--We're going to make our own laundry detergent. After a lot of research, we've decided to use the Duggar's recipe. There are only 4 ingredients - water, borax, washing soda and bar soap. We were able to buy everything below for less than $10 and we can make many, many batches of laundry detergent from what we bought.
I think the cost for the portion of ingredients needed to make 1 batch (10 gallons) is ~$2. According to the recipe, we should get about 640 loads of detergent, which means each load only costs about $0.03. Currently, we use the All Free & Clear concentrated HE detergent. A bottle that claims to have enough for 32 loads costs around $7.99, which works out to $0.25 a load. Although $0.22 might not seem like much, if we average 10 loads a week after Chloe arrives (I'm not sure how many we'll need to do since we're cloth diapering...) that's a savings of $2.20 a week and $114 a year. That's pretty good!!
And...if we do average 10 loads a week and 1 batch of detergent has 640 loads, then it'll be more than a year between making detergent, so the time investment is pretty much negligble. In addition, homemade detergent has fewer chemicals so it's not as hard on your clothes or as harmful to the environment. Bonus!!
--We like it when we can be frugal and green at the same time. Along the same path, we like it when we can eat healthier and save money. One of the biggest things we're trying to do to eat healthier is just knowing what we're putting into our bodies and avoiding unnecessary sugars, preservatives, etc... A few months ago, we made our own vegetable stock. We threw all the ends of onions, skins from carrots, brocolli stalks, etc... into a Ziploc bag and kept it in the freezer until we had enough. Then we froze the stock after we made it and pulled it out as needed to make soup this winter. After seeing a great deal on whole chickens at Hy-Vee, we decided to try the same thing - making chicken stock. We didn't have an immediate need for the amount of meat we'd get from the chickens though, so we shredded it and froze in usable portions.
We ended up getting 10 12oz. portions of shredded chicken and 2 quarts of chicken stock. A 12 oz. can of shredded chicken costs $2.18 and a quart of chicken stock is $2.89, totalling $27.58. We spent almost exactly $7 on the 2 chickens, which means we saved over $20!! Our total time investment was probably about an hour - and $20 for an hours time isn't too shabby in my opinion.--Then there are times when the only way we can spend money, is to try to save some in the process. (I'm not sure if that'll make sense to anyone but me!!) We've been wanting a new bed for a while now. Our bed is over 20 years old and only a full. The size didn't bother us too much until I got pregnant and started having trouble sleeping, which meant lots of tossing and turning, and then the addition of a very large pregnancy pillow. Apparently, the pillow and I don't leave a lot of room for Aaron...
We decided to use some of our tax return to buy a Queen size bed. Aaron did a lot of reading online and decided a Memory Foam mattress would be the way to go. We still had a definite budget to stick to, and we couldn't get the mattress we wanted and a box spring. So my handy husband built us a platform!! We were able to get some 2x4's leftover from another project (thanks Steven!!) We had to buy a couple pieces of plywood, which cost $68. The cheapest box spring we found anywhere was $200, so that's a $140 savings!!
And...thanks to my husband making smart cuts, we'll be able to use the scraps to make a couple shelves for our office. So chalk up another one for the frugal Mortvedt's!!
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