Well sometimes things just get away from us. My Princess went out last weekend and found the perfect prom dress with all the accessories. I wonder where the time flew? It seems like just yesterday she was in first grade. How did she get to seventeen without me knowing?
My Jokester is going into 2nd grade next year. With him too, it seems like he was just in his walker sneaking french fries from our customers, and not a seven year old boy who is obsessed with healthy eating.
Then there's my little Superman. DH, wasn't it just awhile ago, that Superman had the emergency surgery when he was 2 months old? He's going to be five this year, and tells me he knows everything.
How time flies. Quite frankly time doesn't even care if your having a good time or a bad time. Time just keeps marching on doing it's thing. Looking back it seems as if the last seventeen years hit warp speed, and holy crap I wasn't supposed to get older this fast either. The last age I remember being was twenty-seven, and cool, and full of energy, and skinnier. A lot skinnier, and not sleep deprived, and I was fun, and skinnier.
Ok, enough with the skinnier stuff. While it's true that I was skinnier than I am now, that was then and this is now. I must deal with what I have now, and that's all I can do. Seriously though, I do not like being over weight. Let me back that one up a bit and speak the truth. I do not like being fat.
I seem to be one of those people who lately lacks any motivation. It took me three years to actually do more than just talk about quitting smoking to actually trying to quit. Which I did quit on Valentines day.
Don't ask why that day, I have no clue. It just was time, that's all. I have to get unbelievably pissed and disgusted with the circumstance that I don't like before I move to change it. Prior to that, I'm all talk.
Well I'm starting to get pissed about my weight. I want it gone. I am not going to just sit back and embrace my fatness and chalk it up to getting older. Screw that. Big excuse right there. I have over used the excuse of the problems with my back and hips to not do any exercising. Truth is, I can exercise in moderation without ending up in bed for weeks. It is when I go all gung ho that ends up putting me in bed for weeks. I'm not about to add another excuse to use. Older my ass...
Diet. More specifically my diet. Ha ha, well I should say the families diet. It's changing, whether we like it or not. I have been put on a reduced sodium diet. Guess what? It sucks trying to find stuff to eat. Why, you ask? Here's why...for the most part with a few exceptions, everything out there has sodium in it. Whether it's there naturally or put in by man. There is sodium everywhere! There is salt in stuff that doesn't even need salt in it for crying out loud! I can't get away from the stuff it seems. Since I already have to take drastic measures in finding or making food that is low sodium, I might as well go out on a limb and loose some weight too, and eat healthier like my mom taught me to do.
Now the hard part for me. I have no idea why I have such a time with this, but I have just a bitch of a time trying to get all the knowledge that is in my brain into a workable plan. It's driving me crazy. Snort, hehe I'm already crazy. Guess that was a short drive. I can research, and dig up information like there is no tomorrow, but putting it all together....whole nother story. I used to be good at this, apparently not any more. So here I sit, with a ton of knowledge and no idea what the hell to do with it all. I put it in a sloppy temporary form of something to tide me over while I continue to work on the plan. Argh!!!! Talk about a set-up for failure.
Well once again I wrote another post that just took on a mind of it's own. You would think I would have some control over my fingers and what they type, but they just type whatever the hell they want to. This is what the end product looks like. Hope you had a happy read, y'll take care now. I'm off to find some low sodium recipes for enchiladas for dinner tonight. You know this means I have to make everything from scratch here. Ugh.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Veggies, Fruits and Meet my Mom
Today I think I will write about my mom, since she's been on my mind a bit lately. I don't know, probably since it's her birthday this month. Shall we get started?
My mom was bat shit crazy. Ok, maybe not bat shit, but she was crazy. There are a lot of mental issues that run in her family. More on that some other time, or maybe later on in this post. There was something about her that just was just a bit off. I can't really explain it, maybe quirky would be a better way of putting it. Either way, as a teenager growing up with her, it made life...interesting.
You might notice that I speak about her in past tense, and that is because in 1995 she passed away. In 1984 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my mom being herself decided that chemo and radiation was not for her. Now look at the above years. Subtract 1984 from 1995. That's eleven years my mom lived without taking mainstream treatments until the last year of her life. Almost a year before she died, she decided to try the chemo. It didn't work. I'm going to share with you her amazing journey, because it is amazing and it certainly had God's hand in it.
