints, please post them in the comments! One could spend literally hundreds of dollars on these sort of products just for the summer season, or save a lot of money by doing it themselves!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

Part 2: Keeping Things Clean

In Part 1 of this 3-part series I listed some basic ingredients to purchase that can do double or triple duty in your home cleaning, disinfecting and treating small first aid issues while saving you big money and at the same time NOT polluting your home or our collective environment.

In this part of the series I’ll list some easy recipes for mixing your basic ingredients into useful household products. This doesn’t take a lot of time or heavy effort, and can be done on a weekend afternoon easily once every month or two (as they get used up), or mixed on the spot for particular jobs.

In The Laundry Room: Everybody must do laundry. Whether or not you’ve got an infant in diapers (cloth is best!) or small children who love to make mud pies, or older kids who sweat a lot, or just working adults who must wear good clothes or uniforms daily in their jobs, you’re going to have to wash clothes. And while the price of food and gasoline keeps rising out of sight, most people already know that good laundry products are a significant chunk of change out of the budget.

I mentioned in Part 1 how to make liquid soap out of the dregs of bars that melt all over your tub and sink by just putting them in a container with water and letting them dissolve. That’s good hand soap that can be put into a dispenser, but can also provide the basis of laundry soap if you’ve enough of it. I have a friend who must travel for her job, and who collects those little motel soaps through the year, gifting them to me at Christmas so I’ve got sizeable baskets of rock-hard teeny-soaps still in their wrappers. I use these to make liquid soap, and liquid soap to make laundry soap. Alternatively, you can use Fels Naptha laundry soap bars, which are inexpensive and go quite far. The three bar package can make about 6 gallons of laundry soap, which should get most households through at least that many months even if there’s a lot of laundry to do! Ivory soap bars or flakes work very well for baby laundry, and is still among the least expensive of basic soaps you can buy.

Recipe: 2 gallons liquid laundry soap

1.5 cups liquid soap or 1 cup grated bar soap
6 cups water
3/4 cup baking soda
1/2 cup borax

Mix water and soap in a large pot. Stir in soda and borax. Heat over low medium stirring with a wooden spoon until everything is well dissolved. Bring to a boil and boil slowly for 15 minutes. Remove from heat (it should have the general consistency of honey). In a bucket with tight-fitting lid add 1 quart of hot water, then add the soap mixture and mix well. Add enough cold water to make 2 full gallons and blend the ingredients thoroughly. After 24 hours this mixture should set to a light gel. Store the bucket next to the washer, stir it with a wooden slat or spoon before each use, use 1/2 cup per full laundry load.

It doesn’t really have to be a gel, a liquid will work fine. It also won’t suds up in the wash, but that’s okay. The ingredients will all do their jobs. This laundry soap costs about 50¢ a gallon, which is many dollars cheaper than a gallon of liquid detergent at the grocery store!

Recipe: 2 cups dry laundry soap

Some people simply prefer a dry laundry soap to a liquid. This is also easy enough to make.

1 cup grated bar soap
1/2 cup borax
1/2 cup baking soda

Put these into a quart size jar and shake well. Use 2-3 tablespoons per laundry load (depending on size and soil). This mixture takes up less room that a bucket of liquid, and works quite well.

* If you have a baby in diapers, you may wish to use Arm & Hammer laundry soda instead of regular baking soda, as it will absorb more acid than the regular. But for general laundry needs, the cheaper baking soda works fine.

Recipe: stain remover spray

1/3 cup tap water
1/3 cup household ammonia
1/3 cup rubbing (denatured) alcohol

Mix ingredients into a clean spray bottle, shake to mix and use as needed to pre-treat stains on clothing (particularly good on collar and underarm stains).

Recipe: fabric softener

2 cups white vinegar
2 cups baking soda
4 cups hot water

Mix the vinegar and water, then carefully mix in the soda (slowly… or it will foam like you won’t believe!). Add about 20 drops of essential oil (lavender is nice, so is cedarwood, rose, whatever you like). This recipe will make about a gallon, you can put it into a cleaned-out gallon plastic jug. Shake gently before using.

