Reusing Everyday Household Objects

11. April 2012 · Comments Off · Categories: Homemade Products, Household, Money Saving Tips · Tags: , ,

Please enjoy today’s guest post on reusing everyday household objects.

Being a parent is rarely regarded as a creative, entrepreneurial job, but it darn well should be! Raising a child, especially in a healthy, eco-friendly atmosphere, can be one of the more challenging tasks an adult can take on. Don’t believe me? Consider asking your parents living at your local Brookdale assisted living center what the hardest job they ever had was. A good number of them will say raising their kids. Make things easier on yourself, your wallet, and the environment by reusing household items. Here are some of the more obscure examples:

T-shirts—Most households have attics and basements full of old clothes. You can always donate these clothes to Good Will. Or you could reuse the old t-shirts for a variety of applications. Cut out square patterns to create a blanket, sew certain shapes onto jackets, or use them as cleaning rags.

Egg cartons—One of the best uses for egg cartons is as portable seed sprouters. The little oval shapes are the perfect containers for a bit of soil and some seeds. Get your kids involved in this project. You’re teaching them two valuable lessons at once: how to reuse household items and how to sprout seeds, which are very healthy and delicious on salads.

Greeting cards—You probably have hundreds of all greeting cards laying around—birthdays, holidays, get-well-soon’s. Since you can’t really reuse these in the traditional way, cut them up, reappropriate them and create your own new greeting cards. Or, if your kid is into arts and crafts, use the pictures and textures as the raw material for a mobile or a collage.

Coffee Grounds—After making a pot of coffee you’re stuck with a turgid black-as-night mess that you would normally toss in the trash. Not so fast, though. Coffee grounds makes for a great fertilizer for your garden or compost.

Glass bottles—Start collecting multi-colored glass bottles and create your own fun and creative lamps. Any shape, any hue will do—all you need is a light bulb fixture.

Toilet paper roll—You’re thinking, what on Earth could this possibly be reused for? The answer is wires. The average living room or home office has dozens of pesky wires connecting various appliances to various outlets. Use toilet paper rolls to bundle them together.

There are hundreds more examples of how every household items can be given a second life. Collectively, if we all started reusing many of the objects laying around our houses instead of throwing them away, we would save more money for our families and protect the environment too.

How to Make Homemade Toothpaste

14. October 2011 · 7 comments · Categories: Health, Homemade Products · Tags: , ,

While it may sound like a complicated process, learning how to make your own natural homemade toothpaste couldn’t be easier. Chances are, you already have some of the ingredients rattling around your kitchen; and if you don’t, they’re easy to find and inexpensive.

Here’s the recipe:

2 Tbs. baking soda

2 Tbs. organic coconut oil

1/2 tsp. organic raw honey

3 – 5 drops essential oil such as spearmint, peppermint, cinnamon or clove

Just a dash of sea salt or Kosher salt

Dump all these ingredients into a bowl and smash it all with a fork, mushing the coconut oil into the mixture until it looks just like – well, just like toothpaste. Scrape all the well-mixed paste into a glass container with a tight fitting lid and use just as you would your regular, expensive, and not-so-natural paste.

That’s it! You’ve just learned how to make a natural and homemade toothpaste at a fraction of the cost of store bought brands and is safe enough for even the youngest teeth in the family.

Natural Easter Egg Dye Techniques

01. April 2010 · 1 comment · Categories: Homemade Products · Tags: , ,

I ran this post last year, and I thought it timely to run it again.  We’ll be dying our eggs on Saturday, and I’ve got everything ready to go!  Can’t wait…

I’ll admit straight out, I haven’t tried this yet – I have to color our eggs on Saturday, but I’m planning a natural egg coloring festival in my kitchen.  DkMommy Spot reader Alicia asked me if I knew of how to do this, and by golly, I didn’t have much of an answer.  But I’ve done some digging around, and I’m ready to try it on my own.  What I’m imparting to you here is what sounds easiest to me, using simple ingredients.  (For instance, I’m not going to send you out searching for violet blossoms and boiled black walnut shells.  But if you have these just hanging around, test them out!) 