I don't remember the month, but sometime in 1984 when my mom told me to sit on her bed with her because she had something to tell me. (We just happened to be in her room.) I hopped up on her bed and said, "what's up?" I was around twelve years old at the time. She started to cry, and I knew it wasn't good. She told me that a couple of weeks before she had gone to the doctors and they had found a lump in her breast. She told me she just came back from speaking with the specialist. It was confirmed that she had breast cancer and the doctor told her that she had 6 months or less to live. BAM! Life as we both knew it ended that day.
She made the decision to forgo the mainstream treatments, due to other family members dying while taking them. Her philosophy was that it was the chemo and radiation that killed the family members. She very well could have been accurate, but I'm no specialist. In place of the mainstream treatments she went all natural. This woman was way ahead of the times, and it was hell for a teenager who liked to snack on junk food. She also kept having the tumors removed when they occasionally came back.
Let me explain a bit here for you. These fads you see now and days about, I don't know lets say, Pomegranate juice. She was doing this WAY before it became the norm or the fad. I don't know where she got her information from since there was no internet as we know it today, but I notice today, that everything, and I do mean everything she used to preach to me about health and nutrition is true. I remember when I moved to my dads house when I was 14, and while going through things and packing up I found the stash of vitamins that I hid everyday. There were a butt load of them! Can you tell I was not on the health food bandwagon yet?
My mom continued to try alternative treatments to cure her cancer, and during this time her being a woman who already was very religious turned ultra religious. She had a ritual so to speak. She would take her vitamins, go to the Chiropractor, eat all natural foods which included juicing, and pray like there was no tomorrow, because for her there might not have been another day. She would go in for her follow-ups and 9 times out of ten there was no cancer to be found. That other one percent...yeah it was cancer. Usually when the cancer re-appeared it was during the times where she wasn't eating her diet, and praying like she usually did. Many times she would come home and say they found a tumor, and go back on her routine, to have the tumor completely gone at the next visit.
She did this despite the fact that EVERYONE told her she was crazy and was going to die. She lost many friends because she refused to do the mainstream treatments. Family members refused to speak with her because of it.
I was stuck in the middle. Today I understand the reasoning behind everyone's insistence that she go mainstream. It was because it was what they knew. It was what everyone did. My mom's approach was new, and almost unheard of. They were afraid it wouldn't work, and they didn't want to see her die. cancer is after all scary enough to deal with without going outside the box.
So for eleven years everyone held their breath as they sat there and waited for that day. We all new she would die from the cancer, just didn't know when it would happen. I used to think about when she died, as the day of relief. The wait was finally over, and I no longer had to stand there and wonder when it would happen. Looking back I realize that was the worse thing anyone could have done for her. How hard was it to keep going on when nobody believed in what you were doing? We essentially were planning her death. Actually, I just realized this as I was writing and am having a bitch of a time dealing with this realization.
My mom had my brother when she was 43 years old and went into stage 4 cancer. I remember the day she told me she was pregnant, and I asked her if she was stupid. How could she be so selfish to bring a child into the world knowing that it would probably kill her, and her child would grow up without her. Her answer to me was, "God decided that this was to be." Now don't get me wrong here, I believe in God, I really do. However in all honesty I certainly do not have the faith that my mom did, and her religiousness was driving me crazy.
Through out this time her cancer had gone from her breast to her lymph nodes, to her bones, and in the end, into her blood. Let me click back a bit here, and let you know that she did make an appointment with the doctor who first diagnosed her and told her she had six months to live and when she told him how she was going to treat it he then gave her a month. Six years after that diagnose she walked in with her head held high and told that doctor to shove his diagnose where the sun don't shine. In a very religious way of course.
In January of 1995 I had my daughter. I called my mom who lived 4+hours away at 4:00am and told her it was time. She drove 260 miles to witness her first grandchild be born. She arrived 15 minutes after I was admitted, she asked if she could take a seat, and I asked her why she was walking funny she told me when the cancer entered her bones it had weakened two of her vertebrates and they were crushed. I asked her where my step-dad was, and she told me he was at home nursing something or other from surgery. She had driven herself all that ways with two crushed vertebrates! Hell fucking yeah she could have a seat!
