Homemade Laundry Detergent

Last Summer I decided to venture into the world of homemade laundry soap. With two young kids we do a lot of laundry and I hated spending so much money on such little amount of laundry soap. I made my way to google and found that pretty much all homemade powder detergents consist of the same ingredients. Not only did I do it to save on cost (Even with buying the $4.99 Purex I was spending more on that than making homemade) but working towards more homemade in our lives :)

Above is what I used back last summer. It worked well but in my most recent batch I skipped the oxyclean and haven't noticed a difference in how well it cleans so I suppose it just depends on how dirty your clothes are. 

I've linked to the products on Amazon so you can see the product, but I've found it to be  quite a bit cheaper at the grocery store. 

Here is what you need:

2 bars of Fels Naptha or an alike product (These are only 98 cents each at my Walmart, so that goes to show you that it is cheaper to buy these items locally)

1 large box each of: Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, Borax Laundry Booster, Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda

1 tub of Oxiclean

Grater

Large container to store it in

Large spoon to mix it with

Optional: Downy Unstopables In Wash Fresh Scent Booster

*I did find this combo pack on Amazon that brings down the cost if you need to purchase it on Amazon -Laundry Soap Kit - Fels Naptha, Borax & Washing Soda  

I know it looks a bit like cheese but I'd advise against eating it ;)

Mix all of it together. I hear it is easiest to do it in a 5 gallon bucket, but I just do it right in my glass container. The most time consuming part for me was grating the Fels-Naptha. Each load I put in two scoops with my scooper which I think is a total of around 3-4 tablespoons. You can of course easily adjust the amount to fit your needs. A batch of this lasts me 6-8 months depending on how much laundry we happen to go through. 

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Snowed In?!

So if you live in the continental US you know that as a whole we've been having an arctic blast. If you haven't been, consider yourself lucky! This last week we've gotten 12-13 inches of snow and had wind chills as low as -40. That's cold people! Thankfully we had a brief period of time when it had snowed but had not gotten cold yet, and we took full advantage of it. We went out while Wes was napping because we knew he wouldn't be a fan of being bundled up in the snow.

After that though temps dropped drastically and the winds picked up and we were stuck inside for 3 days. We made the best of it with games and coloring and who knew bath time could be so fun?!
Schools are still closed tomorrow and the kids haven't been back from Christmas break yet, I imagine there are some parents ready for the snow to melt ;)
Have you been snowed in? What are your tips and tricks to keeping the kids entertained when you can't get out of the house for a few days?
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New Years Resolutions

I try to keep away from the traditional resolutions of - eat better, lose weight, exercise more. Those are all things I hope to always be doing, but I typically don't make them resolutions. I tend to do 3, though I'm not sure why.
In any case, here they are: 1. Lose my phone more.        Typically I have my phone on my being constantly. There is never a chase to "lose" it. Not very often do I have to look for my phone. I want to find myself looking for my phone more in 2014 when I need to use it.
2. Be more patient with my children.          This might be a resolution every year...
3. Live by the "William Morris" quote that I posted before. 

source

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