Going Homemade Crazy....

After reviewing our budget recently we discovered that we are consistently going over our grocery/household items (cleaners, etc.) budget. It's not like we are getting a bunch of stuff we don't need, there just isn't enough money in that category but there is no other place to take it from. So....we decided that the only option is to find ways to cut our costs in that area. We have researched tons of options for groceries....grocery game, angel food, etc. and just haven't figured out yet the best one for us. That is still a work in process. However, we have had some great success with cleaners. A dear friend of mine started sending me e-mails with all kinds of suggestions on how to save money and one suggested a homemade laundry detergent. I was familiar with this mostly because I love 18 Kids and Counting and knew that the Duggars make their own laundry soap. Come to find out many of my friends do as well. As I shared this, someone else told me how to make homemade dish detergent, and just today I learned how to make a homemade toilet bowl cleaner! I haven't tried the laundry detergent yet but plan to soon, the dish detergent and the toilet bowl cleaner worked great! I've also used homemade window cleaner in the past and will be starting to do that again as well. I'll put the recipes at the bottom for anyone interested.

Another thing that I have done recently is purchase a package of kitchen cloths. We use tons of paper towels and the cloths were $5 for about 8 of them. We are hoping that this will greatly reduce the amount of paper towels we use. I never liked using cloths because it seemed germy to me but with 8 of them I can replace the cloth daily and still reduce my paper towel use and save money. Any other great suggestions out there? I'm listening....


Laundry Detergent
½ c. washing soda (sodium carbonate)

½ c. borax

1/3 bar of Fels-Naptha soap, grated

Heat 3 pts of water and add grated soap. Stir until melted then add soda and borax. Stir until dissolved and remove from heat. In a 2 gal. pail, pour 1 qt. hot water, then soap mixture. Top off the pail with cold water. Use ½ cup per load. Stir before using.


Dish detergent
1 Tbsp Borax (I use a heaping T)
1 Tbsp washing soda (again, heaping)
vinegar in the rinse thingy where the jet dry goes

Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Open up the bowl, sprinkle baking soda all around the inside, pour vinegar in and it will all start bubbling like crazy. Scrub, scrub, scrub and it's all clean!

Window Cleaner
I used this recipe:
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 gallon warm water

But I'm going to try this recipe next:
2 cups water
3 TBS vinegar
1/2 tsp dish detergent (liquid)