That was about the time where things for her started to really head south. It was also the time where she went on the chemo pack. I was at home one day when she called me from the hospital. She wanted me to call the nurses station because they weren't answering the call button. Problem here, I had no clue which hospital she was in. The only info she could give me was she was in Madison WI, and she was freezing. She could hardly talk she was so cold. After playing phone tag with several hospitals and churches to locate my mom or my step-dad I headed out to Madison without a clue as to where I was going, but with one goal in mind. Find my mom, and figure out what the hell was going on. I made the five hour drive in three hours. Little did I know she would be gone in two weeks.
By this time the cancer had entered her bloodstream and was having the worst impact on her than in all the other years put together. It was causing too much calcium to be produced and the side effects of this were that she was very tired and slept a lot. The doctors were able to keep it under control for awhile, but in the end it did a huge spike and essentially what happened was that she went to bed and never woke up again. She fought the cancer for eleven years, but in the end...the calcium in the bloodstream took her in a matter of months. ( Side note here. Just because a person has high calcium levels doesn't not mean they have cancer. What happened to my mom is very rare, and only some times happens with people in late stage cancer.)
She passed in November of 1995, eleven months after she witnessed her first grandchild being born. My little brother was only three years old. My mom taught me many things about taking care of my body and being healthy, and for years I scorned it and laughed at it. It's come full circle now, as I currently am having health issues, and bit by bit I am remembering the things I was taught. I am also kicking myself in the ass for not listening in the first place. Don't you know? Mothers always know best. Slowly I'm changing my life into a healthier one, and I'm sure just like my mom, I too will be ridiculed for going against the mainstream, and being a bit quirky, but it's all good, she's got my back.
My mom was bat shit crazy. Ok, maybe not bat shit, but she was crazy. There are a lot of mental issues that run in her family. More on that some other time, or maybe later on in this post. There was something about her that just was just a bit off. I can't really explain it, maybe quirky would be a better way of putting it. Either way, as a teenager growing up with her, it made life...interesting.
You might notice that I speak about her in past tense, and that is because in 1995 she passed away. In 1984 my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, and my mom being herself decided that chemo and radiation was not for her. Now look at the above years. Subtract 1984 from 1995. That's eleven years my mom lived without taking mainstream treatments until the last year of her life. Almost a year before she died, she decided to try the chemo. It didn't work. I'm going to share with you her amazing journey, because it is amazing and it certainly had God's hand in it.
I don't remember the month, but sometime in 1984 when my mom told me to sit on her bed with her because she had something to tell me. (We just happened to be in her room.) I hopped up on her bed and said, "what's up?" I was around twelve years old at the time. She started to cry, and I knew it wasn't good. She told me that a couple of weeks before she had gone to the doctors and they had found a lump in her breast. She told me she just came back from speaking with the specialist. It was confirmed that she had breast cancer and the doctor told her that she had 6 months or less to live. BAM! Life as we both knew it ended that day.
She made the decision to forgo the mainstream treatments, due to other family members dying while taking them. Her philosophy was that it was the chemo and radiation that killed the family members. She very well could have been accurate, but I'm no specialist. In place of the mainstream treatments she went all natural. This woman was way ahead of the times, and it was hell for a teenager who liked to snack on junk food. She also kept having the tumors removed when they occasionally came back.
Let me explain a bit here for you. These fads you see now and days about, I don't know lets say, Pomegranate juice. She was doing this WAY before it became the norm or the fad. I don't know where she got her information from since there was no internet as we know it today, but I notice today, that everything, and I do mean everything she used to preach to me about health and nutrition is true. I remember when I moved to my dads house when I was 14, and while going through things and packing up I found the stash of vitamins that I hid everyday. There were a butt load of them! Can you tell I was not on the health food bandwagon yet?
My mom continued to try alternative treatments to cure her cancer, and during this time her being a woman who already was very religious turned ultra religious. She had a ritual so to speak. She would take her vitamins, go to the Chiropractor, eat all natural foods which included juicing, and pray like there was no tomorrow, because for her there might not have been another day. She would go in for her follow-ups and 9 times out of ten there was no cancer to be found. That other one percent...yeah it was cancer. Usually when the cancer re-appeared it was during the times where she wasn't eating her diet, and praying like she usually did. Many times she would come home and say they found a tumor, and go back on her routine, to have the tumor completely gone at the next visit.
