Natural Cleaning Product Recipe Links

 I have come to love reading blogs.  I have favorite blogs that I read all of the time.  I wait impatiently for them to post their next blog, because they are so full of wonderful hints and recipes for everything from laundry detergent to coconut shampoo.  Now I am sure you are saying, really, this girl must have nothing else to do with her time, but I can guarantee you that my time is pretty full. 

I can tell you that they all inspire me.  Whether it is to do something for the community  or find something beautiful to read in The Bible like the blog Thoughts by Natalie http://thoughtsbynatalie.blogspot.com/, or making Jillee's Oxykleen from One Good Thing by Jillee http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/05/my-top-ten-favorite-homemade-cleaners.html,  I am most certainly always inspired. 

Today I am going to show how the blog One Good Thing by Jillee helped me to organize my laundry room.  Her pictures are always so pretty.  Then, when I am done, I am going to post a list of links to some of these sites.  I hope that you will explore them and let me know what you think.

Laundry room washer, dryer, and storage shelf


I, of course, did not think about taking a before picture.  Seems like I am always doing that.  Before cleaning this room I had all of the laundry products on the other side of the room around the sink, and towels and one of the baskets on the washer and dryer.  I also had a box of things the clean the lint from the dryer on top of the rack along one of the baskets. 



Laundry room sink area all cleaned up

The jar that is on top of the washer is full of Washing Soda, so that I can easily make Jillee's OxyKleen,
which I absolutely love.  The stuff works wonders.  I had a set of white sheets that were several years old and starting to grey.  I used Jillee's OxyKleen recipe and they are now white like snow.  It is amazing.

Here is a list of a few of the websites that I go to to find new things to make to help clean my house.  I hope that you find them useful also.

A Delightful Home

One Good Thing by Jillee

Frugal Granola

Pre-Shave Oil Recipe

My son has recently started shaving with a straight edge razor.  He said that he got ingrown hairs with the disposable blades.  Well, shaving with a straight edge blade requires a whole set of additional shaving toiletries.

I was trying to think of something personal I could make my son for his birthday, to go with his cards and gifts, and thought about shaving creams.  That was the first time I made the shaving cream from the blog Frugal Granola.  I posted the link to the recipe a few days ago.  We all love this shaving cream.  Then my son came to me about a week later and asked if I could make him Pre-Shave Oil.  It apparently helps the whiskers on a man's face stand up better so he can get a closer shave.

I asked him to bring me his little bottle of Pre-Shave Oil so that I could try to figure out the ingredients.  He brought me the bottle and low and behold, I already had almost everything on hand.  The only thing that I needed was clove oil and pepper oil.  The clove oil was easy to find,  I have still not found pepper oil,  I will probably need to go online to buy that.  Anyway, this is the recipe that I came up with after looking at and smelling his oil.   He uses it everyday and says it works great.  The recipe will follow below the picture.

I am not sure of the cost, but it probably only cost me 15 to 20 cents to make 2 and 1/2 ounces.  To buy this Pre-Shave Oil from The Art of Shaving would cost $22.00 for 2 ounces.  That is amazing,  I just looked it up online.  I can't believe how much that saves.

Pre-Shave Oil Recipe

2 oz. castor oil

1/2 oz olive oil

6 drops sandalwood essential oil

3 drops lavender essential oil

2 drops clove essential oil

Pour in a bottle and shake well.  That's it, a very easy recipe

Have fun, and please leave me any comments or recommendations

Debi

 Frugal Days -Sustainable Ways # 27 Link

Your Green Resource - Week 33 - Link

Upholstering My Couch

My couch has needed to be upholstered for some time.  I finally asked my husband if I could find inexpensive fabric, would it be okay for me to reupholster the couch.  He of course being a kind and wonderful husband said yes.  He actually is wonderful and kind, but more about him later.

I did not think about taking the picture before I started taking off the fabric, so the couch is already partially stripped of fabric and fringe.  There used to be fringe around the entire bottom of the couch.  It was very pretty when it was done 17 years ago, but alas, now it is dated.  I have been stripping the couch for about a week now.  I never realized how many stables were in  a couch.  You also have to use a tiny screwdriver to remove them,  my hands are certainly sore.  Anyway, I have now removed 1000's of staples, and as you can see below I am almost done with this part of reupholstering.

Dare you ask, has she done this before, no I have made slip covers, but never reupholstered something.  When I first started removing the fringe from the bottom, and it was too late to stop,  and I was thinking OMG what have I done.  Now I am not so afraid.  I am getting there.  The next part will be cutting and putting the fabrics together and then getting it onto the couch.  Again, with the staples.  Hopefully it will be easier getting them in then it was taking them out.  Below are pictures of the fabric that I am going to use.

I am getting excited.  Since I have never done this before, I have relied heavily on books to help me.  I believe that I can do anything if I have directions.  All of the books say that stripping the couch is the hard and boring part, putting the fabric on is the easy and fun part.  I am waiting for the fun, yeah!!!

Anyway,  when I get a little farther along, I will post more pictures, so that you can see the changes along with me.