One thing at a time.. this has been my personal mantra when it comes to getting my ( sometimes quite reluctant) family to be more green and more frugal. Most recently, my attention has been drawn to laundry, an unavoidable necessary evil in every household... some of us more than others. ( Oh how I miss the days of only doing laundry for myself, even if I did have to load it in the car and take it to a dreaded laundro-mat to do it.) My main goal is to be completely natural in my laundry efforts, and of course save some money in doing so by making my own laundry soaps, fabric softeners, etc. I have really hit some major road blocks in this endeavor however by finding just about every "recipe" I find calls for Borax, which as I have read is highly poisonous. Hmm.. take out the chemicals and replace with a poison... sounds like a great idea! Not! Being a mother of 2, sometimes frighteningly active, toddlers I really want to cut any "poisonous" or "chemical" aspect out as much as possible. I know there has to be an alternative that not only is free from any of these elements but that still cleans well too... so the search continues!
This week however, more out of necessity than anything else, I ran across one way to cut a commercially made product out of our lives. Our recent change to cloth training pants, one I was extremely excited about, left both my son and I with a few learning experiences to be had. ( Yes I know, it took me a while to change to cloth ones. Unfortunately they were absolutely nowhere to be found here much to my anguish, at least in sizes I could read and I just don't like ordering online for things that need a perfect fit because both of my children are like me.. one size fits for one thing or one brand and another size for another and so on...quite a pain lol) It was one extremely, ahem, "messy" accident that led to my discovery of the wonderful use of baking soda as a stain remover. I decided to test the offending trainers in a solution of about 1 gallon of hot water and 1/4 cup baking soda and to wash the other, less messy ones using my usual store bought pre-treater. Much to my surprise not only did the baking soda work as well as the commercial product but it actually outperformed it bringing the trainers as good as new while a few stains remained, although lighter, in the others. What better reason to toss out those chemical items and move to solely using baking soda? I am a definite convert when it comes to baking soda!
For tougher stains, try to sprinkle baking soda directly onto the fabric and let sit dry for a while, or you can try a paste made of baking soda and water. ( an unused toothbrush makes a good tool for scrubbing this in, I always keep one of 2 cheapie ones around for cleaning needs like that!)
More laundry ideas coming soon as my interest has been peaked by my little baking soda experiment lol.
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