She did this despite the fact that EVERYONE told her she was crazy and was going to die. She lost many friends because she refused to do the mainstream treatments. Family members refused to speak with her because of it.
I was stuck in the middle. Today I understand the reasoning behind everyone's insistence that she go mainstream. It was because it was what they knew. It was what everyone did. My mom's approach was new, and almost unheard of. They were afraid it wouldn't work, and they didn't want to see her die. cancer is after all scary enough to deal with without going outside the box.
So for eleven years everyone held their breath as they sat there and waited for that day. We all new she would die from the cancer, just didn't know when it would happen. I used to think about when she died, as the day of relief. The wait was finally over, and I no longer had to stand there and wonder when it would happen. Looking back I realize that was the worse thing anyone could have done for her. How hard was it to keep going on when nobody believed in what you were doing? We essentially were planning her death. Actually, I just realized this as I was writing and am having a bitch of a time dealing with this realization.
My mom had my brother when she was 43 years old and went into stage 4 cancer. I remember the day she told me she was pregnant, and I asked her if she was stupid. How could she be so selfish to bring a child into the world knowing that it would probably kill her, and her child would grow up without her. Her answer to me was, "God decided that this was to be." Now don't get me wrong here, I believe in God, I really do. However in all honesty I certainly do not have the faith that my mom did, and her religiousness was driving me crazy.
Through out this time her cancer had gone from her breast to her lymph nodes, to her bones, and in the end, into her blood. Let me click back a bit here, and let you know that she did make an appointment with the doctor who first diagnosed her and told her she had six months to live and when she told him how she was going to treat it he then gave her a month. Six years after that diagnose she walked in with her head held high and told that doctor to shove his diagnose where the sun don't shine. In a very religious way of course.
In January of 1995 I had my daughter. I called my mom who lived 4+hours away at 4:00am and told her it was time. She drove 260 miles to witness her first grandchild be born. She arrived 15 minutes after I was admitted, she asked if she could take a seat, and I asked her why she was walking funny she told me when the cancer entered her bones it had weakened two of her vertebrates and they were crushed. I asked her where my step-dad was, and she told me he was at home nursing something or other from surgery. She had driven herself all that ways with two crushed vertebrates! Hell fucking yeah she could have a seat!
That was about the time where things for her started to really head south. It was also the time where she went on the chemo pack. I was at home one day when she called me from the hospital. She wanted me to call the nurses station because they weren't answering the call button. Problem here, I had no clue which hospital she was in. The only info she could give me was she was in Madison WI, and she was freezing. She could hardly talk she was so cold. After playing phone tag with several hospitals and churches to locate my mom or my step-dad I headed out to Madison without a clue as to where I was going, but with one goal in mind. Find my mom, and figure out what the hell was going on. I made the five hour drive in three hours. Little did I know she would be gone in two weeks.
By this time the cancer had entered her bloodstream and was having the worst impact on her than in all the other years put together. It was causing too much calcium to be produced and the side effects of this were that she was very tired and slept a lot. The doctors were able to keep it under control for awhile, but in the end it did a huge spike and essentially what happened was that she went to bed and never woke up again. She fought the cancer for eleven years, but in the end...the calcium in the bloodstream took her in a matter of months. ( Side note here. Just because a person has high calcium levels doesn't not mean they have cancer. What happened to my mom is very rare, and only some times happens with people in late stage cancer.)
She passed in November of 1995, eleven months after she witnessed her first grandchild being born. My little brother was only three years old. My mom taught me many things about taking care of my body and being healthy, and for years I scorned it and laughed at it. It's come full circle now, as I currently am having health issues, and bit by bit I am remembering the things I was taught. I am also kicking myself in the ass for not listening in the first place. Don't you know? Mothers always know best. Slowly I'm changing my life into a healthier one, and I'm sure just like my mom, I too will be ridiculed for going against the mainstream, and being a bit quirky, but it's all good, she's got my back.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
A Bit of This, and a Bit of That
Wow, I have to say the following really, really quietly ok folks...things have been fairly quiet around here. Knock on wood. Wait can't reach any wood. I got Formica. Stop! Every time I knock on anything, something bad, crazy, totally unbelievable, scary, or just plain insane happens around here. I take back my knock on wood. I refuse to knock on anything in the hopes that things stay normal for a bit. I know I totally just fucked myself there now didn't I...sigh. See what happens when I have keys that I can push that makes words? I cause my own demise without even trying. As my dad would say, "you really are a Pollock aren't ya?" Yes, yes I am, and thank you very much daddio for giving me that heritage. (For all you people including me who were not part of the 50's I just called my dad, dude hahaha.)
