Clean livin' and the lord

Guess what?

Soap's ready to use!  

It's been curing for a month in the spare bedroom.  I've visited it often.

And use it we have been--now that those long four weeks are finally over!  It is really nice stuff...very gentle and more slippery than lathery, which is what we are used to anyway since we've been using health-food-store soaps for the last few years.  It cleans well and hasn't disintegrated in our shower (but isn't kept in the trajectory of the showerhead, either, let's be honest.)  It is mild, and I like using it for my face;  I hope that it will prove helpful for Jason's eczema with continued use.

OK, here's the deal:  do you know how satisfying it is to have made something entirely new--to have the chemical reaction work correctly the first time?  I think household alchemy is pretty dang fun, personally.  I will be making soap again...soon.  I keep giving it away, and that month-long waiting period is a bummer.

I am sad to say that the essential-oil fragrance has apparently been sacrificed to the curing period in the open air.  I would like to test the pH of the bars next time to see how long it actually takes them to cure, rather than just going with the average time, which might help.  I would also like to try again with essential oils, but use strong scents like rosemary and mint.  Oh, or clove and cinnamon.  Mmm.  


I was thinking the other day that if there is one area of this homesteading experiment that I feel I have truly explored, it is the home- and human-cleaning product realms.  For most of the last year I have made, rather than bought, the following:

• shampoo
• conditioner 
• hair gel
• body lotion
• herbal salve for wounds
• face lotion
• bathroom spray cleaner
• soft scrub
• toilet cleaner
• kitchen spray/general cleaner
• floor cleaner    

More recently, I've been trying my hand at making
-soap
-laundry detergent
-bug spray
-and bay rum.  

This is such a fun genre to dabble in, and I wish that I could be privately funded to focus on and play with herbs and potion-making all the day long.  I have books on herbs that I bought while in high school, so this is no passing fancy.  [Oh, and I would go to herbalist school in a heartbeat.  I love the rich history that women have with herbs and healing--just as I love the anarchy inherent to the fact that some of the most useful herbs are what we now call weeds.]  

Ultimately, the colors and scents and gathering out in the fresh air and sunshine are a blissful way to spend your day.  I have the most wonderful mason jar full of sun-dried calendula flowers that represents hours of picking, preparing, and drying beautiful flower-heads on sunny days throughout the summer.  How can they be anything but a force for health and happiness?


I also should point out that our house and persons are as clean as they were when we were buying all of the commercial cleaning stuff.   (Notice how cleverly I worded that.  Ha!  Some of you uber-housekeepers would faint, but I think we do OK.)  If anything, I feel like my hair and skin have benefited from this simplistic routine.  I absolutely love not having a label to bother reading--and if you are concerned about the chemical soup we live in like I am, then you are probably inclined to squint at label gobble-de-gook as well.  It is very freeing to have made what you are using and know the ingredients and their quality inherently.  It is a bit of a challenge to try to recreate for myself all that we would otherwise buy, and I am sure that I will eventually need to start weighing what is worth the time-invested and what would better to buy ready-made.  For right now, though, I am having fun.


If you are interested in trying some or any of these cleanliness-creations yourself, there are  many great resources out there with recipes, tips, and suggestions.  My favorites include:

• Rosemary Gladstar's Recipes for Vibrant Health:  175 Teas, Tonics, Oils, Salves, Tinctures, and Other Natural Remedies for the Entire Family
• Better Basics for the Home:  Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living, by Annie Berthold-Bond
• The Wild and Weedy Apothecary:  an A to Z Book of Herbal Concoctions, Recipes, Remedies, Practical Know-How & Food for the Soul, by Doreen Shababy
• The Naturally Clean Home:  150 Super-Easy Herbal Formulas for Green Cleaning, by Karyn Siegel-Maier

  In general, let me say that I use a lot of the following, some of which is available at any grocery or drugstore  (but may be better sourced at a health food store):  

distilled white vinegar, organic apple cider vinegar, olive oil, extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, pure aloe vera, witch hazel, vegetable glycerin, beeswax, baking soda, washing soda, castile soap, borax, lye, fresh or dried herbs and essential oils. 

--and that just about wraps up my shopping list.  From hence, all cleanliness cometh.

Well, with the exception of dishwashing liquid, which continues to elude me.  Tricky liquid soap.   Ah, well. 

Bikes. Birds. Baking soda.

For the past several days, I've been biking my errands.  This is a very good feeling, this no-gas-consumption feeling.  And with traffic being what it is, (and with the canal path and the Monon so handy) I typically get there faster than I would in a car.  Parking alone makes me deliciously smug, especially during the summer when the suburbs empty into Broad Ripple on the weekends and traffic reaches epically nasty proportions.   I don't usually find myself effervescing about Indianapolis or IN in general, but I do appreciate the trails to which we have managed to live in close proximity during our decade in the area--they go a long way to redeem a city with such poor mass transit.

