Pintesting - Heart Hot Pads

One of my oven mitts has a really nasty hole in a terribly inconvenient place for anyone who has no desire to get burned. I plan to fix it - but haven't decided what method I want to use to do so. Meanwhile .....

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the info found here.

The directions say you will need to make your own template or that you can print out the one provided. I'd printed it out but then lost it so I made my own.

I started by taking a manilla folder that wasn't being used and traced the outline of my hand. Try to center your hand over the fold.

Once you outline your hand fold the folder in half

and free hand a heart design that you find pleasing and that should encompass your hand.

 Following your own guideline, cut out the heart.

Et viola - you have your template.

Place your template on the fabric you intend to use to make your hot pads and pin it in place. I layed my fabric in a way that would leave me cutting 4 pieces out at once - you can do one at a time or fold like I did.

Cut around your template.

 You should now (or very soon depending on if you're cutting one at a time) have four hearts.

Get out your insul-bright.

Lay it out so that you are either cutting one or two pieces at a time. Pin your heart template to the insul-bright.

Carefully, once again cut around your heart template. You should now have two pieces of insulated fabric.

Cut one of your two pieces of insulbrite in half. Take one of your pieces of heart fabric. Place the insul-bright inside, fold your heart over and pin in place. Do this to one more of your cut pieces of heart fabric.

Take one of your pieces of heart fabric and set it with the right side facing down. Place a piece of insul-bright in the center. Place your remaining piece of heart shaped fabric on top and pin all three pieces together.

You should now have three pieces pinned together and nearly ready to sew. This was the point where I decided to trim all of my edges. Then remove your pins and get out whatever you choose to use to get that Valentine's day feel. The original pin says ricrac but I used some lace.

Lay it out on your heart shape and pin it in place. You're going to want all the lacy bits that you want to poke out around the edges to be facing inward.

Then pin the other two pieces in place. Make sure that all pins you are using can either be sewn over or are far enough in to hold things in place and not interfer with your sewing.

Sew all around the edges.

Flip the heart so that it is now right side out.

Then top-stitch all around the edges.

DONE! A pin well worth trying!

Fleas - The Waiting Game

The fleas are still here. They're very hearty little buggers (much to my chagrin). The toll it was taking on the dog was just too much.

I started waking up with more and more flea bites in the morning. Worst of all - I found fleas in my daughters hair once after she rolled around on the floor playing. I felt like I was the worst worst house-keeper and that I had my family living in some flea infested hovel (my mother didn't help me feel any better about all of this either.)

My father bought a flea spray to be applied to the dog pretty much every day, we bought the dog a flea collar, we bombed our house twice, and then we had to give the dog a flea bath. Once again we will have to wait.

I found a pin talking about an at home spray you can make using essential oils, but essential oils run around $10 - 20 per bottle at my local health food store and the mix calls for quite a few. I just couldn't afford it.

Now you may be thinking, "with all that was purchased, surely you could have afforded the natural solutions." We really don't have a lot of money, and I really didn't expect this flea problem to go this far. Maybe I'll slowly purchase the necessary essential oils to create the natural flea spray but for the moment I have a lot of other things on my plate.

It seems that a kitten our daughter was playing with at my mother-in-laws house was patient zero. I heard a lot of my brother-in-laws friends found themselves victims of a flea infestation. It just seems my own household was the one that suffered to this extreme degree.

One of the friends said that his mother suggested banana peels. He he said he bought some bananas and left the peels in the corners of a few of the rooms and the fleas were gone in days. He also made sure to point out he's never home so they may have just starved to death.

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - The Kitchen Sink

My kitchen sink can sometimes look . . . pretty gross.

As much as I'd like to blame it on my husbands it's my fault too.

Someone should be going behind the other to make sure things don't get to an unacceptable point. This is definitely not the worst it's ever looked but most certainly not the best.

Today's pin-test comes from the info found via this pin, all the info I needed was on the pin so I didn't really have to dig around on the source blog.

This is one of the quickest and easiest pin-tests I've done.

Sprinkle your sink with baking soda.

Spray with vinegar and then rinse your sink with super hot water. I didn't even bother scrubbing and my results were satisfying.

This one is definitely worth trying.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Dishwashing Detergent (part III)

You can imagine how absolutely sick of dishes I must be by now. If it weren't bad enough that I was already doing multiple loads in a day - lately I've been getting nowhere, fast.

Today's pin-test from from the info here via this pin.

Considering how terribly this has all being going for me and that I read in the comments of someone's blog about home-made, chemical-free, cleaning agents that citric acid cancels out Castile soap somehow I wasn't feeling too confident that this would work.

It didn't. Again I had a bit of a chalky residue. I'm considering packing it in and just buying some Meyer or Seventh Generation . . . .

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - Dishwashing detergent (Part II)

Unhappy with the way my last attempt at home-made dish-washing detergent was going I decided to try another recipe.