So on with the writing. Oh yeah, it's gonna be one of those very unnecessary Rambling posts that doesn't go anywhere. Just thought I would warn you before you get too deep into it. As I was saying, read the very first sentence and insert it here. One thing that has changed is that I have gone from the only driver in the house to one of three drivers. Scary! Well one of us is only on a permit, but none the less, still scary. Let's just say Princess thinks she needs to have a love affair with the right side of the road. Oh yeah, she also doesn't like to stop. I really do not want to take her driving. I have no idea why. I taught two of my sisters to drive the day I got my license. Ha! There would be the why...I was young and stupid. We also lived in the middle of no where so there wasn't anything to hit either. Not the case here.
Maybe this post should be about all the stupid things I did as a younger person and never got caught. Naw, I still might get in trouble. Really I wasn't a bad kid, just Polish. Yes! There is my excuse! It's rock solid. Fine I'll stop picking on the Pollocks. You know DH gets really pissed when I say stuff like, "hey that was my Polish coming out". He seems to think I'm being derogative towards myself, and I fall into a pit of dispare or something. On a side note...for some reason Blogger is not liking the way I am spelling my words. Hey Blogger they are correct! I double checked, so suck it! Well on that note, the lid on my garbage can just opened by itself.
Moving on to less passionate things I guess. I definitely do not want to upset the garbage can again. Touchy, touchy. So the doctor and physical therapist that I saw for my vertigo, unbalanced, ear thingy, thing seem to think I might be in the early stages of Meniers Syndrome. Yippee! Not. Hopefully they turn out to be wrong, but in the mean time they would both like me to go on a low salt diet of only 2 grams of salt a day and I guess with this comes no caffeine too. I originally thought that this would be a cinch (the salt thing, not the caffeine) since I didn't think I ate much salt, since I rarely use it when cooking. Turns out it's in everything that we eat for the most part. For instance there is 130mg of sodium in one serving of 2% milk. I had no clue, and guess what? It's there naturally. Nothing we can do about it. This is going to suck, big time. Then to top it off...once someone tells me no, I only want it all the more. I could really go for some salty chips right now. Good thing I'm broke and there isn't any in the house.
Well I guess I'll wrap this one up, I'm sure there is something around here that I should be doing right now. I really should start looking at the foods I can actually have now. How boring. Well you all take care now, and I'll check you next time. Hugs to you.
So on with the writing. Oh yeah, it's gonna be one of those very unnecessary Rambling posts that doesn't go anywhere. Just thought I would warn you before you get too deep into it. As I was saying, read the very first sentence and insert it here. One thing that has changed is that I have gone from the only driver in the house to one of three drivers. Scary! Well one of us is only on a permit, but none the less, still scary. Let's just say Princess thinks she needs to have a love affair with the right side of the road. Oh yeah, she also doesn't like to stop. I really do not want to take her driving. I have no idea why. I taught two of my sisters to drive the day I got my license. Ha! There would be the why...I was young and stupid. We also lived in the middle of no where so there wasn't anything to hit either. Not the case here.
Maybe this post should be about all the stupid things I did as a younger person and never got caught. Naw, I still might get in trouble. Really I wasn't a bad kid, just Polish. Yes! There is my excuse! It's rock solid. Fine I'll stop picking on the Pollocks. You know DH gets really pissed when I say stuff like, "hey that was my Polish coming out". He seems to think I'm being derogative towards myself, and I fall into a pit of dispare or something. On a side note...for some reason Blogger is not liking the way I am spelling my words. Hey Blogger they are correct! I double checked, so suck it! Well on that note, the lid on my garbage can just opened by itself.