My grocery-getter bike, the Trek with all its convenient racks & panniers, is still out of commission, a long story of ambitious tinkering friends and boyfriends who commenced upon a tune-up of said Trek and ended with the bike stuck in one gear, the machine victorious over the men and now enjoying a long vacation in the garage.  Someday, I will remember to throw it in the back of the truck and have it fixed professionally, but until then, I grab a backpack and take the more stripped-down Schwinn.

In any case, and no matter what sort of bike and related equipment you have, I would like to strongly recommend getting outside in your neighborhood, whether that means taking a walk or a bike ride or being pulled in a little red wagon.   This is the time of year to stop and chat at the end of the driveway, or admire some nearby gardens, or to barter some of your homegrown lettuce for fresh eggs from your lucky backyard chicken farmer next door....

In poultry news, the girls are all doing very well.  I thought we were going to lose Roxie on Jason's birthday, probably due to heat exhaustion (although she might have ingested some red paint that had dripped into the grass from a project I was working on).  In either case, it was a rough few days that started with a limp, almost unconscious bird in the bottom of the coop.  Yikes.  Why I have to have a hypochondriac, drama-queen chicken, I will never know.  She is back to her usual sassy self now, but has yet to lay me another egg, after going strong for so many weeks.  Apparently I am not meant to have all four chickens laying at the same time!

Fern and Betty accompanied me to another chicken workshop on Sat. 6/18; it was a nice event & Fern's first venture into being an educational chicken.  All new faces in the audience, which was fun, and we held it outside this time, under a tent.  The only glitch occurred when the second presenter began her discussion of first aid and how to raise & butcher a meat flock.  Fern seemed to take offense and proceeded to squawk, loudly, until you could barely hear the woman speaking.  After stuffing her with treats and apologizing repeatedly, I finally had to have Jason pack the girls up and take them home so that we could all hear the rest of the program.  Jeez.  And, as seems to be the custom with these workshops, she promptly plopped out an egg upon getting home and was calm and docile immediately thereafter. 

The flock seem quite well-adjusted and confident of their little backyard kingdom...they have created strategic dust-baths around the place, and know where to dive for cover when something sinister flies by.  My neighbor's mulberry tree is dropping buckets of ripe fruit over the fence in the mulch, and the girls are happy to snap many of them up--the downside to this, of course, is that they then continue on to make piles of shiny black, tar-like droppings as they strut their merry way around the yard.  Ugh.  While grateful for the free chicken food, I will be glad when mulberry season is past!

And speaking of chicken food, the girls are so busy nibbling on the plants and bugs in the yard, that I rarely have to fill their feeder, and their egg yolks are a brilliant orangey-yellow.  What a great time of year to be collecting eggs from your own gals!

Inside the house, I have made another homemade-cleaner discovery, and not surprisingly, it has to do with baking soda again. 

Since I've started making shampoo & conditioner and begun to favor locally- and naturally-made bar soaps over shower gels and hand soap pumps, I've noticed one particular problem:  a lot more soap scum left behind.  Which makes sense, of course, since we are using soaps rather than detergents, but who likes to scrub their shower all the time??  Ugh, not me, that's for sure.  So the soap scum tends to build up and then I really dread attacking it.

The last time I cleaned the tub, I decided to use baking soda on a damp scrubber, since it is known to be a great exfoliator and scrubbing agent.  --And it worked.  Not wonderfully, but it did the trick with some added elbow grease and lots of flakey baking soda flying everywhere.  Eh.  Not so fun.

Back to dreading the scum.  So, today, I decided to try a "soft scrub" recipe I've found in several different books:  baking soda, with just enough liquid castile soap to make a creamy paste similar to cake icing.  Since I happen to have a bottle of Dr Bronner's in the peppermint scent, I had the added bonus of a pleasant, minty concoction. 

I think it is the aromatherapy of using essential oils--because I didn't hate scrubbing the bathtub this time.  The soap kept the baking soda from being so flakey and seemed to clear the scummy stuff with greater ease; the whole thing smelled great and left the tub and walls shiny and clean.  I used a scrubber with the paste, and a more absorbent sponge and hot water to rinse; it was a simple, pleasant process. 

I am now prowling the house, looking for scrubbing jobs, since I have some leftover after finishing in the bathroom--who knows, maybe Jason will come home to find me on hands & knees, going head-to-head with the dingy kitchen linoleum....

Then again, probably not. 

Fairy eggs and pretty glass

Any snippet of green is welcome in February!  These two tiny cuttings are the very last living leaves of the rose geranium that has been limping along in one of my south-facing windows.  I don't know why I always kill scented geraniums when I try to over-winter them.  I mean:  light, water, good soil..."what do you want from me, blood?"  I suppose every gardener has their Waterloo, and without question, I meet mine in my windowsills along about February each year.

I digress.  The rooting vases were on super duper clearance at the Gardener's Supply Co, and we will see if I can salvage a new plant...hopefully we'll see some rootlets appearing soon. 

On a more whimsical note, Jason & I had a chuckle over the latest surprise in the chicken coop:  a teeny little gumball-sized egg, complete with a sprinkling of freckles.  These are known as fairy eggs or witch eggs, and they are too small to contain a yolk.  Nothing to worry about--just another kink in one of the girls' laying systems as they work through the first few months of reproductive life.  Although I had promised myself not to gush any more over anything chicken- or egg-related, I have to say that finding this miniature nestled in the straw was pretty darn cute. 


 As you can see from the picture, we are also still getting larger-than-usual eggs occasionally too.  I guess adolescence is a roller coaster for all of us!

I am also happy to report that we have officially switched to a local organic feed source for the girls:  Central Indiana Organics.  Until now, I've ordered from Pennsylvania because the girls were still developing and I couldn't find the right feed around here and still buy organic--such a relief to escape the ridiculous shipping costs!



And now, for your laugh of the day, allow me to issue a warning about homemade cosmetics and expiration dates.  If, in the year of our lord 2011, you are attempting to make your own baking soda shampoo, it will behoove you to discard anything with this on the bottom of the can:

 Yes, that says "SEP 2009."  I'm not sure how a can of baking soda actually lasted that long in my pantry, but apparently it did--and let me tell you, it matters!

I had been facing a haircare conundrum:  the homemade shampoo wasn't working and nothing that I tried seemed to help.  I supplemented with castile soap to no avail.  I used a trial bar of Greenridge Organic's Rosemary Rhassoul Shampoo Soap, which made a marginal improvement at first, but soon things deteriorated again, and I was beginning to wonder if I needed to concede defeat, buy a normal shampoo to deep clean my hair, and then start again from scratch.  Since everything I've read states that your hair and scalp need time to normalize and wean off of a detergent-based shampoo, I really didn't want to--but continuously wearing hats just isn't my thing.

...and then I ran out of my bathroom can of baking soda and used the kitchen box.  One--ONE--quick shampoo, after weeks of fruitless scrubbing and rinsing, and I'm back to the normal mop of brown curls, once again defiantly styling themselves and bouncing around outside of my control.  *sigh* 

Lesson learned:  baking soda expires.  Good grief.

Homemade Hygiene. Oh, yeah.

Well, I've crossed another invisible line, but I think that our relationship can handle it.

Herb garden.  Food, medicine, and cleaning?

Since you haven't written me off with the urban livestock, I feel safe venturing into another new realm:  I'm tired of buying "natural" cleaning products, shampoos, conditioners, and laundry detergents.  I'm tired of all of the label-reading and expense.  I would love to make use of my home's gray water--but I don't quite know that I trust even my green stuff, poured over my plants, to prove healthy for them and the soil.  So, I've listened to my favorite enviro advice column and decided to make these products for myself.

I'm taking all of this one step at a time, using up the remaining commercial products we have and starting herbal concoctions going that take a few weeks to brew.  For now, I have switched to making my own shampoo, conditioner, dish soap, and kitchen floor cleaner.  Whew.

OK.  I would guess that anyone still reading this is with me here, but I should still mention that--ahem-- I do not live in fear of germs and dirt.  There are bad germs, absolutely; I like a clean house & self as well as anyone.  I am a big fan of washing hands.  What I find laughable is this pervasive idea that we are going to nuke any potential germs (The Bad Guys), and this will magically grant us health and safety--as though the larger world and the microscopic one can be adequately assessed by an "us-versus-them" scenario.

Anyway, I can rant about systems thinking and out-dated patriarchal competition-and-fear-based social paradigms another time.  (!)  For now, let's talk about castile soap, baking soda, white vinegar, lemon juice, herbs and essential oils--and pursue a less heroic path towards cleanliness.

Step aside, Suave...

Wanna try this yourself?  These recipes are heavily inspired by The Naturally Clean Home and my latest favorite herbal book Wild & Weedy Apothecary, both of which contain all sorts of goodness.  I get impatient about measuring things closely, so I used the recipes as guidelines most of the time.  Here are the successes (at least so far, so good):


Simple Shampoo
1 T. baking soda dissolved in
1 c. warm water

Pour into an old shampoo bottle, close, and shake.  Apply generously to wet hair & scalp, scrubbing scalp with fingertips and making sure to thoroughly saturate your hair.  Leave on for a few minutes if you like and then rinse.