Today's pin-test come from the info here via the this pin.

The biggest change between my last dish-washing detergent and the one I tried today is the addition of lemi-shine and kosher salt. Feeling a bit hopeless at this whole home-made cleaning supplies thing I made only as much as this recipe called for rather than a large batch like I previously had. I'm glad I did.

Today's results were again disheartening. Upon opening my dishwasher and hoping to be removing my sparkling clean dishes I was met with that same chalky residue. At this point this particular load of dishes had gone through at least three times. I ran it once more, on heavy duty, with just water.

Residue. Frak.

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - Dishwashing detergent

I saw quite a few pins saying that a mixture of half borax and half washing soda would give you a good powdered dish washing detergent.

The first pass through the dishwasher left me really happy with the results but for whatever reason all subsequent uses of it left me with powdered residue on the dishes. Frak.

The use of white vinegar as mock Jet Dry in combination with the mixture didn't remedy the issue. Back to the drawing board I suppose.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Bathroom Sink

My bathroom sink frequently looks . . .disgusting. With my parents coming I couldn't possibly let my mother see the sink like this.

Today's pin-test comes from the info from here via this pin.

My husband usually shaves his head over our sink and then leaves his hair there to clog it for a pretty indefinite amount of time.

• DRAIN CLEANER: Pour 1/2 cup baking soda into drain followed by 1 cup vinegar. Let it sit and fizz for 15 minutes, then rinse with hot or boiling water. May need to repeat or leave baking soda and vinegar in overnight.

I was hoping the foaming action from the drain cleaning would leave me with nothing left to scrub - but this was not the case. On to round 2.

• SCOURING POWDER: Combine 1 cup baking soda, 1 cup borax, and 1 cup kosher salt in a jar. Sprinkle on area to be cleaned, wipe with a sponge, and rinse.

With all of the cleaning I've been doing I've pretty much run out of baking soda so i used 1/4 cup of each ingredient instead of a full cup.

In fact, I figured while I was at it I may as well scrub the entire sink area.

The back of the sink had also gotten a bit grody.

I was pretty happy with the results.

Was it worth a try? It sure was and I definitely recommend it.
 

Washing In My Own Laundry Soap

There's a chance my mother was even more excited about my first use of my home-made laundry soap than I was. In fact, right before she'd called I was already getting ready to wash some clothes.

When I first drained the detergent into the little cup that comes with the container it was that same watery consistency from when I first poured it in. I put a bit more in and started the washer. Still pretty nervous about the soap I stopped the washer about half-way through and poured some in from the other end (after a good shake.) Still a bit watery but nowhere near as clear or thin as it seemed before.

After I washed it you better bet this girl gave the laundry a sniff test before I went forward. I didn't smell a thing, no chemicals, no foul odor, not even wet clothes. Into the dryer they went while I started another load of laundry. For the second load of laundry I used vinegar as my fabric softener.

The consensus: I'm happy with yet another positive change being made in our household and say this one is worth a try for all of those who are interested.

Pintesting - Chemical-free cleaning - The Toilet (Take II)

As I mentioned in my previous post, the bathroom closest to my bedroom is used with enough frequency that leaving it with borax in it all night isn't much of an option.

Today's pin-test comes from the info here via this pin.

The before

15 minutes later

After scrubbing

The consensus: I was better off letting borax sit all night in the toilet

Pintesting - Chem-Free Cleaning - Laundry Detergent

The Christmas before my daughter was born my mother gave me a bottle of Dreft telling me that it was gold. Dreft, as it was explained to me was the laundry detergent I should be using to wash my little ones clothing. I was left with the impression that it was gentler and perhaps contained less of the harsh chemicals I was using on my husband and my own's clothing. Since that time I have been dutifully using Dreft to wash my little girls clothes.

But wait a minute! Why didn't I ever stop to think that if it wasn't so great for my little lamb to snuggle up in sheets washed in the same detergent I was using on my own, maybe the detergent I was using simply wasn't so great.

If you're using a chemical free laundry detergent there's should be no reason to have to do your childs' laundry in separate loads with and entirely different detergent. You're already saving money by only using one type of detergent rather than two.

Today's pin-test comes from the information I got here via this pin.

Grating Fel Naptha proved simpler than I expected. The soap is really soft so it grates quickly and easily. I was able to do it despite having a sprained wrist (on the side that would be holding the grater).

I opted to use empty containers from my husbands juice. He wasn't happy about this. Because the juices are so sweet he usually saves an old container and splits the juice equally between the containers and then adds water. When he realized there was really no talking me out of using his containers for a short while to make the new laundry detergent he told me what I already knew: to clean them very, very, very well because if I didn't and he mixed juice in a contaminated container he could get very, very, very sick. His faith in what I do and don't know is just amazing.