Moving on to less passionate things I guess. I definitely do not want to upset the garbage can again. Touchy, touchy. So the doctor and physical therapist that I saw for my vertigo, unbalanced, ear thingy, thing seem to think I might be in the early stages of Meniers Syndrome. Yippee! Not. Hopefully they turn out to be wrong, but in the mean time they would both like me to go on a low salt diet of only 2 grams of salt a day and I guess with this comes no caffeine too. I originally thought that this would be a cinch (the salt thing, not the caffeine) since I didn't think I ate much salt, since I rarely use it when cooking. Turns out it's in everything that we eat for the most part. For instance there is 130mg of sodium in one serving of 2% milk. I had no clue, and guess what? It's there naturally. Nothing we can do about it. This is going to suck, big time. Then to top it off...once someone tells me no, I only want it all the more. I could really go for some salty chips right now. Good thing I'm broke and there isn't any in the house.
Well I guess I'll wrap this one up, I'm sure there is something around here that I should be doing right now. I really should start looking at the foods I can actually have now. How boring. Well you all take care now, and I'll check you next time. Hugs to you.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Homemade Laundry Soap...Time to Make a Mess
Hey guys, it's been a bit since I did a post. I've had a few people ask me how I make the homemade laundry soap that I use, so this one will be focused on making this money saving stuff.
So without further adieu, and including breaks every sentence to finish dinner here we go!
There are only up to five ingredients that you use when making your own laundry soap. The fifth ingredient is up you to decide on. This soap is about as close as you can get to chemical free, it doesn't leave behind any fragrance other than one that could be described as..."clean". That is unless you add the essential oils.
I have made the soap a couple of times now, today was my third time in alittle over a year. I have not bought regular laundry soap in that long! There are a few things you will need water, certain bar soap, arm and hammer washing soda, borax, essential oil. (Wow, I was sort of joking about writing a sentence and then working on dinner, but it's actually worked out that way.) Now break for dinner...this is taking forEVER to write!
Ok, back now. Got a bit side tracked there for a moment. I know, I know it was for awhile. I have tried three different recipes to find the one that works the best. The last time I made it super concentrated in the hopes of not having to use as much. For some reason...it didn't seem to work better, but worked just the same as the diluted one. I could be that I used different soap or something.
I will now talk about the soap to use. You want to stay with the soaps that have the least ingredients and fragrances in them. Part of the reason for making my own laundry soap was to save money and the other reason was to limit the exposure of chemicals to the family. After doing a lot of reading it seems the soaps to use are as follows: Fels-Naptha, Zote, Kirk's Original Coco Castile, Ivory Soap, and Sunlight bar soap. I haven't used the Ivory, or been able to find the Sunlight yet. The others can sometimes be picked up at the local hardware store, grocery store, and I even found the Kirk's Castile in a three pack at the dollar store. You know the store where it actually cost a dollar for everything? Just about fell over on that one.
Here is a little advise. You will be grating the bar of soap. It's a pain in the ass. You should really, really use the finest grater you have. I used the food processor...didn't care for that mess. The reason for getting it grated as small as possible is for the dissolve time. OMG! I so didn't know about this the first time. I stood at the stove stirring forever waiting for that stuff to dissolve. (I never got it all dissolved either. I was there for over an hour.) Big pieces bad, little pieces very good! So for the first time that I made it I used 2 cups of the Fels-Naptha bar soap (found it at my local grocery store down the street in the laundry isle) with 1 quart of water. It was nice to work with, and left the "clean" scent. Oh yeah, stir, stir, stir.
I then put 2 cups of Borax in my bucket. You can usually find Borax in the laundry isle, bottom shelf at any store. I happened to get mine from Walmart.
I had a hard time finding the next item. Every store I went too they didn't have it. I think I might have read that some stores keep it in the backroom, and you have to ask for it. Anyhow I added 2 cups of Arm and Hammer Washing Soda. Notice I wrote Washing Soda. This is what you need, and it can't be substituted with Baking Soda. Washing Soda is Sodium Carbonate, while Baking Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate. Don't screw it up now. I have no idea what will or wont happen if you use Baking Soda, but let's not find out. K? Good, moving on. Oops, I forgot. I found this stuff at my local Ace Hardware. It is something the chain carries, so if your store doesn't carry it...tell them nicely to please order it. Then again I don't know if you have an Ace Hardware by you, but they do have online shopping.
