Another Homemade Tooth Paste Recipe

Make Your Own Toothpaste | Ultimate Money Blog- Save Green and Live Green!

In a quest to green our lives and save more money, I have decided that when we run out of many of our personal hygiene products, I’m going to try my hardest to make the replacements myself. Here are the recipes I’ve concocted so far. When we ran out of toothpaste last week, I knew that I would be creating some of my own toothpaste. I have a couple recipes that I’ve been using, but Mr. Money wanted something more like commercial toothpaste, so the search was on. Enter this super simple toothpaste recipe.

Ingredients

-4 T. Baking Soda
-4 T. Vegetable Glycerin (I got mine at the grocery store in the pharmacy area, but you can get it from Amazon if you can’t find it locally.
-2/3 t. Salt (I used pink Himalayan sea salt)
-30 drops of Peppermint Essential oil (I got mine locally, but it’s on Amazon too)
-Container (I use an old toothpaste tube that I cut the end off)
-Toothpaste Tube Squeezer (Optional- keeps the toothpaste in the tube!)

Instructions

Mix baking soda, glycerin, and salt in a bowl. Add in 30 drops of peppermint essential oils and stir. It should be the consistency of real toothpaste. You can add more or less glycerin if preferred.

Put it in a container or reuse a toothpaste tube, and use it to brush brush brush your teeth!

Easy Sew Fabric Produce Bags

Wisdom of the Moon: Cheap & Easy Fabric Produce Bags

Cheap & Easy Fabric Produce Bags

I've been using my set of fabric grocery bags since I made them this summer, but I still kept using the plastic bags from the store for fruits and vegetables. Every time I pulled one off the roll, I thought, "I have got to make some of these." And then by the time I get home, I'd forget.

I finally made 9 of them this weekend. And they cost me exactly nothing because I reused a sheer curtain that we'd replaced.



You can either use tulle or sheer fabric, but really I think the sheer is much easier to work with. The only requirement is that they be see through and lightweight. Sometimes they have sheer curtains at the thrift store, just take em home and wash well in hot water. If you can't find those, tulle is probably going to be cheaper. You can get 4 bags out of one yard, which costs 2 bucks.

Also, if you want them to be painfully cute, you can decorate them with some handmade stamps. I carved up some broccoli and onions special for this project.


So, on to the directions.

-First, cut the fabric into rectangles that are 17" by 27", which makes a finished bag 15" tall by 13" wide (with double hemming). You can easily make them bigger or smaller, though. (If any of the edges are excessively frayed, cut that off first before cutting to size.)

-Then you need to hem any sides that are not on the selvedge (finished edge) to keep the whole thing from unraveling over time. You can do it one of two ways, both shown in the picture below. If you need a better explanation of the double hem, check here. If you use the tulle, don't bother with the hemming, just sew the whole thing with a fairly tight, straight stitch. (Note- I've changed this from the original recommendation of a zigzag because straight stitches work much better on tulle. Sorry, August!)


-Next fold in half hamburger-wise (as opposed to hotdog-wise... does anyone else remember this brilliant instruction from elementary school?) and pin. In the picture below, the right side is the bottom of the bag and the left is the top.


-When you sew the side and bottom, start sewing about an inch down from the corner. Also, it's best to sew where the fabric is doubled up on itself, basically somewhere along the hem.


-Once you've sewn the bag, make the channel for the twine by folding down and pinning the top edge like shown.


-Start sewing where shown in the picture, folding the fabric evenly down as you go.


-By the time you've gone all around the top and returned to where you started, you'll have created a channel like this. The openings to the channel are underneath my right finger and thumb (please excuse the paint on my hands, we've been painting Randa's room this week.)


-All you need to do to finish the bag is to tie a knot in some twine, push a safety pin through it and feed it through the channel. Leave about 2 or 3 inches hanging out on each side and tie it in a knot. When you want to close up the bag, just do a slip knot.

Oh, and one more thing. I weighed one bag on the kitchen scale and it's total weight was 0.4 ounces (as compared to the plastic bag which was 0.1 ounces).

That's it.

Usuing Things To Death

Using things to death | Frugal Village

We live in a throwaway society. We’re so wasteful that people known as freegans (www.freegan.info), an anti-consumer environmentalist group, can salvage and survive, by choice, on what mainstream consumers discard. While they’re often criticized as being extreme or downright nasty, I couldn’t disagree more. I think it certainly reflects the amount of waste generated, and I’m pleased these items aren’t simply tossed and going into landfills. Maybe to you it’s garbage they’re sifting through, but there’s more to it. They’re making a statement that goes against materialism and over-consumption. In a way, freegans are like soul cousins to tightwads. We both simply prefer to take advantage of the full usable life of goods.

Many frugal discussions on my forums (www.frugalvillage.com/forums) include topics such as using items to death. It’s interesting to note the camaraderie among like-minded members. It gives me hope that we can make a difference. In order not to appear fanatical by carrying on about global warming, waste and poverty, I’ll share a bit about wearing out common goods. I’m doing so to show you that if there’s not a little frugality in you already, there easily could be. Why? Because it’s simply the right thing to do.
LINENS: From comforters to towels, frugal-minded folks are holding onto these items until they’re threadbare. It does my heart good to hear from one reader who has a 31-year-old comforter and another who has 27-year-old towels. It’s not uncommon for these items to be used as rags for many years after their original purpose. While there isn’t anything wrong with buying new, if an item has plenty of life in it or needs only a simple repair, there’s no true need to toss it. What happened to this type of thinking?
CLOTHING: Remember when cutting jeans into shorts, patching them and then making them into quilts once they were unwearable was common sense? Winter coats weren’t bought every year. Shoes that were worn out were used for outdoor work until they literally fell apart, and who had more than a dozen pairs? Clothing was bought as needed.
KITCHENWARE: Dishes and flatware were once passed down to children when they moved out. Now it seems everyone wants brand-new and everything immediately. They’ll buy plastic this and that and toss and buy new on a fashion whim. While some appliances are wonderful for convenience, I can’t stop shaking my head at the gadgets that are available. However did we get by without hot-dog and hot-cocoa makers?
I don’t want my children to think I had to walk uphill 10 miles to school in a snowstorm, but I do want them to understand what is good enough. We have better use for our money such as saving or sharing it, and because I want my children to care about their impact on the environment, the economic state of our country and our humanity. What a concept!

Homemade Natural Deodorant

Homemade Natural Deodorant – Passionate Homemaking

Homemade Natural Deodorant

Did you know you can make your own wonderful deodorant with just a few completely natural ingredients? This recipe is awesome! It is frugal and very effective!  I have been using it for over a year now, and it has worked wonders. It smells wonderful, but very faint, so the hubby does not mind! We have tried all natural brands without much success, until we tried this! It is especially important for women to take thought to the harmful aluminum materials in deodorant as it has been linked to breast cancer, being that the armpits are so close to the chest.
Ingredients:
5-6 Tbsp Coconut oil
1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup arrowroot powder or cornstarch
Combine equal portions of baking soda & arrowroot powder. Then slowly add coconut oil and work it in with a spoon until it maintains the substance you desire. It should be about the same texture as the store bought kind, solid but able to be applied easily. You can either scoop this into your old dispensers or place in a small container with lid and apply with fingers with each use. After applying the product, you can just rub the remains into your hands as a lotion! This recipe lasts about 3 months for two people with regular daily use.
Read here and here for more wonderful uses of coconut oil!

For the best price around on organic quality coconut oil, check out Mountain Rose Herbs. Delicious for so many uses!