Homemade Tea Tree Laundry Detergent

Making my own laundry detergent is another way I'm trying to stretch our budget! I've made a basic, homemade laundry detergent in powder-form in the past, but I am loving this liquid version (more like liquidy-gel) so much more! Plus, the antimicrobial qualities of tea-tree oil is a definite added bonus.

Here is the simple tutorial:

You'll need:
 
1 bar of Fels Naptha Soap, grated
1 Cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (not baking soda)
1/2 Cup Borax
20 drops tea tree oil (you could also do 1/2 tea tree and 1/2 lavender)

Heat 4 cups of water on stove with grated Fels Naptha. Stir and let it dissolve.
 
Fill large bucket 3/4 way full with water. Pour in the water with Fels Naptha. 
Stir in washing soda and Borax.
Stir, stir, stir 
Cover bucket with towel and let it sit for a few hours or overnight.
Transfer to containers or one large container. (I found the lovely 2-gallon glass container with lid from Walmart!)
Add tea tree oil and stir.

It always helps to have a little helper!

 This is by far my favorite homemade laundry detergent so far. It makes our clothes smell wonderful and they come out very clean! We have a high-efficiency front load wash machine. I use a 1/2 Cup of detergent per load.

An extra $40.96 in one day for our Emergency Fund

If you look on the side bar to the right of my blog, you will see I've listed "Creatively Building Our $1,000 Emergency Fund". Here I am listing all of the creative ways in which we're making money for this fund. I update this as money is deposited into our emergency fund.

In one day we made an additional $40.96 to deposit into this account. It is possible to start building your emergency fund quickly - you just have to be willing to be creative and put in some time and effort!

Here is a breakdown of this week's deposits:

1. On Wednesday I sold $7 in items through our local Swap & Sell site. I do not arrange a meet up unless I'm already on my way to run errands. This saves on fuel.

2. While at the grocery store on Tuesday I used the Coin Star machine and received $13.37 in cash from our change jar. Make sure you have a change jar and keep putting your coins in it - even pennies you find on the ground. I'm telling you, these add up! Our change jar was empty last month and it wasn't even full when I cashed in this week. I got over $13 out of it!

3. Our bank has a rewards program through our checking account. We get cashback when we shop with certain companies that we'd normally shop at anyway. I received $6 this week.

4. I made $14.59 in Ebay sales on Thursday. I still have items with active bids, so this is just my initial profit!

All of this equals $40.96 in ONE day! I'm pretty excited, especially with the decluttering that is also taking place during this process.

Some tips:

1. Take time to list your items you'd like to sell, and make it look professional. Be honest, and thorough in your listings. Your customers will greatly appreciate it. Be courteous as well. I have many repeat customers both through Ebay and Swap & Sell.

2. Don't underestimate value of your "junk". There are items you own that someone else will love. Some items I really didn't think would sell were the first ones I'd hear an offer on!

3. Start rummaging your house and vehicles for change! You never know how much money is just laying around. Put them in a jar and cash in the next time you're out.

Our Ebay site: Mountaintop Bookseller

Building our $1000 Emergency Fund #1

As I have shared in my previous debt-free living posts, we are following Dave Ramsey's steps to getting out of debt. Since we are nearly caught up on our current bills, I'm finding ways to start building our $1000 Emergency Fund. I opened this account at a bank that is not attached to our checking. We are $895 away from our goal.

This week the steps I've taken to continue building our Emergency Fund:

1. I listed many items on Ebay. Most of these items are popular homeschool materials, so I'm confident they will sell.

2. I listed items in my Etsy Shop. I am also offering a 10% Off code to boost sales. My e-book Mama Don't Sew is my most popular and lowest priced item.

3. I plan to deposit the difference between October's electricity bill and this November's into the account. October's bill was $117.57. November's bill is $107.20. Therefore I'm going to deposit $10.37 into our Emergency Fund. I came up with this idea at the top of my head to continue with the momentum of saving money. Plus, creativity keeps me going!

4. Any profit from items I sell through our local Swap & Sell site I plan to deposit into our Emergency Fund.

5. Money from our change jar will be cashed and deposited on a monthly basis.

So those are the steps I'm currently taking to build our Emergency Fund! After this, we'll begin taking more chunks out of our debt.

Our November 2013 electric bill

I received our November electric bill and am happy to say that it is the lowest it has been all year! This is even before switching to the A-TOU rate I talked about in this post. I am so excited to see our next bill with this new rate, especially with this month's bill being much lower.

Last week I went through all of my electric bills from this past year and logged them in a notebook, so I could compare our usage for the year.

The set up in my notebook looks like this:

Month:
Amount due:
Daily Usage (kWh):
Monthly Usage: 
Supply rate:
Delivery rate:

The highest it has been this year was February 2013 at $239.17! Our daily usage was 55 kWh. I am guessing we ran the furnace and dryer much more then. My husband just reminded me that we also had to run space heaters in the basement around that time when the water line froze right as it entered the house. My husband purchased a sheet of foam board insulation, dug and placed it against the foundation. We're hoping this does the trick.

Our bill for November 2013 is $107.20! Our daily usage was only 25 kWh. My goal is to get our next bill under $100, and if I can keep it that way throughout the winter it will make our plans to becoming debt-free that much quicker and easier. Every step counts. 

Here are two things I've been doing that may have contributed to this lower electric bill:

1. I rarely use the dryer (only for towels). I hang dry all our clothes...on a rack, on the shower curtain rod, over doors and chairs, pretty much anywhere I can hang clothes.

2. We've been using our woodstove as our primary heat source. We did have oil delivered, but we're going to conserve this as much as we can. We have enough wood to heat our house all winter.

We are taking a few more steps this month to lowering our bill, in addition to our new rate and supplier. Our next step is to purchase an insulation blanket for our water heater. We also need to change out a couple remaining light bulbs to CFLs.

Day 4: Breakfast & Lunch on a $100 weekly food budget

Yesterday our daughter had rehearsal for her part in the Nutcracker performance tonight. My dad joined us and he treated us to dinner last night to a Chinese buffet that is my absolutely favorite! So, I only have breakfast and lunch in this post :)

For breakfast we had granola cereal with whole milk and a side of sliced apples. The apples were only 79 cents per pound our last $100 weekly grocery trip. The granola cereal is Sunbelt brand, for which I had a coupon for. 

For lunch we enjoyed homemade italians and chips

I wanted to be sure I squeezed this post in before we head out for the show tonight. Hope everyone is having a blessed weekend! Stay tuned for our next $100 food budget post.

Switching to an at-time-of-use electricity rate

In yesterday's post I mentioned one of the steps we've taken this week to debt-free living was switching to an at-time-of-use (A-TOU) rate with our electricity company.

The reason we switched to an A-TOU rate is because it allows us to shift our electricity usage to a lower price period (Off-peak). Our usage is billed on-peak, shoulder (interim) and off-peak. Here is a look at these times and their rates with this service:

On-peak 7:00am - 12:00pm and 4:00pm - 8:00pm   $.105288/kWh

Shoulder 12:00pm - 4:00pm   $.091088/kWh

Off-peak 8:00pm - 7:00am   $.046007/kWh (Saturdays, Sundays and holidays are also designated as off-peak)

With our previous Residential Service Rate, we were paying $.068920/kWh no matter the day or time of day. An A-TOU rate basically allows us to control the cost of our electricity.

A-TOU works best for our family and our lifestyle for many reasons.

1. My husband leaves for work between 4:45 and 5:00 in the morning. He is able to take his showers early in the morning or late at night when the rate is off-peak.

2. I am up early with my husband and am able to do laundry, run a load of dishes through the dishwasher and take a shower before the rate switches to on-peak. I can also prepare the makings for dinner, bake, etc. during this time. For example, this morning I toasted bread pieces in the oven to make a crock-pot stuffing for tonight's dinner.

3. We watch very little to no television during the day. The television usually gets turned on between 7:00 and 8:00 at night , but we're all usually so tired (plus the kids go to bed around 7:30) that we don't really watch much during the week. Most of our television viewing - er, hubby's television viewing - is on Sundays...it is football season! The plus side of that is Sundays are designated off-peak, all day!

4. Any bulk cooking I do is done on the weekends or after the kids go to bed. This is also when I make hubby's breakfast sandwiches for the week.

5. Our woodstove is our primary heat source. We do have oil heat as well, but it gets used very occasionally, and typically at night if we're too tired to stoke the fire. With me being pregnant, I usually get up at least once in the middle of the night, so I throw a piece of wood in. In short, little to no electricity is being used here.

6.  We have a lot of natural light that comes into our house. We don't use lights during the day.

7. I unplug everything! Yes, I'm one of those people. It's been habit for years. It drives my husband nuts sometimes, but I know he appreciates my efforts to lower our electric bill :)

The real test will be when our new electricity bill arrives! I will definitely be posting about that, so stay tuned!

In my next post on saving money on electricity, I will share about how we recently switched to a new electricity supplier.

Steps we've taken this week to debt-free living

For us, becoming debt-free means being intentional and making little goals each week. A couple questions I ask myself each week:

1. What is one thing we can do this week to chip away at our debt?

2. What is one way we can bring in a little extra cash?

3. How are we doing with our budgets?

It is so much less overwhelming to take baby steps! I also look back on the previous week to see how we're doing with the changes we've made (such as a lower food budget).

Here are some steps we've taken this week to improving our finances:

1. I switched our electricity rate to an At Time of Use rate (A-TOU). Our new meter was installed this morning. I will post all about this tomorrow.

2. I switched to a different electricity supplier (our deliverer, Central Maine Power, remains the same). The new supplier has a lower, fixed rate and better contract. I'll explain more about this in tomorrow's post as well.

3. Yesterday, my husband sold a pair of boots to a co-worker for $100. He took $20 for two weeks of coffee and I deposited $80 into our Emergency Savings Account. We are up to $105 on this account. We are $895 away from our goal. Again, baby steps!

4. I'm creating a budget for toiletries and cleaning supplies. I'm thinking $20 per month on toiletries (toilet paper, paper towels, shampoo, etc.) I'm not sure what budget we'll need to make for cleaning supplies yet. However, I did score free dishwasher detergent today after mail-in rebate!

5.  We applied for a gas program that will save us 10 cents per gallon! This program is completely free. A friend who recommended it to me said she has saved over $200 in gas since July! Thankfully, this particular gas station is right in our town, and on my husband's route to work.

Those are the steps we've taken this week. We aren't at the snow-ball phase yet, as we're still getting caught up on current bills. We also had to have the oil tank filled today ($685) and Monday we have a propane delivery coming for our stove ($68). Our driveway is nearly impossible to get up in the winter, so we definitely needed to make those deliveries priority.

The only change we've made so far in our current budget is we had to increase hubby's coffee budget by $2 to account for tax.