Let's Talk About Soap, Baby...

Soap powders, that is. 

I must also begin with apologizing for the use of a terrible early-mid nineties song.  Let us never speak of this again. Yikes.

 I have a great recipe for liquid detergent (thanks to my dear friend, Hannah Tate) the only downfall is that it can be a little messy and it takes a good bit of time to gel properly.  So if you're in a pinch for detergent and you don't want to use/can't get a hold of store-bought, what do you do?  Whip up a quick batch of powdered detergent, of course!  On the "For the Laundry" tab of this blog there is a good recipe for powdered detergent, however, I have found a simpler and less time consuming way of making it.  Do you have a food processor?  Great.  Then we're in business. 

Easier Powdered Laundry Detergent:
1 bar soap (Ivory/Dove/Fels-Naptha...)
1/2 cup Borax
1/2 cup Washing Soda (or Ph Plus, as long as it is Sodium Carbonate, it will work!)

-Cut the bar of soap into a few manageable chunks.  Put in food processor until pretty well ground up. 
-Add other ingredients to the ground soap in the processor and let it run for 30 seconds or so. 

Really, you can let your processor run as long as you like...it just depends how fine you want your detergent to be.  (The finer it is, the easier it will dissolve in cold water washes!)  I tend to use somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 cup for large loads.  Hope this works well for you!

**Question:  Does anyone have any good homemade fabric softener ideas that smell good?  I know white vinegar works (and the smell rinses out), but I really like having the extra fresh scent.  Any tips or ideas??

A Toddler-Inspired Idea

My son, Nicholas, loves everything we say "no" to.  Loves.  Passionately.  (He will be two in December, need I say more?)  Unfortunately, our DVD collection started to take the brunt of this passionate, explorative "love"...and we have a sizeable collection.  After two broken in half VeggieTales, several scratched and marred discs of the Simpsons, and countless chewed up cases, my husband decided something had to change.  What course of action did he follow?  Well, of course, he began by looking for a new DVD shelf...something a little more Nicholas-proof.  This was to no avail, though, due to poor selection and a tight budget.

We were walking through Lowe's when it struck- he had the perfect solution!  I must admit, I was very skeptical when he explained his idea to me, it just seemed a little... rigged, to put it simply.  He purchased the supplies he needed that day, and began the work shortly thereafter.
Here was his idea.  Our DVD shelf was actually a moderately sized, wood bookshelf.  He used a piece of wood that was approximately 6 inches larger than the base of the shelf as a base.  On that base, he attached the working parts of a lazy susan- thereby giving the shelf the ability to turn a full circle.  He then put a small sliding bolt lock on the bottom of the shelf and, after drilling holes in either side of the base, gave the shelf the ability to lock in either the rear-facing or front-facing position. 

Voila!  Problem solved!  Now the only problem that remains is, how do I want to paint it?