Forgotten Skills

Photo credit:  Village Green Network

One of the Facebook/Blog pages I follow started this morning off with these words:  "Amazing how a decision to start growing your own food cascades into so many different things in your life. New friends (invaluable support), baking your own bread, making your own taco seasoning, making your own laundry soap. The list goes on and on..."  (Karen Taylor of Old Pa Farm) Not sure my list of mostly forgotten skills would look exactly like that but the words and sentiment got me thinking about how many old and [by many people] forgotten skills I use in my day.  Some things I do because it's how I learned to do it growing up and some is a conscious choice for either thrift or to leave an environmentally softer footprint on the Earth.

I garden.  Most years I do anyway.  And I will be when this coming Spring finally gets itself underway.  In the past I've used much the same methods I learned from my Dad - organic for the most part but willing to bring in a chemical for limited use if I found myself dealing with a pest I couldn't otherwise control.  In the past, I've hired someone to rototill the ground but this year I'm going to experiment with creating permaculture beds.  That's something I'm pretty excited about!

I preserve garden produce for later use.  This summer I want to make red and green salsa, dilly beans, apple pie filling, applesauce, spaghetti sauce, garlic preserved in vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, refrigerator dill pickles, strawberry freezer jam, frozen diced tomatoes, and several dried herb blends.

I cook from scratch.  Well, sometimes.  I admit a lot more boxed stuff has slipped in during the past 18 months.  It's been a time of big adjustments that affect all parts of my life and that's part of the reason that real cooking has fallen by the wayside.  It's something I laugh about now and then, but Derek loves the TGI Friday's(TM) Tater Skins from the freezer isle and would eat them 3-4 times a week... I about had a heart attack right there in the frozen food section when I saw the price and started making them at home.  Mine are so much better he tells everyone that they "are the bomb!" And I want to get back to even more real cooking over the coming months.  One of the first things I plan on doing is getting my sourdough starter going again and making our bread.

I make many of my own cleaning products.  Again, I've slipped a little in doing this but getting back to it more and more.  I've found that I can make my own product that is very effective for much less money. Some of my forays in cleaning products have been laundry soap, dryer sheets, and a concoction (I hope I can replicate) that did an awesome job getting puppy stains out of our carpets.

I create things.  For Christmas I made Derek an afghan in his favorite sports team colors and since we have serious lack of bedding (thanks, in part, to puppy chewing) it's been helpful in keeping him warm on some of those unusually cold nights we've had lately.  Over the last year and a half I also made some of the items we've gifted for birthdays and Christmas, cards, our potholders and some of the decor on our walls.  Several items have used recycled or re-purposed materials.  I love that it saves money, but even more I love that it is unique, kind of quirky and very personal.

I do my own home repairs and upgrades.  Inasmuch as it's safe and I have the skills to do a reasonably good job, I do my own repairs and upgrades.  A recent example was replacing a burned out breaker in our box.  Calling an electrician would have run around $100.  A few friends telling me it was an easy do-it-yourself job and a Youtube tutorial later, I did it myself.  The new breaker cost $11.84, including tax.  Money savings aside, it was a powerful feeling when I flipped that switch and everything worked!

I get to know my neighbors.  For me, a sense of community is important.  I am a naturally friendly person and I like finding people nearby who can share information and skills and, sometimes, garden tools.  Besides, being sociable is a good skill to have... so many of us suffer from nearly unbearable loneliness these days.  I also want to try and barter for things I can't do on my own like get our one neighbor who co-owns a dog grooming business with his daughter to cut the dog's toe nails.  I've talked to him a number of times about gardening and learned that he's diabetic and baked goods won't appeal as a trade off... so I'm hoping this summer to woo him into a barter arrangement with lots of fresh garden-ripe tomatoes!

Could I do more?  Sure.  Will I?  In time, probably.  I've already started a list of upgrades and additions for the 2015 garden...

It All Comes Out in the Wash

For months, maybe even close to a year now, I've been talking about wanting to try making my own laundry soap.  I've read innumerable blogs and watched video tutorials about it.  One thing I noticed is that the recipes are all very similar.  Some use more or less of a specific thing, but they all use the same ingredients.  And so my quest turned to finding one that made a more manageable amount of detergent for me.  I found one that makes 2 gallons, instead of the 5 that was more common, and gave it a try.

Here's what I did:

I cut 1 bar of Fels Naptha soap into thirds and grated 1 piece.  (Yes, it does look just like grated cheese so if you have little ones around be very careful that they don't eat it.)  Then I melted it over low heat with 6 cups of water.  When it was completely melted, I added 1/2 cup each borax and washing soda and let it

continue to cook until it started to get a honey-like consistency.  This took a lot longer than I had anticipated and it foamed up more than I thought it would.  Next time I will use a bigger pot.

In my big blue enameled canning kettle, I put 4 cups of hot tap water.  This happened to be what I had convenient but you can use any container that will hold a little more than 2 gallons and allow for easy stirring.  A plastic bucket commonly used for food storage would be perfect. Add your melted soap-borax-soda mixture and stir together.  You can then add any essential oils you wish to scent your laundry soap.  Use a lot!  I put 16 drops of tea tree oil and I can't even smell it.  If you add nothing for scent, your laundry will just smell clean not perfumed.

Next you add 1 gallon plus 6 cups more hot water (that's 22 cups of water).  Stir it up and let everything sit for 24 hours.

At this stage the recipe I was following said you could have a number of results depending on the temperature of your house... it could have layers of clear and cloudy liquid, be a thin gel, or even have a 'slimy' top coating.  Mine had a top layer that was mostly clear and then a thicker cloudy layer.  I just stirred it all up

good and used a funnel to transfer it to some old water bottles.  You can use any containers that you wish - old laundry soap bottles would be great because they have the measurement on the cap.  Some of the other people posting on line used a 2 gallon water storage/dispenser with a hook attached to the side for a measuring cup.  That was attractive and handy, but for now my old water bottles will do just fine.

For each load of laundry, you'll use 1/2 cup.  Everything I saw in my research indicated it would be fine in the high-efficiency front loaders because it is very low sudsing.

Cost-wise, this laundry soap works out to about 3 cents per load, compared with 15-20 cents per load for commercially available detergents.  The borax and washing soda were each between $2 and $3 (and each contains several cups of product) and the Fels Naptha bar soap was 97 cents so less than $7 total and I should be able to do laundry for more than a year!

The first load is washing now.  I will post a follow up telling you what I think later this evening.

I've linked this post to the Preparedness Challenge #31 at Homestead Revival.