You can also put some of this in a spray bottle and use it as a freshener like Febreeze.

Recipe: starch

If you like your shirts crisp or work in a uniform that needs starch, you can make your own by simply mixing a tablespoon of corn starch in a quart of water. Put it in a spray bottle and keep it near the iron.

In The Kitchen and Bath

The most important household products you’ll be using in the kitchen and bath are scouring powders and disinfectants of some variety. These of course will do double duty, so you’ll want to keep a spray bottle of disinfectant separately in those rooms, along with a jar of powder.

Recipe: surface disinfectant

1/4 cup ammonia
1 cup rubbing alcohol
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 cup water

Mix these ingredients together and put into spray bottles to store in the kitchen and bath. It cuts grease and kills bacteria, can be used to clean countertops, sinks, tubs, showers and toilets.

* Remember… NEVER mix ammonia and bleach! None of these recipes use bleach, but don’t get careless!

Recipe: scouring powder

We all need some good scouring powder on occasion to get tough stains off sinks, tubs and toilets. Mix equal parts baking soda and borax, put into a lidded jar and keep where it’s needed. Shake it a bit and shake onto a wet surface, scrub with a sponge, rag or brush.

* Always be sure to label your home made cleaning products when you make them. You can use printer labels and a Sharpee (waterproof ink). That way nobody makes mistakes!

Around The House

There are other cleaning, deodorizing and disinfecting jobs to do around the house. Here’s some hints on those…

Stains and odors

Salt works great for getting serious stains out of carpet. Wet the stain and shake salt on it amply, let it sit overnight before vacuuming.

Carpet odors (pet or baby urine, general funk) are well absorbed by plain baking soda. Shake it onto the carpet and allow to sit for at least an hour, then vacuum.

Urine stains on kid’s mattresses can be sprayed with a borax and water mixture, allowed to dry, then vacuumed with the brush attachment. You can add a little soda too, it won’t hurt and will absorb even more odor.

Mildew anywhere in the home is best cleaned with a mixture of salt and enough lemon juice to make a paste.

To deodorize plumbing drains pour a cup of white vinegar down it once a week. Let stand for half an hour and flush with cold water. If your drain is slow due to hair/grease clog, pour a handful of baking soda down the drain and then add 1/2 cup vinegar. Rinse with hot water, the clog should dissolve.

If your dishes from the meal are greasy, add a tablespoon of vinegar to the soapy wash water. Vinegar also cleans dishwashers, steam irons and coffee makers well, just run some vinegar through once a month. Wash microwave ovens with vinegar and water.

In the third part of this series we’ll look at some recipes for first aid and insect repellants that will come in handy over the summer months, using these same cheap ingredients. See you then!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

Part 1: The List of Ingredients

Now that it’s late May, it’s time to stock up for the summer – and our many summer visitors – on things like bug repellant (we really do live in the Deep Woods), anti-itch solution, insect sting remedies, poison ivy treatments, cut and scrape treatments, etc. The basic summertime First Aid Kit, all ingredients of which will be used as regularly as the usual household cleaners, deodorizers, detergents, polishes and disinfectants get used all year round.

Might as well get items that do double or triple duty as household cleansers and disinfectants as well as personal skin and hair care products too. I’ll use this post to make the basic list of things to buy, and later posts will give specific recipes and hints on how to use them to best advantage. And the best thing about these products? They’re Green and Eco-Friendly to boot!

Baking Soda: It all starts with good old baking soda. You can purchase generic or the primary name brand we recognize (Arm and Hammer). It’s cheap either way, and the same product though generic will tend to clump and solidify quicker and easier. Compared against the multitude of specialty chemicalized products you could be buying to do many of the same tasks, you could save hundreds of dollars a year with a cleaner, fresher house and a healthier family to show for it!

