I love cooking tips. The new term for it is “kitchen hacks” but it is the same thing, only without the picture of an aproned grandma with a meat cleaver. I got many of these tips from my mom, but some I have just picked up along the way, while cooking.
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I belong to a Facebook group called The Minimalist Life. It is about getting rid of the excess stuff in your life and paring it down to what is really important. They have posts about all kinds of decluttering and organization. It really has some great ideas.
Last week I saw a really awesome idea on how to turn a bookcase into a child's closet. This idea would be perfect for someone who had a very small house or apartment and had a new baby with no place to put their clothing and other baby items. The photo was from a group member named Sprite Dunbar. I got her permission to use the photo and to discuss her idea here on my blog.
In winter, when all your windows are shut tight, your house can take on a stale smell. Odors from your furnace, from cooking, even laundry, can make the air in your house not very pleasant to smell. But there is an easy fix for this! Simmering Potpourri is easy to make and gives your house a most delicious fragrance.
Today I want to share with you an easy recipe to make your own liquid hand soap. We use a lot of soap in our household. My husband is a mechanic, and as much as I garden, our hands are always dirty. I don't like bar soap because the bar always gets grimy and I hate looking at a dirty looking bar of soap on my sink top. It just looks gross! So to avoid this situation we use liquid soap. The problem is, good liquid hand soap is kinda pricey, so I learned to make my own!
If you are like me, your microwave got a real workout during the holidays. Heating chocolate for candy, making hot cocoa, and lots of other things. When the hectic holidays are over, one day you open up your microwave and are horrified at how dirty it is!
My First Experience with Tightwaddery
I got my first Tightwad Gazette book back in the 90's. I was much younger then and I remember scoffing at some of the ideas in it, though some were actually very good. The book got misplaced somewhere along the road and disappeared. Fast forward to 2015, when I was going through some boxes in the basement, and guess what I found? Yep, my Tightwad Gazette book. Considering that my husband and I are in a very different place now, than we were over a decade ago, I decided to give it another read. We are looking for a homestead to buy for retirement and I have been been spending a lot of time recently reading about self sustainability, going more green and changing to a simpler lifestyle where less is more. This book fit in nicely with the research I've been doing. Today I have a short post for you, but it is a great household tip that will save you money every time you buy fresh berries of any kind. Are you sick and tired of buying strawberries, only to get them out of the refrigerator a few days later and find them mushy or with patches of mold on them? How much money have you lost, throwing away raspberries, blackberries and other berries because they went bad before you got the chance to use them?
I found out about Castile soap from a book that I got on Amazon about Grandma's Remedies and Recipes. It swore by the value of Castile soap and basically said it could be used for just about everything. So I tried it, and I found out that it is partially true. It can be used for lots of things, but some, not so much, like toothpaste. Castile is an all natural soap made from plant oils and that's all. No animal products, no chemicals, no preservatives. It is completely green and biodegradable. Castile is real soap, not the poisonous garbage that you buy in the store to wash your hands, clothes and hair. You can use Castile to wash all those, it's easy, cheaper and more earth friendly.
I've had a few people tell me that how my Grandma did things was all well and good, in her time, but it would not work today. There were referring to my last post entitled 10 Things Your Grandparents Didn't Do. While there are some things that Grandma did that would not be practical today, like let your kids walk two miles alone to the store. I think that there are lots of ways we can simplify our live and do things the way they used to be done, even if you live in a condo, apartment or subdivision.
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