Friday Favorite: Charlie’s Soap Powder
Since the non-toxic cleaning series is coming up soon, I figured I’d start listing a few of the products I actually purchase instead of making myself for Friday Favorites. First off we’ll start with Charlie’s Soap Powder. For the last couple years I’ve been making my own laundry detergent, grating soap, mixing it with borax and washing soda to make a powdered laundry detergent. Depending on the variety of soap I used it was great or not so great.
My biggest problem with making my own laundry detergent is finding local sources of washing soda and borax. For a while I was using lye soap bars made my a local family for my laundry detergent, but something just wasn’t right. I felt like it left the clothes slightly oily as my towels stopped being absorbent. I also found that it didn’t keep the whites white as well. I didn’t want to buy Fels Naptha soap that so many people use because of the SLS in it, so I finally decided to try a small 80 load container of Charlie’s.
It averages out to about 20 cents per load for the small container, you can buy a larger 1000 load bucket of Charlie’s which cuts the price in half. I’ll buy a bucket next, with only two of us in the house it will take a LONG time to use up such a large container.
Being very sensitive to dyes, fragrances and harsh detergents, I was wondering how my skin would react to Charlie’s soap. They claim that the soap is: Here are just a few of the benefits of using Charlie’s Soap “Contains no clays, dyes, phosphates, ultraviolet brighteners or perfumes.” I also appreciate that the detergent is safe for wool, which makes up the majority of our clothing. Since we have hard water at Chiot’s Run I’m going to order a container of Laundry Booster and Hard Water Treatment. It’s supposed to help clean clothes better by softening the water.
So far I’m very impressed with Charlie’s Soap and will be purchasing a 1000 load bucket when I use up the 80 load container I have. As much as I’d like to make my own detergent, I have found it simply doesn’t work as well with the soaps I’m using. Charlie’s makes liquid detergent as well (which I haven’t tried), I’m a dry laundry detergent kind of gal. Isn’t it funny how that’s one of those things we choose and usually don’t waver from.
Do you use powder or liquid laundry detergent?
NON-TOXIC CLEANING SERIES
Stocking Your Non-Toxic Cleaning Kit
Learning to Love Castile Soap
Make Your Own: Foaming Soap
Make Your Own: Infused Vinegar
Make Your Own: Multi-Purpose Cleaner
Make Your Own: Color Safe Oxygen Bleach
Friday Favorite: Charlie’s Soap
Friday Favorite: Twist Sponges
and more to come
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Keeping Track
Along with all the garden chores, I’ve also been busy doing a few things around the house. Since the weather has been so nice, I’ve been staining a few of the doors that need a fresh coat and a few that have never been stained (in rooms without hardwood floors). When doing projects where you’re taking down doors or removing blinds, it’s easy to misplace screws and hardware. After this happened once, I started saving a few yogurt containers for such occasions. Now, whenever doors and other things come down, all the hardware goes right into a container so nothing is ever lost. It works like a charm!
You could also put all the hardware into zippered storage bags and tape/attach them to the item as well, this is especially handy if you’re planning on storing them for a while. We have blinds that are removed in winter and stored in the attic. In summer they get put back up to help block the sun/heat from coming in the front windows. All the hardware is kept in labeled bags attached to the blinds.
We love our house, but as with most, it came with it’s share of things we didn’t love. The good thing is that the basics were solid, good windows, lots of insulations. etc. The decorative features were all as cheap as they could be, including faucets, doors, trim, etc. The doors and moulding in the house were paint grade and were stained by the original owner to a very less than inspiring “natural” wood tone. Since we installed lovely dark hardwood flooring throughout the house, it made the moulding/doors look even worse than they had with pink and blue carpet. We toyed with the idea of changing them out but it was too expensive. Then we thought about painting them but didn’t think that would look good with the dark floors.
Instead of replacing them, we decided to try to stain what was here. I mixed a can of Minwax Wood Finish in Walnut and Red Mahogany together and set to staining. The results are nothing less than amazing. The color of the doors and trim now almost perfectly match the color of our floors.
It’s amazing what you can do with a little bit of a time and a few dollars to make something you already have look great! I was so glad I came up with this plan instead of replacing or painting our exciting moulding & doors. They look great and they match the floors and it saved me a ton of money!
Any great tips for making those home improvement projects go more smoothly? What about tips for taking what you already have and making it look better?
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Live Long and Prosper
Spring insinuates itself little by little into the winter and into our awareness, almost like a dye put drop by drop into a glass of water, hardly coloring it at all first, but eventually, by steady additions, changing its appearance and even its very nature.
Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd in Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill
Mr Chiots and moved into this house 10 years ago, in February of 2002. That first spring I purchased four primroses at the grocery store checkout that were marked 50% off. They were the first things planted by me in the gardens of Chiot’s Run. I wasn’t a gardner then and can’t remember why I chose to plant them where I did. The next spring two of them came back and bloomed, then the third year I was down to one.
Amazingly, this little primrose is still thriving in the garden. I can always count on it to be one of the first signs of spring in the garden and one of the last flowers to bloom in the fall. If we pack up and move, this little primrose will definitely come with along to our new home. I don’t know if it will survive, but I’m sure going to try.
What’s the longest living plant in your garden?
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Visiting Naples Botanical Garden
While we were in Florida a few weeks ago, we took one morning to visit Naples Botanical Garden. It was so nice to see so much lush foliage and such beautiful color, especially since the garden back home was still covered in a blanket of snow. I’m always amazed by the brightness of the foliage and flowers of tropical plants, we don’t often get such saturated color in our northern gardens. I’m sure they would look out of the place though, somehow these colors need heat to look at home!
It was hard to narrow down the images since there were so many interesting things (more over at Flickr). Plus I figured all you who live in the North would really love to see the lush garden since it will be a while until our gardens spring to life once again. Click on the first thumbnail below to start the slideshow, then use the arrow keys to move through the images.
Are you a fan of bright tropical plants or do you prefer the more subdued plants of the northern gardens?
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Planting Peas
Traditionally, St Patrick’s Day is the time to plant peas and potatoes here in NE Ohio. I was getting ready to plant peas yesterday and realized that I have a ton of seed for sugar snap peas, but only two small packets of shelling peas.
I’ll definitely need more shelling peas, so an order needs to be placed this week. I’ve grown Wando & Alaska previously, this year I planted a pack of Sabre easy-to-work, short vines bear double sets of well-filled pods each with 10 to 12 peas that shell out easily. Delicious tender peas with great taste. Extremely disease-resistant and productive plants (source Renee’s Garden Seeds)
I had a lot of sugar pod peas and planted:
Mammoth Melting snap pea pods are used like snow pea pods. The thick, stringless, 4″-5″ flat edible pods encase creamy-white peas. A high-yielding, early, uniform, and wilt resistant variety. The pods are excellent for stir-fries, steaming, freezing, or eating fresh. (source: Grow Organic)
Oregon Giant Huge yields of sweet, exceptionally large, five inch crispy snow pea pods on vigorous, disease resistant short vines. (source Renee’s Garden Seeds)
Super Sugar Snap Tall vigorous vines (resistant to powdery mildew and tolerant to other pea virus) are laden with long crisp sweet pods that mature in 60 days (source Renee’s Garden Seeds)
I planted all the varieties listed above, but I’ll definitely need to plant more shelling peas so I can stock my freezer for the coming winter. Even though peas take up lots of garden space and you have to shell so many pods to get any measurable amount of peas – to me they’re worth every square inch of garden space!
Do you have any great varieties of peas to recommend?
