June 18, 2012

It's so hot today.  The house is dark with all the curtains closed to try to keep out the heat.  I am really trying to live without the air conditioner on, because it's only June.  I have been wandering around the house trying to think of things to do that won't involve me sweating or heating up the house.  I spent a fair bit of time on Pinterest, but I really want to do something.  I measured up my laundry room because that's the next room that will be getting a make-over.  I will be putting up some beadboard wallpaper and new shelving, and hopefully just make it prettier so it loses its status as dumping ground.  I thought about going to Walmart for the paper today, but the car is too hot!

Yesterday I puttered around the kitchen a bit and made some cleaning products.  I had to make another batch of laundry detergent; some scrubbing powder for bathroom cleaning, and a vinegar-eucalyptus fabric softener spray.

It's hard to take pictures of stuff like this, because really they are not all that interesting.  The laundry soap recipe I use is 2 cups grated  soap; 1 cup Borax; 1 cup washing soda.  The soap that I grate is home made - not by me but by another real human.  I get the plainest kind they have - no colours, fragrance or anything; just made with lye, oils and water.  My clothes come out of the machine smelling like wet clothes, not tropical waterfalls, which is how I like it.

The vinegar fabric softener is something I read about yesterday.  You squirt 10-15 sprays on the wet clothes in your dryer before drying.  There is no residual smell once the clothes are dry, and yes, I think they are just a bit softer than when I don't use any at all.  All you do is mix 2 cups of white vinegar with three teaspoons of eucalyptus oil and decant into a squirt bottle.  Shake it up before squirting of course.

I use baking soda to clean my tubs and sinks.  This time I mixed it with a couple of tablespoons of dried, ground up balsam fir needles.  It smells like Christmas!  After Christmas I filled two boxes with balsam branches cut from my friend's tree once they threw it out.  They have been drying in the basement ever since.  Last week I pulled the needles off all the branches in one box and am storing them in a plastic container.  I was really hoping that by this time I could just shake the branches and the needles would fall off, much like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.  No such luck: I have to do it all by hand.  Perhaps going through the second box would be a good job for today:)

These are the last peonies from my garden.  What a perfect pink!  I think it would be a nice colour for my laundry room:)