Testing takes time. June 17, 2008

I haven’t been able to write about much lately. I’m still testing a few things – like a scrubbing bubbles substitute and swiffer wet jet refill recipes.

Yesterday I decided to make some more homemade laundry soap/detergent, but instead of gelling it I’m going to leave it as a powder. When I grate the soap, it comes out powder-y so I thought I’ll try a powder, since the gel takes up so much room in my itty bitty laundry room. So far though I really like how the gel is working. It just doesn’t dispense from my dispenser very well, so I have been putting it in with the clothes. I’m hoping the powder will work in the dispenser.

I’ve also discovered for sure that we have insanely hard water – I read somewhere 10 is hard, 15 is REALLY hard. We’re 19.5. ack! I knew we had hard water but didn’t know it was that bad. So I’m going to have to check out some water softener additive of some kind. The only kind I know of here is Calgon and I’m sure it has a lot of chemicals in it so I’m not sure if that will work, ‘green’-wise. There’s no way we can afford a whole home water softener at the moment either. I’ll have to do more research on it.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post more recipes that have worked for me, in the near future.

Natura reusable dryer cloths/sheets work! June 5, 2008

So, since the last post, I decided to go out to Home Hardware and purchase the “Natura” cloth dryer sheets that are supposed to eliminate static to see if they would be a good alternative to regular dryer sheets. As I said in my last post, I tried the ‘natural’ type with not very good results, I still had a lot of static. So far, after about 5 loads with the Natura cloths, there is very little static, even on the 100% polyester fleece stuff. I’m happy. I just wish they had a nice smell. Don’t get me wrong, everything smells clean and fresh when it comes out, I’m just used to the pretty perfume-y smells.

 

My homemade laundry detergent is working great as well, except it’s leaving a small amount of residue on the seals (it’s a front loader) so I’m now adding vinegar hoping that helps clear that out. As an aside, I HATE my washing machine. Don’t EVER get an LG! We’ve been having problems with grease stains, and now brownish stains showing up AFTER our clothes have been washed. I had a repair guy out (incidentally, to fix our LG dishwasher but got him to check out the washer too) and he’s pretty sure is the bearings and the seals, or something, and that it’s a super costly repair.

 

 I’m NOT happy and sure won’t be buying LG ever again, we’ve had problems with ALL of our 6 LG appliances (we bought them all to match) that are only 2 years old. So next month we’re budgeting for a cheaper washer, not as big, but it will have to do for now – I won’t repair the LG for the cost it’s not worth it, especially for the other problems we’ve been having, like the error codes that always show up. I did some searching online and I’m not the only one. Talk about frustrating!

 

We bought that washer because it was rated good at the time, only now do I see all the negative reviews. It’s all such a crapshoot, you can even do the research (which I did before we bought) and not know. We’ve had several new sets of appliances over the years (as well as some older ones the sellers left behind), nearly every time we’ve moved and we’ve never had to call a repair person, ever.

 

 So as you can see, LG has definitely NOT made our life good.

But those Natura sheets – quality product!