Vinegar, Herbs, & Soft Clothes....

...Oh My!!

When I swapped to the 7th Generation laundry detergent I stopped using the rest of my laundry products with the exception of my favorite Spray 'N Wash Dual Power liquid stain remover. With two kids there's no way I'm going without the stain remover. You find me some easy to use all natural products that work as well as my Spray 'N Wash and I'll swap. But I digress, back to the what I was talking about. I stopped using Clorox 2, fabric softener, dryer sheets and bleach. So far the 7th Gen detergent has worked fairly well at keeping static cling at bay but I've been reading that white vinegar makes a great fabric softener.

I decided I'd give the vinegar a try. The whole point to going green was to start eliminating chemicals in our life and become more environmentally friendly. The vinegar works great and the smell really does go away between the rinse and dryer. It has hardly any smell after the rinse cycle and after you dry your clothes there is no smell at all.

Now my cloths have no scent so I decided to make my own dryer packets out of cotton and lavender.

I based mine off this post but I used cotton instead of muslin or cheese cloth. The cotton works just as good and is super easy to get a hold of. I bought a half yard of three different colors from Wal*Mart and it cost me a little over $4. Now a half yard of cotton will get you 6-9 little pouches....depending on how big you make them. You squeeze the bag, then throw it in the dryer with your wet clothes and it will leave them smelling nice when they are done drying. I recommend making several bags to rotate through so you aren't using the same bag over and over again. I have three but will probably make a few more since I do quite a bit of laundry.

Here's what I did. Instead of making 2 squares to sew together I cut one stripe that was 11 inches long and 5.5 inches wide. I then folded the cloth in half with the wrong side facing out with the folded portion as the bottom of your pouch. Take your sewing machine and sew both sides leaving the top open. I then turned the pouch in side right and filled it with 1-2 ounces of your favorite herbs. I used lavender but there are plenty of other dried herbs you can use. We prefer lavender and eucalyptus but roses and chamomile would be nice too. After you get it filled, turned the corners in on both sides and fold a couple times like you're folding a paper bag. Zip over the top of the fold from end to end with your sewing machine to seal the top. When the bag is no longer producing much of a smell rip the seams out, crush up the herbs and toss them on your carpet to sit for a few before vacuuming up. Refill the bag and resew the top.

If you're looking for bulk herbs I get mine from Starwest Botanicals. They have tons of organic herbs. Some are sold in 4oz packets and some are sold in 1lb bags. They have fast shipping and their products are excellent.

If there is enough interest I will put up a step by step photo filled post on how I made my dryer bags. Let me know if you're interested.

On the growing side of things, our tomatoes are doing wonderful.

Aren't they getting huge! We bought these great tomato support things at Ace Hardware. They're called Ultomato. They made
a tremendous difference on how our plants were growing. The limbs were
starting to sag really bad and we were afraid the weight was going to
cause some of the limbs to snap.

 

There are blooms all over and a few of them are starting to form tomatoes. I have a feeling we're going to have more then enough tomatoes to share with our neighbors. I can't wait to have some fresh tomatoes from my own plants. Next year I'm planning on a small herb garden to go with the tomatoes. There's nothing better then fresh herbs from your garden to spice up your foods.

We've been working on moving to more foods that are organic. The more chemicals I can cut out of my kids lives the better. We don't mind if our grocery bill goes up because we are gaining the benefits of chemical free foods. I know it sounds crazy but the organic carrots we bought the other day tasted different the the carrots we normally buy. If you haven't tried organic milk you need to. Its super smooth and very yummy. For me to say milk is yummy is quite a thing because I hate milk. I can drink the organic milk because it doesn't have a funky taste. We've get Horizon and Organic Valley. Normally we pick up Organic Valley because it's a little cheaper but the commissary doesn't always have it in stock when we need it so we buy Horizon. They are both great brands. Getting the organic milk is a lot more then what we are paying for the regular milk but I think it's worth it. A regular gallon of milk on base costs around $3....give or take about 10-15 cents. A half gallon of organic milk runs around $2.60. To us the pros outweigh the cons so we pay a little more.

I'll be back in a few days with a knitting post!