Homemade laundry detergent

Did you know you can make your own homemade laundry detergent, and fairly easily too? Yes, you can!

Now some of you may be wondering, why on earth would I want to make my own laundry detergent? Here are three reasons:

1. It's cheaper than store bought
2. It doesn't have the chemicals that most store bought detergents have that do nasty things to the environment and to our own bodies
3. It's easy!

Take a look around the Internet and you can find many different recipes for laundry detergent, both powered types and liquid. I decided to go with a recipe I found on a blog called Keeper of the Home.

It uses only three ingredients: Borax, washing soda and bar soap, such as Castile bar soap. Now, I gotta admit I didn't really know what some of these items were and where to find them, especially the Castile bar soap. But once again, thanks to Mr Google, I found lots of information online and discovered I could get all three items at London Drugs. The Castile soap is a brand called Dr. Bronner's. The washing soda and Borax are pretty easy to find in the laundry section, but I had to search high and low for the Dr. Bronner's bar soap and eventually had to ask a clerk before I found it.

 

The detergent recipe couldn't be easier:

• 1 cup washing soda
• 1 cup Borax
• 1 bar of soap, grated

Yes, you just grate up the soap with your cheese grater (looks like mozzarella, doesn't it). This is the part of the recipe that will take the longest, but the whole thing only takes about 15 minutes in total.

Once you've grated the soap, put it into your blender together with a cup of either the washing soda or Borax (it doesn't matter which). Depending on your blender, you may want to do this in two or three smaller batches. Blend it until all the pieces are finely cut.

Add the blended mixture to a bowl, and mix in the remaining 1 cup of either washing soda or Borax. Mix it all up together, put it into a container with a lid and you're done!

To use in your washer, add one tablespoon of detergent per load. This mixture will not produce suds and from what I've read, this also makes it suitable for high efficiency washers.

Has anyone else out there ever tried making their own homemade cleaning products?

 

Posted with Blogsy

Grateful for this country

 

This is the view outside my office window.  It is a building that was damaged in a fire and is now being demolished to make room for something new.  To me, it looks like the remains of a bombed out building, and every time I see it, I am reminded of how lucky I am that I don't live in a war zone.

I recently got hooked on a British TV drama series called Foyle's War, which is playing on Netflix. The show is set during (and shortly after) World War II and portrays a very realistic picture (I imagine) of what it is like to live in the middle of a war.  Bombing raids, air raid sirens, rationing, suspicion amongst neighbours are all part of the picture.

My trip to (former) east Germany this past summer reminded me of how recently war had been a part of that country.  Touring sites like the Jewish Holocaust Memorial and the former Buchenwald Concentration Camp were stark reminders of the horrors that occurred only 65 years earlier. 

In Berlin, we walked the streets that were divided by the concrete barrier of the Berlin Wall only 25 years ago.  And in Leipzig, we listened to a mother speak of what it was like to raise her children in an era of Communist rule, where students were expected to be members of the Communist youth.

And since then, how many countless numbers of people have seen their countries and their families devastated by war or armed conflicts of one kind or another.

So when I look out my office window and see the remains of a demolished building, I can only feel grateful.  Grateful for a country where demolition promises hope for the future, not devastation.

To travel is to live

Curtis and friend

My nephew, Curtis, along with three of his friends, left this week on a four month trip to Australia, New Zealand and parts of SE Asia.  It's his first time traveling outside of North America and I couldn't be more excited for him!  As Hans Christian Andersen put it, "To travel is to live."

As I think about the extraordinary adventure he is embarking on, I can't help but reflect on my own amazing travel opportunities and how the richness of those experiences remains with me all these years later.

My most memorable travel experience was the trip I took to India at the age of 22.  It hardly seems possible to me now that I flew off to such an exotic location at that young an age.  What were my parents thinking as they waved me goodbye?  At that time, my mom had never even been on an airplane and here I was heading off to the other side of the world.  If my parents had any misgivings about letting me go, they never once voiced them to me.  Instead they sent me off with their blessings, allowing me the freedom to leave behind all that was familiar and to experience the rich adventure and independence of the unknown.

And what an adventure it was!  I clearly recall the pungent smell of curry on my fingers that summer as I learned to eat without utensils and often with a banana leaf as my plate; the musical voice of the tea vendor calling "chai, chai" as he elbowed his way through a crowded train; and of course, the unique skill of mastering a squat toilet which was really just a hole in the floor.  

I will never forget how it felt to be entrusted at the age of 22 with Christy, the 9-year-old daughter of our team leaders, the two of us riding alone in a rickshaw through the crowded streets of Delhi.  With the dilemma of getting 10 of us to the train station with all of our luggage, Christy’s mom had simply hailed a rickshaw, handed me 10 rupees and sent us on our way, saying "we'll meet you there."  It was so easily said and yet the confidence those words instilled in me stayed with me to this day.

I recall the incredible thirst of +40 degree days and the preciousness of clean drinking water which, until that point, I had mostly taken for granted. I recall the open-handed generosity of our hosts, the Indian pastor and his wife who lived on a fraction of what we spent in a day, and sharing in their loss as the monsoon rains rose several feet high inside their ground floor apartment, drenching everything including the pastor's books. 

I remember finding out that the night train we had been riding was now at our stop, but was only stopping for five minutes, and the thrill of rushing to gather up our belongings, throwing them out the train door, and then jumping from the train as it began moving out of the station.

We have no idea what adventures await Curtis over the next four months, but two things are sure -- there will be many and they will be memorable!   They will change his life forever.

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“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky