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I don’t have many guilty pleasures. Mostly because I don’t like to feel guilty about stuff. This is my one exception. Guilt: At my grocery store, they’re $9 a box. (Here is a $1 off coupon though!) (And they’re only $8 a box when you order on the site.) Pleasure: OMG SMELLGASM. I only use them on my laundry and the sheets though, everyone else gets Bounce. Ok, maybe that is stretching it a bit.. but give these tips a try. These are all things I actually do, so I know for sure they work. White vinegar:
Liquid dish soap:
On July 1st, a law was passed in sixteen states that banned phosphates in dishwasher detergents. I don’t believe that Nevada was one of the states on the ban but all of a sudden, all the detergents I am finding on the shelves at Wal-Mart have a big label that says “no phosphates”. Now, I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t know what a phosphate was or what it did til I noticed that all my dishes were coming out nasty- everything had a white, dusty film on it- just like the time I tried using one of the natural dishwasher detergents instead of my normal Cascade. When I mentioned this to my mom, she told me it was due to the phosphate ban. So, I did my research. Phosphates make your dishes come out sparkly clean by suspending particles so they don’t stick to the dishes, as well as softening the water… but the downside is that they encourage algae growth that deprives fish and other plants from the oxygen they need. So what’s the solution to this? Clearly, we need to cut the phosphates to keep our streams and rivers happy, but what about our dishes? Eating off a plate that is white and filmy when it’s supposed to be clear glass is pretty gross. One blog I read said that she was soaking her dishes in warm soapy water as long as OVERNIGHT before loading and running the dishwasher. Of course, this is absolutely ridiculous, you may as well just wash them by hand! So what else can be done? I discovered vinegar works well. I always keep a gallon jug of white vinegar under my sink for cleaning anyway, so I started adding two big glugs to each dishwashing cycle- that turns out to be maybe 1/2 a cup or a little more. A gallon jug of vinegar is only $1.98 at my Wal-Mart so this seems like a fairly inexpensive solution. And my dishes are coming out sparkly again! Of course, I don’t know if it will work as well in all areas- if your mineral content in your water is different where you’re at, maybe not, but at least it’s worth a try. I’ve also read that some people are not using dishwasher detergent at all, but putting a teaspoon of baking soda in the detergent compartment in their dishwasher and then some vinegar in the rinse-aid compartment (or straight into the bottom of the dishwasher if you don’t have a rinse-aid compartment) and they say they’re having great results. I intend to give this a try and see if my dishes come clean enough to skip detergent altogether- what a great savings that’d be! I wrote this post on Sunday and then my internet stopped working and I couldn’t get it published! So now that it’s working again- naturally, it doesn’t work on a weekend when I can’t call and whine but works fine on a weekday when they’re in the office- I re-wrote most of it and… here we go! So, I have this really neat cookbook called Organically Raised by Anni Daulter to review and I have been making things out of it all week and taking pictures with my phone and was just about ready to load the pictures and post my review… and my phone crashed. Totally crashed, nothing but the text and phone call functions would work. I wound up having to do a factory reset and lost all my pictures. DUDE. Not pleased. About the loss of the food pictures or the other 300+ pictures I had on there. Teaches me to always back that stuff up. Ugh. So. Will be working on that, I want to post at least a couple of pictures with my review! Anyway. Tim was gone for a work thing in Wyoming from Thursday early early morning til late Sunday night. I’m not gonna lie, I totally slacked on the housework while he was gone. So, I spent all of Sunday cleaning the house. And after all that effort- by today, it looks like I did nothing. Kids, kids, kids. Oh well. Our house is where we LIVE. It’s not a showplace, so.. it gets messy. I’m not gonna be on top of them constantly telling them to clean up because I firmly believe that kids deserve to play and have fun- when else in life do we get that opportunity other than childhood? Sure, they’ve got to help out some but I’m not gonna be unreasonable and expect a five year old and an not-quite-three year old to be totally neat. A few days ago, I went through the kids’ rooms and cleaned out all their toys. It took three hours. I came out with a STUFFED full kitchen trash bag of broken or otherwise non pass-on-able toys and one box of stuff we can donate. And their rooms look amazing! Like, you can actually find their beds and stuff! Hooray! As a downside to that- I wore myself out! It’s amazing how little stamina I have now, for someone who used to run 3-4 times a week. After the kids went to bed I lounged in the recliner and watched an episode of Mad Men (OMG BEST.SHOW.EVER.) and then dropped, exhausted, into bed and fell right to sleep. I do still get a bit of swelling when I’m overly busy or up and around a lot… but DUDE. I can’t stop looking at my reflection. I know that sounds horribly vain and I’m sure I will get over it soon but it’s been nearly 6 years since I’ve had a flat tummy!!! Uh… ok well, OVER 6 years because I was certainly getting “puffy” (20 lbs overweight is puff, right?) before I got pregnant with Hailey. And it’s been nearly 3 years now that I’ve been working hard toward a flat tummy but seeing no results. So- yes. I think I’m entitled to be excited about this. Last week, I started noticing something really really gross. I’d get a clean set of workout clothes out of my dresser, put them on, start my workout… and then as I began to sweat, my clothes would start to smell really musty and weird. SO GROSS. I can stink on my own, thank you clothes, I don’t need any help! When I work out, I sweat. Seriously. Like, you know when you watch Biggest Loser and you start to get kind of grossed out during the Last Chance Workouts because there’s just grunting and sweat flying everywhere? Yeah, that’s pretty much me. I work out hard. I drip. When I get done, my clothes are saturated. And apparently my ‘normal’, leading brand name detergent just isn’t cutting it for stuff like that. (I intend to switch to a natural detergent for everyday use but I’m having some technical difficulties with that.. namely that we don’t have much to choose from around here, small town and all.) Then I remembered… back in the cloth diapering days I used Bi-O-Kleen Bac-Out Stain & Odor Eliminator with Live Enzyme Cultures BioKleen is all natural and uses live enzymes to actually eat away stains and odors. It works on pet odors, food stains, and obivously, even cloth diapers and really nasty sweaty workout clothes. Plus, it smells nice! No nasty chemical or bleachy smell at all, it’s fresh and citrusy. Their site even says it works on carpets AND it can get rid of mold and mildew. Awesome! I did notice that my grocery store has the Bi-O-Kleen Laundry Liquid  |
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on the diapers to get the tough stink out. So… why not on workout clothes? So I bought a bottle (my local grocery store actually has it, HOORAY!!), and added it to my workout clothes load along with my normal detergent and hot water. And guess what?! It actually worked. I have been able to exercise without knocking myself out with stink for the past two days. Yay!
also, so I am excited to try that once I am out of my other stuff.
