Shampoo-less

I have finally found a shampoo recipe that does not leave a residue, does not dry my hair out and does not smell funky . .... . (drum roll please) - using no shampooo at all!  I was visiting the Simple Mom a couple of days ago and she posted about going shampoo free, the alternative recipe for a hair rinse she did post and I tried it, and it has actually worked better than any of the other recipes ever.  Add one tablespoon baking soda to 1 cup of water, stir well and pour on hair.  Use your hands to work it through a couple of seconds, do it again, leave on for a couple of minutes, then rinse.  If you use a lot of hair junk, you may have to rinse a couple more times.  But that was it.  There is the option of a vinegar rinse, 1 tbsp cider vinegar in 1 cup water, but that does leave a smell.  I did it yesterday, both the baking soda cleaning rinse and the vinegar softening rinse, and my hair looks and feels great - tonight I will do it without the vinegar and see.  I will post an update on this experiment in about  week to see how my hair is doing.

For a better explanation of how this all works, go to,

http://simplemom.net/how-to-clean-your-hair-without-shampoo/

The Summer Crockpot

Most people generally see the crockpot as a fall/winter tool, but I love it's versatility all year. For instance, tonight I made enchiladas in my crockpot. They were wonderful, and I managed to NOT heat up my kitchen in the process which is great because it has been in the 90's and I am trying hard to keep my AC unit from going into overdrive. So it's. Twofold victory - great dinner and lowered energy cost. Sounds win-win to me. Next recipe to try, crockpot lasagna!

I still need a good way to make bread in the crockpot, but that one is a little more difficult to sort.

One Week

. . . . And I am still on the same squeaky clean trash bag!

My List

I have a few things on my list I really want to accomplish, and I will post progress as I go.

1). I want to do once a month shopping, not cooking, but shopping. I was working on the numbers and I believe that once a month shopping, including Costco, is going to be least expensive way for me to go overall. For one thing, I drive an Expedition and gas is $3.50 a gallon. Another is that I have become an on sale/discount/coupon impulse buyer. So I need to stay out of the stores as much as possible. I think this will help me get under and start under budget.

2). I am in need of organizing my stuff. I have plenty of hand me down kid clothes to figure out how to manage so I don't double purchase things, plus my food storage is a bit messy and I don't want that stuff to go bad or break or whatnot. I also get really tense when the messiness and clutter builds, even a little. I just can't function optimally when I can't get to what I need when I need it. It becomes a stressor.

3). Style. My hair is atrocious and I need to figure it out.

Bag Reusing

Not everyone reuses ziploc bags or the like, but consider the potential. Each little baggie costs about .07, which I realize is not a lot, but let's say you reuse enough bags in a year to not waste 100 bags. That alone accounts for $7.00. Not much, eh? True, but one small habit started soon spills over into many habits that pile up. There is an old saying that I read in Isabella Beetons Book of Household Managemnt" that I love but will Americanize, "Take care of you pennies and your dollars will take care of themselves" (she used pounds and farthings I think )

I do have a few rules about reusing bags though, never after raw meat of any sort, allow to thoroughly dry after washing, when you fill it with water and the leaks resemble a sprinler system, either throw away or use for crayons and markers only.

Any of you have any good bag reuses?

I reuse store bread bags for homemade bread too.
I keep ratty reused bags in the car for trash collection.
In the summer I also keep spare bags for wet bathing suits,etc.

Trash Bags

I have been pulling out my tightwad gazette lately, so watch out.....

When you go to the grocery store, wal-mart, etc., you usually leave with a ton of bags whether paper or plastic.  In my area, the little plastic ones are pretty much illegal, so we get paper.  So I now have a ton, and I use them for lots of things, including wrapping books and packages for mailing since they protect the package nicely.  I have also been putting them in my trash can (with plastic glad bag lining the can).  This way, I just pull the paper bag up by the handles about once a day and toss it, instead of pulling out the much more expensive glad bag.  Plus, the paper bag is at least biodegradale, whereas the plastic bag is not. 

I wonder how long I can make one glad bag last

The proverbial wagon

Oh come on, we all have one- a wagon of some sort that we keep falling off of. Mine is record keeping of all of my purchases.

I have a desire to manage our money so well that I can account for every dime, and have eliminated as much waste as humanly possibly. But then I'll forget to write a couple of things down, and then get frustrated with myself and stop, then on the first of the following month, I will go through it and torture myself all over again when I fail. However, I was forgetting something, I don't have to wait until the beginning of the following month to stop letting myself drag behind the cart and get back on the cart. Where had that rule come from anyway? No one normal I am sure, and certainly no one with small kids.

So, I got back up out of the dirt and started writing it all down to evaluate again, a d it was freeing not to wait ntil the beginning of the following month Hallelujah!

Butter Paper

I know some people who save butter papers for greasing cookie sheets, etc, and that's fine.  I do not.  I use a scraper (the flexible, silicone type) and I scrape down the paper to get every bit of butter off and then the wax paper is generally butter free and has no use for greasing.  This is especially helpful when you let your butter soften in the wax and lots of it likes to stick.  You can lose 1-2 teaspoons that way easy!

So scrape it off, or grease stuff with it - but don't let all of that wonderful (and $3 per pound) butter get wasted!