Preparation: In a pan add water, a vegetable, fruit, or spice from the list below, and a tablespoon of vinegar.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes.  Allow the water to cool to room temperature, strain out the veggies, fruit, or spice, (unless you want speckled eggs) and add the already-boiled eggs.  You can leave the eggs in the color for as long as you wish, even overnight in the fridge, to get the desired color. Here’s the color chart that will tell you which natural item to use with your eggs:

Red:  3 Tbs. Chili Powder (reddish orange) or lots of red onion skins (purplish red) or chopped fresh beets

Orange:  Yellow Onion skins

Yellow:  Ground Turmeric or Orange Peel or Lemon Peel or ground cumin

Green:  Spinach Leaves; or mix turmeric with red cabbage 

Blue: Red Cabbage Leaves (about 1/2 a head, chopped) or canned blueberries

Violet: Purple Grape Juice (no need to boil first or to add water)

One unique trick I plan on trying is to wrap the raw eggs in the outer skins of onions (any color) and put rubber bands around them to hold the skins in place.  Boil the eggs as usual, and when cooled, remove the skins.  It is said to leave a nice pattern on the eggs.  

Another trick that I do every year after coloring eggs is to buff the shells with a little olive oil.  Gives a nice shine!

If you have any different ways you use to dye easter eggs naturally, please let us know!  I’d love to have a few more tricks before Saturday’s egg coloring too.

I Hate Junk Mail – 10 Uses for Unwanted Junk Mail

24. February 2010 · 8 comments · Categories: Environment, Homemade Products · Tags: , ,

 

If I get one more piece of junk mail I'll...

I hate junk mail.  It seems like an invasion of my mailbox, and for reasons other than some sense of eco-morality, every time I open my mailbox to an onslaught of paper fliers and advertisements to credit card companies, I see red.  There are a number of legitimate ways to stop junk mail, but while you’re calling the 1-800 numbers and filling out forms, you can try these 10 creative – sometimes slightly revengeful – uses for unwanted junk mail.

1.  Learn to make nifty beads which can be strung together for colorful jewelry.  Sell it at flea markets and use the money to buy a composter.

2.  Save the junk mail in a craft box for your kids.  My son loves to color on the wasteful ads that have print only on one side.  And kids always manage to find creative uses for otherwise unwanted items. They’re brilliant that way.

3.  Weave a basket. 

4.  Line your birdcage.  (My birds love pooping on credit card applications.)

5.  Throw it in a blender, add water, and make your own decorative stationery.  Okay, there may be more to it than that, but darn it’s creative.  Check out this how to make paper link.

6.  Wrap small presents in the more colorful sheets.  Yes, it’s cheap, but your friends will thank you for it.  Or not.

7.  Mark it return to sender and mail it back.  It’ll help keep our U.S. postal workers employed.  (This doesn’t work with bulk mail, however.)

8.  Learn origami.

9.  Teach the kids papier mache, make collages, shred it and use it in your chicken coop, sort and recycle it, wallpaper with it, make paper airplanes.

10.  Getting an A+ for creativity is this idea I stole from a coworker.  Collect all the Postage Paid envelopes you receive from credit card companies.  Stuff them with a wide variety of advertisements and other junk mail, seal the envelopes and mail them.  Is it legal?  I have no idea.  But just the thought of sending junk mail to the credit card companies makes me smile just a little inside.

How to Make Homemade Plantain Salve

17. September 2009 · Comments Off · Categories: Homemade Products, Remedies · Tags: , ,

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Common Plantain - A Friendly

Common Plantain - A Friendly "Weed"

Plantain is a good herb to talk about for many reasons.  It’s great for skin irritations like diaper rash and bug bites, and it’s able to help minor cuts and scrapes heal faster.  One nice thing about plantain is that it is truly a common “weed” that most of us can easily find.  It can be picked all year long, even looked for under the snow.  

If you’ve never made a salve before, it’s not that complicated.  There are a few different ways to do it, and although I usually let my herbs sit in a jar of oil in the sun for a few weeks before turning them into salve, I’ll show you here how to make the plantain salve without having the long wait.

Pick enough plantain leaves so when they’re finely chopped you have about 3 cups.  (You can read about plantain here and learn how to identify it.)  Place 4 ounces of olive oil in a glass Pyrex-type dish.  I usually put mine into a larger aluminum pan after adding an inch or two of water into the pan.  Add 2 to 4 ounces of beeswax to the oil and heat slowly until all the wax has been melted.  (At this point, I like to spoon a small amount of the mixture on a plate and let it cool a minute in the fridge.  If the consistency isn’t thick enough for me, I add a little more wax.) Carefully add your herbs, remove the Pyrex dish, and cover it.  Place it in the oven at a very low heat, say 170ºF, and let it stay for about 4 hours.  Now remove the mixture from the oven, carefully strain it through a sieve, add 1/2 an ounce of Vitamin E, and pour the salve into smaller glass containers and leave to cool.  After they’re cool, cap them.  

I usually find salves will last for a year or more.  The beeswax and the Vitamin E help preserve them, and if you store them in the dark, all the better.  Next time a bee sting, cooking burn, or other skin irritation occurs in your household, you’ll have one great remedy to rely on!

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