Variations:

   -Use a cup of herbal tea or an herbal infusion* in place of the water.  Good herbs to use include rosemary, sage, horsetail, nettles, and yarrow flowers.  I find this recipe lasts me through several showers--if you use tea, it might be best to refrigerate after a few days.

   -You may substitute 1 oz of castile soap for the baking soda. I've been happy with the baking soda so far...and afraid the castile soap might be too drying.

*An herbal infusion is a tea made with more plant material, brewed for a much longer time.  A very general recipe might be one ounce of dried herb (root or leaf) in one pint of boiling water, covered and steeped for eight hours or overnight.  Flowers and seeds are more delicate and require shorter steeping time.  Any herbal by Susun Weed is great for more detail.  

Conditioning Rinse
1 T. apple cider vinegar (preferably the good organic stuff) added to
1 c. warm water.

Pour into an old conditioner bottle, shake, and work your concoction through your scalp and hair, letting it soak in for a bit--I rinse it at the end of my shower. 

Variations:

   -If you would like, you can steep beneficial herbs in the vinegar for a month, shaking daily and storing in a sunny window.  I have some brewing; in the meantime, I added 4-5 drops of bergamot essential oil to my current mix--the earthy orange blends blissfully with the cider vinegar.

   -For help with dandruff and to encourage general scalp health, make an herbal vinegar out of nettle, violet leaf, red clover and peppermint, according to The Wild and Weedy Apothecary.  Or (no joke) parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.  Love it.

Love-in-a-Tangle and herbal vinegar

As strange as it seems to not be lathering a sudsy shampoo into my hair, it is actually working well--not too oily, not too frizzy or dry--I'm digging this, to be honest.  I am still using a tiny dab of leave-in conditioner and a larger dab of gel...although while researching recipes, I came across this website which has a ton of info on making the baking soda/vinegar potions, why they are effective, and recipes for homemade gel, mousse, and hairspray.  Hmmm.  I sense homemade gel in my future.

Another super homemade cleaner is the citrus-mint kitchen/bathroom floor cleaner that I used to mop my kitchen linoleum a few days ago.  Using essential oils has been reminding me how effective aromatherapy is--who knew I could enjoy mopping anything??  And, yet, the smell was blissful.

Citrus-Mint Floor Cleaner
Fill a bucket with very hot water
Add:  a few squirts (tablespoons?) of Dr Bronner's peppermint castile soap
15 drops sweet orange essential oil
8 drops lemon essential or 1/4 c. lemon juice (or both)

If you have unscented castile soap, that is how I originally found this recipe, and I am sure it would be great--however, I just used what I had--which was the minty stuff, and it smelled fantastic with the orange & lemon.

My big failure so far has been liquid dish soap.  Boo.  Unfortunately we do not have a dishwasher, and so I need something that will really hold up to loads of dishes.  In the middle of this, I've also been experimenting with creating herbal salves and lip balms--which means a lot of olive oil, shea butter and melted beeswax all over my kitchen.  This is not a great time for lackluster dish soap.  I'm about to cave and spend some more time on R & D...with a bottle of Mrs. Meyers or Seventh Generation handy.

First, I tried several tablespoons of castile soap to a sinkful of hot water, adding 4-5 drops of lemon essential oil as well.  This seemed to clean adequately but left a hazy film on everything, particularly glassware.  I tried collecting rinse water in the other side of my sink and adding several tablespoons of vinegar to get rid of the film, but that didn't seem to help.  Of course, I was also washing olive oil salve off of some of this stuff--I'm not sure anything can handle that the first time through.

Grated soap:  now available in a bottle-shaped bar!

So, I tried another recipe.  I grated a bar of Dr Bronner's unscented castile into hot water, stirred it until the soap was dissolved, and let it cool for five minutes.  Then I added lemon juice, some essential oils, and several tablespoons of vegetable glycerin.  When I deemed it cool, I stirred it to break up any areas that might have solidified, and then I used a funnel to pour it into an empty dish soap squeeze bottle.  Unfortunately, I discovered that it wasn't cool enough and now I have a squeeze bottle-shaped hunk of hard-ish soap and a little filmy, bubbly water surrounding it.

I think that to truly make a good dish soap, I may have to venture into actual soap-making.  I would love to try at some point, but not right now; I'm not entirely excited about working with lye anyway.  So, in the interim, I am resigned to buy it ready-made.

There you have it.  Homemade Hygiene, Part One.  When I run out of laundry detergent, window spray, and the various bathroom cleansers I will be back with more recipes!