Laundry!

I'm going to start our saving money plan by cutting back on laundry. No, not cutting back on actually DOING laundry, by starting to dry all of our clothes on a wooden rack and fluffing them in the dryer. I'm also hoping to convince hubby to put up a clothes line in the spring! Nothing better than clothes dried outside in fresh spring/summer air! This will probably mean clothes will need to be ironed more, and since I've never done that, another learning lesson! I got an awesome iron for my bridal shower oh about 4 years ago and I've never used it. Oops. Good excuse to start right? I am getting an inexpensive ironing board also ($11 table top board from Amazon).

We are also washing everything in cold water to save money on heating hot water and therefore propane.

I am going make my own laundry detergent, but not use it immediately because we have an almost brand new bottle of detergent. The "recipe" I found online for laundry detergent calls for:

• 1 bar of laundry soap (Fels Naptha, Zote or Ivory)
• 1 box Borax
• 1 box of washing soda
• Essential oil of your choice, I'm gonna try peppermint and lavender (not together).

Once you have all of these items, you  mix together:

• 1 cup of soap
• 1/2 cup washing soda
• 1/2 cup of borax
• Few drops of essential oil

Use 1 tablespoon for light loads and 2 for heavy loads.




Cost breakdown looks like this:

Soap $1.09 a bar (3 cups shaved),
Borax $4.19 for a 4 lbs box,
Washing soda 55 oz $3.59

I don't have any essential oil (though I have ordered some), but I am thinking that I will not use it, this stuff smells yummy just the way it is. We found all of these items in our local grocery store, I was planning on buying them from Amazon but it was MUCH more expensive on there than at the local store, shame shame Amazon!

The finished product?

I'm sure that I was supposed to put it in the food processor and blend it up, but I got out the food processor and it didn't work, so this will have to do. I tried it out on one load of laundry last night and it seems to work great! Clothes are clean and smell good too. 

I am doing these things in hopes of saving money, saving wear and tear on clothes (hence saving even more money!). I found this neat website that has formulas for costs of electricity. If you run your dryer approximately 4 hours per day (this is probably a bit overkill in our case but nonetheless) it saves you $192 a year. That doesn't sound like a lot but I am 26, lets say I do laundry until I'm 80 (we can only hope) that's 54 years. $192 for 54 years is a total savings of $10368, that is CRAZY, do you know what you can do with $10000 over the course of your lifetime? Many many things, starting with a college fund for Kenzie!

Back in the saddle....

I've been going back and forth deciding if I really want to keep this blog going. I don't lead a very interesting life so I don't always never have any good "material" to write about. However, recently due to unforeseen circumstances we've taken a good hard look at our budget and where our money is going. This prompted me to take a look at DIY projects and things I could make myself instead of buying in the store. Examples? Laundry detergent, household cleaners, yogurt (Kenz eats a ton and it adds up quick!), christmas gifts, etc.

This blog had actually got me thinking about it before. Allison is extremely down to earth and her kids are adorable too!  It really helped me think of ways to get started and what I we could do. I love the idea of debt free living. Do I think it is realistic? Yes absolutely, however I also believe that you will "always" (like for 20-30 years) have a mortgage so that kind of negates the debt free living to me. Though we are lucky we have no credit card debt and the loans we do have are small. Neither of us has college loans or anything like that, yes losers that didn't go to college over here! We planned a lot when we decided to have a baby and had quite a bit of money set aside for an emergency fund and had both of our vehicles paid for. THEN the baby came along and we realized we needed a bigger car and.... etc, etc. We also sold our house bought a bigger (more expensive, but thank goodness for a good downpayment from our "emergency" fund, plus equity in our first home) house and the list goes on.

Moving on, I also looked meal planning(which we have successfully done before and I love it), couponing (which I don't have a good handle on yet), etc. Meal planning isn't easy for us, 99% of the time I don't start cooking until Eric has actually walked IN the door. It never seems to fail if I start cooking before he is home, he calls to say he is going to be late. Yes he works *that* kind of job. Its annoying but I've come to terms with it. So I would say at least 1-2 nights a week he is late so we keep frozen foods or boxed meals on hand for these nights, because they are quick and easy, and give us more time together as a family.  Anyway I love meal planning, I love knowing what we are cooking so we have everything on hand and not playing the game every day where we talk about what we are going to eat for an 1/2 hour before we decide and start cooking.

So what I would like to do with my blog is share these things with you, what we are doing to save money, the recipes for meals as well as cleaning supplies, my fails (because I will have many!) with trying all of these new things and how we get to where we want to be financially! Which is debt free! Isn't that what everyone wants?!

So to sum it up the things we are going to be doing and trying to do are:

• Meal planning
• Sticking to a (strict) budget
• Making our own cleaning supplies
• Making our own food we would normally buy (yogurt, possibly pasta, etc)
• Looking at where we shop - what we can buy with coupons vs whats on sale vs dollar store, etc
• Stopping the impulse buys. Me=GUILTY
• Looking at need vs want

Hope you will join us on our journey and any tips, thoughts, comments are much appreciated!!!!

Christmas Crafty

So I've been looking for something fun and exciting to blog about, and none of these things are happening in my life. Unless you would like to talk about the fact that all of our big bills have come at once (I'm looking at you, taxes, insurnace, home repair, car repair, etc). That is a totally different subject though. Well... not really. Because we have so much money going out and the same amount of money coming in as always(and you know, we bought a house this summer) and Christmas is coming, I've decided to try and get crafty with my gifts this year. Why you ask?

1.  Because of the things mentioned up there (^)about money.

2. I feel like gifts that have time into them instead of money are more meaningful.

3. I am a part time SAHM and while last year was crazy (with a 5 month old) around the holidays things have settled down this year and I feel that I should take advantage of the extra(ha!) time I have.

4. I want to be able to do crafty things with Kenz when she gets a little bit older so she can give handmade gifts to her grandparents and friends and will want to do this, and maybe you know be crafty.

All of that being said, I am not crafty AT ALL. Any of you that know me, are reading this and laughing your butts off at me. Its ok, laugh, Eric did when I told him. Then told me he was proud of me for stepping out of the box and trying something new (and you know not making him go shopping).

Anyway, moving on, what I have decided to try is buying this, and you know obviously some yarn to try to make hats for the kiddos and possibly scarves for my friends. My problem is, I don't knit, never have even tried. Plus I am a left handed and I have heard its hard for left handed people to knit. We will see what happens though UPS should be delivering it this afternoon, I've asked hubby to pick up some yarn at the store so I can try it tonight and see what happens. Wish me luck! If you have any tips PLEASE help me. I'm scared really excited to try this.

I've also decided to try to make these kits and these jar kits. My friends are probably going to kill me for the playdough kits but I think the kids will really enjoy them. The food recipe jar I think is a neat idea and the recipe looks super easy (and doesn't require to many ingredients on my end).

My other idea(hey I've been busy on the internet, don't judge) is filling a jar with buttons or beads, only sorting these by color first and then layering them as a decoration for the home? As I am sitting here thinking of this, I can also do this with M&M's and do the same thing only have it be edible....mmmmmhhhhhmmmm. Me thinks this is a good idea. Only I will eat all the M&M's before they get in the jar, will have to hide them from the hubby.

So what are you doing for Christmas? Do you have any tips for me? Or other ideas I can try? Help me out!