Baking soda is a good deodorizer for carpets and upholstery (even effective against pet and human urine odors), disinfectant, anti-fungal, a surface-safe scouring powder, cockroach insecticide, drain unclogger, silver and copper polish, laundry aid and pH equalizer for things like pool water. It is used medicinally as an anti-itch wash, insect sting treatment, toothpaste, mouthwash, gargle for sore throats poison ivy neutralizer, soothing treatment for athlete’s foot, an antacid, deodorant and anti-acne scrub. Given that it doesn’t cost much – particularly in 4-5 pound boxes – it can save you a bundle on all these sort of products that cost several dollars apiece.

Borax: Our list of necessary household basics continues with another sodium product, borax. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, while borax is sodium borate decahydrate. It’s a laundry booster (improves detergent action, natural colorsafe bleach), a water softener, multipurpose cleaner, fungicide, preservative, insecticide, herbicide, disinfectant and dessicant.

Plain Salt: The final sodium product on the list of must-haves is salt. You should always keep a one-pound box of plain (Kosher, iodine-free) salt on hand for non-table uses. This can be fine grain or coarse, basic sodium chloride purified from a mine rather than more expensive sea salt (which comes with quite a few extra minerals and chemicals than even iodized table salt). Salt has many general household and medicinal uses, such as water (and skin) softener in bath water, soothing soak for sore muscles and arthritic joints, anti-microbial mouthwash for gum disease, sore throat gargle, nasal decongestant spray (with soda in water) and eyewash.

Vinegar: Next on the list is your basic gallon jug of white vinegar. Vinegar is also a good disinfectant, a strong degreaser, streak-free glass cleaner, no-wax floor cleaner, stain remover from carpets and upholstery, wood furniture polish and ring remover (with olive oil), garbage disposal and drain deodorizer, brass polish, ant deterrent, stainless steel cleaner, bathroom water and soap deposit scrub, faucet and shower head unclogger and in the yard, an effective weed and grass killer (spray directly).

Olive Oil, Light Safflower Oil: These are of course useful for maintaining leather and wood furniture, and in certain recipes can be substituted for liquid soaps (they also provide fats for homemade soaps). But you’ll want these primarily for skin and hair care products and bath oils and such. Buy basic 12-ounce bottles for these purposes and keep them separate from the oils you use normally for cooking and baking.

Lemon Juice, Rubbing Alcohol, Liquid Soap: Lemon juice and rubbing alcohol are household and medicinal necessities to keep on hand for a number of uses, along with liquid soap. If you save the dregs of your soap bars (those annoying left-overs that end up melted all over your sink or tub holder) in a pump jar with a little water (shake occasionally), you’ll be surprised at how much normally gets thrown away. Or, if you’re really enterprising, you can make your own soaps!

All told, I could go to the store today and bring home ample supplies of all these items for about $20, knowing they’ll last through the crowded summer and some will last through the rest of the year. If you were to do an inventory of all the specialized products you buy – furniture polish, drain opener, toilet bowl cleaner, bathtub and sink scrubs, spray-on spot removers, laundry additives, bath, skin care and beauty products, insect repellants, first aid sprays and creams and gargles and washes, etc., etc., etc., you’d find yourself spending hundreds over the next six months. Sometimes the best products are the old-fashioned (still cheap) ones!

Below are links to some basic uses on the web that readers may find useful. I’ll provide more specific recipes in my next post for household cleaning and disinfecting. Then I’ll list specifics on the first aid and medicinal recipes and uses. Later in this series we’ll look at personal care basics and how you can save a whole lot of money not buying fancy facial masks, skin treatments, moisturizers, wrinkle creams, bath treatments and skin soothers. So please stay tuned to put all this together!

