For the month of April, anyone who comments on this post will be entered into a drawing to win a free 32 MB flash drive! A winner will be picked on May 1st by using random.org and notified by email that is left in the comment.  Everyone is eligible, and I hope to hear from some of you lurkers!  I’d love to visit your websites as well.  Good luck everyone!  Thanks for reading!

Posted under Freebies, Giveaway

I have become the epitome of frugal: I just made my own laundry detergent. I decided it sounded like a fun project to do today, so I hunted down the ingredients to make it, and voila! I know have a ton of homemade laundry detergent stored in a trash can down in my basement. I decided the liquid homemade laundry detergent would be my best bet, so that’s what I decided to make.

Before I started, I gathered up the following supplies:

• A pot to melt the soap in
• Bar of soap (I chose Ivory soap because it is non irritating)
• 1 gallon jug
• Trash can to store laundry detergent in
• 1 box of Washing Soda
• 1 box Borax
• Long handled spoon to stir mixture

Where to buy washing soda? It was a little tough to find, but my local Meijer carried it in the laundry detergent aisle. I called 1-800-524-1328, put in my zip code, and it told me where I could find it.

Here is the recipe for dry laundry detergent:

• 2 1/2 ounces soap bars, grated into flakes (Approx. a half a bar of soap)
• 1 cup borax
• 1 cup washing soda

Here’s the homemade laundry detergent recipe for liquid laundry detergent:

• 1 bar of soap of your choice
• 1 cup washing soda
• ½ cup borax

My first step was to almost boil about 4-5 cups of water, and shave the bar of soap into the water, stirring occasionally. Once that was done, I let it sit on the stove while I poured three gallons of hot water into my trash can. I then measured out 1 cup of washing soda and 1/2 cup of borax. I took the hot soap mixture, added it to the water in my trash can, and stirred until it looked pretty evenly distributed. Then I slowly added my 1 cup of washing soda until that was dissolved, and then did the same to the borax. That’s it. Fairly simple. I’m going to let it sit and get cool before I try to use it. It’s pretty liquid right now.

I have a front loading high efficiency (HE) washing machine. I’m going to use about a half a cup of this for my laundry loads. I’ll let you know how well it works!

Posted under How To, Save Your Money

I admit it, I’m being a slacker. I still haven’t finished my taxes. And the April 15th deadline is quickly approaching. I guess I’ve been putting it off because I’m afraid we are going to have to pay, and that thought kills me. I really don’t want to have to pay.

I did start our taxes last night with Turbo Tax, and so far it is showing we owe over $800. I still haven’t put everything in, so I’m hoping that once we are finally complete that we will at least break even. Last year some of the big things we did were: bought our house, paid off some student loans, and donated items to Goodwill. I figured with paying over $7,000 in interest on our mortgage alone that we would get some of that back. I hope we still do.

When inputting the information into Turbo Tax, I realized how much money we spent last year and it almost makes me sick. $7,000+ on mortgage interest, $3700+ on student loan interest, and who knows how much to the Home Depot for home improvement items. The $7,000 on the mortgage interest makes me think: did we really make the right decision on buying a home? Sometimes it makes me wonder. Of course, if you figure it out, that is roughly $600 in interest on our mortgage each month, and our rent on previous apartment was around $700. Factor in home repairs, though, and I think the rent looks even better.

What really peeves me is the fact that we spent $3700+ on student loan interest and were unable to write all of the interest off. We were only allowed to write $2500 of the interest off. What a bummer. Of course, next year we won’t have that much to write off because we’ve consolidated the loans to a much lower interest rate that I don’t mind paying. The fact of the matter is, we paid $3700 and only could write off $2500. It’s irritating.

Hopefully after I add in the car registration fees and some other items we won’t owe as much if anything. I’d love to be one of the lucky ones that receives a refund. I think part of the reason we’re in this predicament is that my husband is not having enough taxes deducted from his paycheck. I’m not completely sure what he claims, but I’m going to use this IRS withholding Calculator to figure out what each of us should claim on our W-4. I’m going to be optimistic that this year will be much better for us financially, and I’ll be crossing my fingers that we’ll be getting a refund next year!

Posted under Economy, Income Taxes, Jobs