Helpful readers: I am in desperate need of your help. I am looking for a dish soap recipe and dishwasher soap recipe. As you are probably aware, I love making my own cleaning products. I have tried and tried to make my own dish soap and dishwasher detergent, but every time it either doesn’t work, or turns out horrible. I want to “be green” and also be frugal at the same time. Here are a few things I have tried.

Dishwasher detergent recipes:

Mix and use per dishwasher load:
1 Tablespoon Borax
1 Tablespoon Baking soda

and
1 Tablespoon Borax
1 Tablespoon Washing soda

These recipes never seemed to get my dishes clean!

Dish Soap Recipes:

I’ve also tried melting soaps down to a liquid consistency and then using those as dish soap. I have a ton of bars of soap that I wanted to use up. I used Dr. Bronner’s bar soaps, melted them, and then used it as dish soap. The problem is that it doesn’t lather up very well. It works fine for hand soap, but when you put it in the sink to wash dishes it just stinks.

I have tried googling, asking around, and asking my mom, who normally knows how to make everything. No one has a dish soap recipe to make your own dish soap or dishwasher detergent!

Do you make your own dish soap and dishwasher detergent or know of a recipe that I can use?

Posted under DIY, How To

Well, I didn’t end up hiring someone to do the floors for us. We ended up (after much frustration) taking the manual stapler back to Home Depot since it just wasn’t working. Instead, we ended up purchasing an air compressor for around $150 and rented a nailer for around $50. We got about 6 rows of the hallway done completely. It has been a long and tedious process.

We’ve decided that we’re going to cut the wood before we start nailing it down because that will save us time with nailing it. Time = money when renting tools! I think that’s going to work better than how we did it last time.

I just couldn’t bring myself to pay a professional to do it when all it’s going to take is a little blood, sweat, and tears to get this project finished. After all, we’ll appreciate it more and probably take better care of it since we’re doing it ourselves. I’ll let you know how it goes when we’re all done. Hopefully that won’t be too long!

Posted under DIY

It’s no secret I’m extremely frugal. After all, if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have started a blog about it! Sometimes I wonder if I am being too frugal (sounds better than “cheap”).

Ever since we moved into this house, I have been doing some sort of home improvement project. I’ve painted, replaced a windowsill, tiled a bathroom, you name it, I’m willing to give it a shot.  I decided that since I successfully tiled our bathroom that laying hardwood floors myself would be no problem.  Yeah right.

Last night we went to Home Depot to get some supplies for laying the hardwood flooring.   After doing a calculation on how much it would cost us to rent versus buy the hardwood floor nailer, I figured we’d come out ahead and less stressed if we just went ahead and bought the $239 nailer.  It’s roughly $22 a day when you rent it, so I figured I’d have to use it for only eleven days before it would pay for itself.  I thought it was a good money decision.

Fast forward to today.   Mr. Money and I face nailed the first two boards yesterday, and today I decided I would try to lay the floor while he is at work.  I get the next boards prepared, bang them into place with a rubber mallet, line up the nailer, bang it, pull the nailer away from the floor, and guess what?  There is still the darn nail poking up!!  I have tried and tried and tried to do this, but the more I keep doing, the more hardwood floor I end up damaging.  I can’t tell you how frustrated I am.

I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it just to pay someone to install it.  The whole purpose of doing the hardwood floors ourselves was to save money.  Being as frugal as I am, I just can’t justify paying someone else to come in to install the hardwood.  I’ve got the tools, but honestly I think I’m lacking the strength (and maybe patience) to do this myself.  I think I’m going to price some garage sale items, clean, and wait for Mr. Money to come home so he can attempt to install them.  I’m really hoping he’ll give it a fair try and be strong enough to nail the floor in.

Do you think I should just suck it up and pay someone to come do it?  Am I being too frugal here? 

Posted under DIY, Save Your Money