You will need a five gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid to mix this slop all up and let it set. I just bought one of Ace's buckets since I didn't have one. You take your nice and clean bucket and pour in the hot liquid soap you just made. You then add the Borax, and Washing Soda. Start stirring again people. You want those powders to dissolve completely. You can add 2 gallons of hot, hot water in at anytime, and keep stirring until everything is all dissolved and mixed thoroughly.
Pop that cover on it, and set it in a warm spot somewhere out of the way. Trust me on this, as we tripped over it constantly. (My kitchen is tiny peoples) Don't touch it for 24hrs. Yes you must wait 24hrs for it to do it's thing.
Once your 24hrs has passed, (do you get the drift that you must wait 24hrs? Thought so.) take that top off and prepare to be grossed out. Yep you now have some slime, gel, goopy stuff. Well actually first you must break up the slime. Reach those hands in there and just start squeezing clumps and breaking them up, and then once again stir, stir, stir. I found that using my electric hand blender worked well on the clumps and I never had to give it a shake to break them up before pouring the soap. During this time you can add your essential oils if you choose to use them. I haven't used them yet, but what everyone seems to agree on is 10-15 drops per every 2 gallons. Stir them up good
With this laundry soap you will need to give the bottle a couple of shakes before pouring and you use 1/4 cup of soap per large load. Adjust quantity as needed until you find your perfect amount. Holy buckets that took along time to write. I am including the last two recipes that I tried making. They are both made the same as described here with the exception of #3 where I added hot water to the top of the bucket. I noticed that whenever I use this soap I never have static cling with my clothes no matter what the season or how long they have been drying in the dryer. So I have saved a bundle on dryer sheets too.
Place soap in old laundry soap containers. You don't really have to clean them out unless they somehow got dirt or something in them. I think maybe, possibly that I got 12-14 various sized containers filled out of this batch.
#1
2 Cups Fels-Naptha finely grated (about half a bar)
1 quart water
2 cups Borax
2 cups Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
2 gallons hot water
5 gallon bucket with top
essential oils-optional
#2
1 quart water
About 1/2 bar Fels-Naptha bar soap finely grated
1/2 bar Zote bar soap finely grated
2 cups Borox
2 cups Washing soda
3 gallons hot water
#3 one I tried today
1 quart water
1/2 Zote bar soap
1/2 Kirk's Castile bar soap (this clogged up my grater big time)
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cups Borax
Filled the bucket to the top with hot tap water.
Please note that all the bars of soap are different sizes so to compare them that way wouldn't work out. You would have to do it by a different measurement system than half a bar to know the exact amount that you are using.
So without further adieu, and including breaks every sentence to finish dinner here we go!
There are only up to five ingredients that you use when making your own laundry soap. The fifth ingredient is up you to decide on. This soap is about as close as you can get to chemical free, it doesn't leave behind any fragrance other than one that could be described as..."clean". That is unless you add the essential oils.
I have made the soap a couple of times now, today was my third time in alittle over a year. I have not bought regular laundry soap in that long! There are a few things you will need water, certain bar soap, arm and hammer washing soda, borax, essential oil. (Wow, I was sort of joking about writing a sentence and then working on dinner, but it's actually worked out that way.) Now break for dinner...this is taking forEVER to write!
Ok, back now. Got a bit side tracked there for a moment. I know, I know it was for awhile. I have tried three different recipes to find the one that works the best. The last time I made it super concentrated in the hopes of not having to use as much. For some reason...it didn't seem to work better, but worked just the same as the diluted one. I could be that I used different soap or something.
I will now talk about the soap to use. You want to stay with the soaps that have the least ingredients and fragrances in them. Part of the reason for making my own laundry soap was to save money and the other reason was to limit the exposure of chemicals to the family. After doing a lot of reading it seems the soaps to use are as follows: Fels-Naptha, Zote, Kirk's Original Coco Castile, Ivory Soap, and Sunlight bar soap. I haven't used the Ivory, or been able to find the Sunlight yet. The others can sometimes be picked up at the local hardware store, grocery store, and I even found the Kirk's Castile in a three pack at the dollar store. You know the store where it actually cost a dollar for everything? Just about fell over on that one.