While I was constantly stirring the soap and water mixture there were more suds than I expected. I was pretty worried I'd already done it wrong. I soldiered on . . you know . . . for science (and because I can be a bit hard-headed and had nothing else to do anyway.)

The resulting pudding-like mixture left me feeling pretty satisfied and amused. I used a measuring cup to put the soap into the bottles. One cup in one bottle, One cup in the following, one cup in the last, one cup in the last, one cup in the center, and one cup in the first - then repeat until you run out of soap.

The tops of the bottles ended up getting a little messy.

I did my best to eyeball where the half-way point for the bottles was when I added the hot water.

Shaking up the mix was again, something that left me feeling more satisfied than I expected. It was a little bit fun.

Come morning I was hoping to find a gelatinous blob that would slide when I moved the bottle. My blob did not slide when you moved the bottle. I stuck a wooden spoon in and began breaking up the blob. Then I filled the bottles the rest of the way with hot water. You will need to do a lot of shaking to get your detergent to mix well. I thought my husband would have done well enough but when I began transferring the mix to an empty detergent container it was downright watery. The reason for this was that there was still quite a huge blob left untouched by the shaking. So really go to town on the shaking.

I actually ended up rendering two of the jugs (in my opinion) useless. My husband was cleaning out one of our very messy rooms and throwing things away. Wanting to see what he was throwing away with reckless abandon I headed out to our trash can to look through the boxes. Aside from a $300+ pair of jeans I found some shirts that would make perfect baby rompers and some rose scented laundry water.

Without checking the label I added the laundry water to two of my jugs. When I checked the label I saw that it contained "fragrance", which I now know is a synthetic, toxic, ingredient. I was still able to completely fill our emptied laundry detergent container. I'll need to make more to replace the Dreft but next I plan to replace our fabric softener.

Pintested - Chem-Free Cleaning - Pans

Even after my last two cleanings and a trip through the dish washer my husbands pan was still just not clean enough for me.

Today's pin-test comes from this pin, all the info you need is actually right there on the pin.

I filled the pan with 2 cups of cold water and then added 3 tablespoons of kosher salt. Knowing that if I just left the pan sitting in the sink I moved it into the laundry room to sit overnight (actually I filled the pan that afternoon instead of that evening but this pan needed help!) I also made sure to spread the salt over the problem areas.

Here's what the pan looked like the next morning.

Not a whole lot of change if any. Not feeling too confident this would actually work I put the pan on the stove and heated it on medium - or as close to that as I can assume it is since I have a gas stove.

The only thing this experiment accomplished was creating a hot, salty crust around the edge of my pan. The treatment did nothing for the pan. The pin says that this can take a few tries but I feel unconvinced that multiple tries would result in a nice, clean pan.

Would I say this is worth trying? No, save yourself the time and effort.

Pintested - Chemical-Free Cleaning - Microwave

I'm thankful to be able to tell you that my microwave is not regularly a hang-my-head-in-shame mess. But I do periodically find myself with a larger share of splattered food than I'd like in there.

Somehow it seems there's a lot of people who aren't aware of the problem this mess poses in relation to how well your microwave cooks food. The short and sweet explanation of what I mean by this is: when you have a microwave coated with food splatters, each time you use it, your microwave will expend a portion of its energy to once again cook those food splatters. More splatters - less even or concentrated cooking.

Today's pin-test comes from the info I found here as a result of following this pin.

My microwave was already "acceptably" clean but it had once again been a while since it's last cleaning.

I assembled the things I would need to begin cleaning. Once they were I jumped right in.

I really want to be able to tell  you that I walked down the hallway and smelled the magnificent aroma of vanilla wafting towards me but no such thing happened.

Did the dirt/grime/grease/food residue just wipe right off as websites with similar solutions boast? Not really. However, this one did at least tell you how long to microwave the water. I've seen some that just tell you to microwave whatever the mixture is and not tell you mixture amounts of microwave times.

Here is what the microwave looked like after merely wiping it down after doing as instructed.

Although some things did seem to wipe away with ease, I didn't get the end result I was hoping for. What's a pinner to do? Dip your UnPaper towel into the warm vanilla water mixture and scrub the microwave with it.

Although I saw more positive results there's definitely still some residue left that will need to be removed.

Chemical to Chemical-Free

My little girl has reached the point where I find her looking in all cabinets within reach so I really can't think of a better time to just jump in and replace all those dangerous chemicals.

First I collected 99% of our cleaners and toxic chemicals (I decided to go ahead and finish up the bottles of laundry detergent and children's laundry detergent. I may dispose of what's left of the cleaners or just finish using them. My end game plan is to reuse the containers.)

Then I went to the store and returned all of the unopened containers and exchanged them for greener options. It's not a perfect system putting those toxins right back out there but I don't really have too many pennies to spare.

Now to begin making at-home chemical-free cleaners.