Keeping Up With The Jonesin'

I guess as winter still has it’s firm grasp on us all that I should start out with things on the indoor front first. It’s not as if there is not more than enough inside work to keep us all busy forever and a day! I remember that when I was still working that I’d love to hear people say to one another on Friday evening as we’d all head home for the weekend “Have a good weekend,” or “I hope you enjoy your weekend.” I used to think to myself “Are you kidding me?!?! I don’t know about you, but my weekends are filled with the 40 hours worth of household work that I didn’t have time for because I was here all damn week! Yippie Skippy, Laundry! Dishes! Scrubbing my much needed dirty floors! Wow, sounds like a weekend in the Alps to me!” I always had some weird, twisted vision of them going home to houses with maids on Friday nights having all of their chores done for them and miraculously being able to settle in with a good book while some layperson fetched them a cup of hot tea. In the meantime I went home to a house that looked like pigmies had ravaged it, playing lacrosse from one room to the next in it without a care in the world. I’d put down my coat and work items and settle in to reclaiming my piece of the world I claimed by owing a mortgage the size of Texas on 

Recently however, I have been reminded on a dear friend of mine, Manuel. I refer to him as my Italian brother, as he was my neighbor when I lived in Italy and he taught me many things about the cultural differences between Americans and Italians. One of the most important lessons Manuel ever taught me came in a single word….”Simplexity”. To this day I remember his speech on the reasons why it seemed to him that so many Americans are on anti-depressants and have such troubles. He said to me very simply “Americans it seems to me live to work, where us Italians work to live.” He explained that in Italian culture that many of the most blessed things that they embrace and refuse to concede no matter what century or technology brings upon their culture are life’s simplest pleasures. Time with your family, good food, good wine, love, relaxation, vacation, spirituality, and simply taking time out of the rush to “be.” Manuel was right with so much of what he said about Italians. It's also sad how that we as Americans have conceded so much of those things in search for the huge house, 2.5 kids, nice car and high paying job…it’s always more, more and MORE with us…and for what? So that we can all be moving so fast that we fail to take the time to simply “be” and keep conceding the most important things in this world that make it worth living in order to chase things that none of us, no matter our stations in life, can't take with us to the grave. It’s just plain silly and I for one am more than willing to start living under Manuel’s Laws of Simplexity to see if there isn’t just a little something better on the Italian side of the fence. I'm gonna try to see if I can't just keep up with the Bussato's :)

On with Simplexity and Indoor Chores; yes…I was going somewhere with that! Ha! During our family challenge I took the time to take a gander through all the crap I called “cleaning products” throughout the house and boy did I discover something! I discovered WMD’s!!!! I just knew I had to get rid of them…not only for the health of me and my family, but I’d heard of the “Bush Doctrine” and wasn’t about to go messing with the possibility of Dick Cheney launching a preemptive strike on my house if he only knew the junk I was stockading at my place! Gesh!!! Can’t take the risk! After all Dick’s still hangin around and I’m not taking chances with that crazy old man! Ha! Especially since after writing down the top 5 chemicals on the 5 common cleaners in my house and looking them up I found out that in order to “legally” dispose of them in my state I would have to basically take them to the nearest HazMat site! Of course no one actually does that in the real world, but I did take mine to the Solid Waste disposal facility in my county and ask them what the impact of these cleansers was on our ground water and soil. Needless to say I didn’t get a pretty picture painted for me, but I did get some nice EPA stats that showed me that if we all dumped them down the drain that the fish in Lake Erie should have 4 to 5 eyes and at least 2 heads by now! Thankfully that must mean that someone isn’t dumping their cleansers, or they are using alternative cleaners! From there on out I did the research and found that in order to clean my house to the same standard I only needed a few basic items and some recipes:
Borax Soap
Washing Soda
Baking Soda
Castile Soap
White Distilled Vinegar
Lemon Juice
Ivory Snowflakes (or grated castile or Ivory soap bars)
Bleach*** (Now, many people will say that bleach is still harmful, and if you have a greywater system it is! BUT I am a germaphobe, so I couldn’t let go of my Clorox Bleach…sorry!)

With these items I could make my Laundry soap, Dishwasher Detergent, Hand Soap, Dish Soap (for sink washing), and All Purpose Cleanser. I was amazed when I researched these items and found not one of them is damaging to the environment. Even Borax is found naturally in the environment and that was the one I was most worried about. With these in hand I started to follow some basic recipes for making my own household cleansers that I will now share with you. See…I told you I was going somewhere with this  It’s hard to keep up with the Jones’s 

Laundry Soap:

1/3 bar Ivory or Castile
½ cup washing soda
½ cup borax powder
**You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size**

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

Dishwasher Detergent:

1 Cup of Borax
1 Cup of Washing Soda
1 Mason Jar
Place the Washing soda and Borax in the Mason jar and shake. Now fill your dishwasher with the mixture where you would normally load your dishwashing powder. **Instead of using “Jet Dry” fill the dispenser with Distilled White Vinegar instead. This will work just as effectively to remove water spots from your dishes.

Dish Soap:

¼ cup Castile Soap
Essential Oil (5-8 drops of your fave scent)
Re-use an old Dish Soap bottle, or use a decorative bottle

Place the ¼ cup Castile Soap and Essential Oil in the bottle and SLOWLY fill the bottle up with room temp water. I say slowly because the foam will cause you troubles at first…so the slower you go the easier it will be to fill the bottle the first time. Once filled, cap….and mix together by gently shaking the bottle. Viola!

All Purpose Cleanser:

½ Cup Distilled White Vinegar
½ Cup Lemon Juice
¼ Cup Castile Soap
Spray Bottle

Combine the liquids in the bottle and fill the bottle the rest of the way with water. Once filled gently shake the bottle to combine. Strangely enough this cleanser was tested to be as effective on killing the virus that causes the common cold, and Ecoli as the commercial brand 409! The acidity in the lemon juice and vinegar is said to be what kills these viruses…so why do we mess with the chemicals in the other cleansers?!?!

Happy Cleaning!