Links:

Vinegar Institute: Uses & Tips
64 Uses for Vinegar
Uncommon Household Uses for Salt
Top 6 Uses for Borax
20 Mule Team Borax: Many Household Uses [pdf document]
FAQs: Arm & Hammer

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: List of Ingredients
Part 2: Recipes
Part 3: Bugs & First Aid

The Beauty and Style site List Maven has posted a linky article entitled…

35 Accessories Made From Recycled Materials

It’s truly imaginative. I particularly like the crocheted plastic grocery bag necklace, though I use my plastic grocery bags as trash basket liners if I forget to take my many forever re-usable canvas bags to the store with me. And I’ll definitely have to make my grandson those computer key cuff links for the prom, since he’s determined to win the Duck brand Scholarship for best Duct Tape tuxedo…

NYC Bread Line

Installment three of this series of 20 ways to live on little-to-nothing. In these we’ll look at some basics about food, using all of your abilities, and taking honest stock of exactly what you need to do in your life to get through the hard times. If you get hit hard by what’s happening – and cutting back on luxuries just won’t fix the problems – you’ll need to learn to rely on yourself.

11. Taking Honest Stock

If you don’t want to go all Gypsy (and have a family to support), you can still take control of your situation. Keep a careful record of where the money goes over a month. Examine your ‘necessary’ expenses (home, utilities, car, insurance, food, gas, any other fixed expenses). If the ‘necessary’ expenses are larger than net income, it’s time to get out from under the big ones and take a good look at less expensive ways to live. You can live through hard times, but first you have to acknowledge you’re in hard times.

Housing markets are bust right now, so it’s difficult to sell your house even if you were willing to take an equity loss. Same is true for cars and light trucks. It can be the best option to make a clean break and declare bankruptcy, which can allow you to start fresh with a whole different way of approaching life.

12. Put Your Skills to Good Use

Incorporating your skills into your life so you don’t have to pay someone else to do things for you is a way NOT to spend on such things. If your vehicle needs an oil change, new plugs or new brake pads, do it yourself if you know how. Use the opportunity to teach skills to the kids. Quality time with the young’uns as well as not spending $100 or more for something you did for yourself!

And keep in mind that your various skills and talents are themselves valuable. Someone always needs what you can do, and if you play your cards right, you can get a lot (besides cash) in return.

13. Grow Your Own

It’s nearly impossible for any one person to grow all the food they eat. Though there are good ways to barter for things you don’t grow, if you grow a lot of what you do grow (or can trade services). Some good information about community food cooperatives and exchanges is available on the web, through organizations like Local Harvest and Eat Wild.

You’ll inevitably have to spend money on food, but you can spend a lot less by a number of means. And even if you don’t have much land, you can still have a little plot of tomatoes, peppers, salad greens and such. Those can also grow in pots and flats on a sunny patio. Grow heirloom varieties and you can save seeds, too.

14. Make What You Eat

People these days are way too accustomed to eating out. Cooking up a cup of rice and adding some chopped veggies (or canned) to fry makes about 4 servings of fine fried rice for a buck or less, that you’d have to pay $10 or more for at the Chinese Take-Out. Really. Every time you DON’T eat out you’ve saved a chunk of change, done your body a nutritional service, and not contributed to the overabundance of styrofoam garbage that never rots.

One-pot meals (soups, stews, pasta and rice dishes) are not difficult and can go quite far. If you’re cooking for one, try cooking for two and that’s a whole other meal you don’t have to cook another day!

15. Eat What You Make

Eat leftovers for lunch the next day. People tend to roll their eyes at this, but think about it – if it was good enough for dinner, it’s good enough for lunch. That’s money you won’t be spending, food you won’t be throwing away. If you take a morning’s worth of coffee in a thermos, fill it with cold water from the fountain or cooler as soon as it’s empty, you’ve an afternoon’s worth of refreshment available. Buying bottled or fountain drinks adds up quickly.

Every scrap of edible food is valuable nutrition you won’t want to waste. Adding something fresh to the rice or something meaty to the mac and cheese makes a whole new meal. If it goes into your body instead of into the trash or compost pile, you’ve done yourself and your food budget a big favor.

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Items 1-5
Part 2: Items 6-10
Part 3: Items 11-15
Part 4: Items 16-20