Here is a little advise. You will be grating the bar of soap. It's a pain in the ass. You should really, really use the finest grater you have. I used the food processor...didn't care for that mess. The reason for getting it grated as small as possible is for the dissolve time. OMG! I so didn't know about this the first time. I stood at the stove stirring forever waiting for that stuff to dissolve. (I never got it all dissolved either. I was there for over an hour.) Big pieces bad, little pieces very good! So for the first time that I made it I used 2 cups of the Fels-Naptha bar soap (found it at my local grocery store down the street in the laundry isle) with 1 quart of water. It was nice to work with, and left the "clean" scent. Oh yeah, stir, stir, stir.
I then put 2 cups of Borax in my bucket. You can usually find Borax in the laundry isle, bottom shelf at any store. I happened to get mine from Walmart.
I had a hard time finding the next item. Every store I went too they didn't have it. I think I might have read that some stores keep it in the backroom, and you have to ask for it. Anyhow I added 2 cups of Arm and Hammer Washing Soda. Notice I wrote Washing Soda. This is what you need, and it can't be substituted with Baking Soda. Washing Soda is Sodium Carbonate, while Baking Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate. Don't screw it up now. I have no idea what will or wont happen if you use Baking Soda, but let's not find out. K? Good, moving on. Oops, I forgot. I found this stuff at my local Ace Hardware. It is something the chain carries, so if your store doesn't carry it...tell them nicely to please order it. Then again I don't know if you have an Ace Hardware by you, but they do have online shopping.
You will need a five gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid to mix this slop all up and let it set. I just bought one of Ace's buckets since I didn't have one. You take your nice and clean bucket and pour in the hot liquid soap you just made. You then add the Borax, and Washing Soda. Start stirring again people. You want those powders to dissolve completely. You can add 2 gallons of hot, hot water in at anytime, and keep stirring until everything is all dissolved and mixed thoroughly.
Pop that cover on it, and set it in a warm spot somewhere out of the way. Trust me on this, as we tripped over it constantly. (My kitchen is tiny peoples) Don't touch it for 24hrs. Yes you must wait 24hrs for it to do it's thing.
Once your 24hrs has passed, (do you get the drift that you must wait 24hrs? Thought so.) take that top off and prepare to be grossed out. Yep you now have some slime, gel, goopy stuff. Well actually first you must break up the slime. Reach those hands in there and just start squeezing clumps and breaking them up, and then once again stir, stir, stir. I found that using my electric hand blender worked well on the clumps and I never had to give it a shake to break them up before pouring the soap. During this time you can add your essential oils if you choose to use them. I haven't used them yet, but what everyone seems to agree on is 10-15 drops per every 2 gallons. Stir them up good
With this laundry soap you will need to give the bottle a couple of shakes before pouring and you use 1/4 cup of soap per large load. Adjust quantity as needed until you find your perfect amount. Holy buckets that took along time to write. I am including the last two recipes that I tried making. They are both made the same as described here with the exception of #3 where I added hot water to the top of the bucket. I noticed that whenever I use this soap I never have static cling with my clothes no matter what the season or how long they have been drying in the dryer. So I have saved a bundle on dryer sheets too.
Place soap in old laundry soap containers. You don't really have to clean them out unless they somehow got dirt or something in them. I think maybe, possibly that I got 12-14 various sized containers filled out of this batch.
#1
2 Cups Fels-Naptha finely grated (about half a bar)
1 quart water
2 cups Borax
2 cups Arm and Hammer Washing Soda
2 gallons hot water
5 gallon bucket with top
essential oils-optional
#2
1 quart water
About 1/2 bar Fels-Naptha bar soap finely grated
1/2 bar Zote bar soap finely grated
2 cups Borox
2 cups Washing soda
3 gallons hot water
#3 one I tried today
1 quart water
1/2 Zote bar soap
1/2 Kirk's Castile bar soap (this clogged up my grater big time)
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cups Borax
Filled the bucket to the top with hot tap water.
Please note that all the bars of soap are different sizes so to compare them that way wouldn't work out. You would have to do it by a different measurement system than half a bar to know the exact amount that you are using.
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