Non-toxic (and cute) Cleaning Supplies

Neither of us ever really put much thought into what we were using to clean our house until we had baby #1. Now that we're on baby #2, I'm the only one who doesn't put much thought into what we are using to clean our house. My wife, on the other hand, started experimenting with more kid-friendly cleaning supplies.

Her first love in this regard was the Method brand of cleaning products. Their products were non-toxic, seemed to work very well, and they smelled great (a big bonus for my wife). While I'm sure she's still a fan, she stopped buying method when she began experimenting with cleaning supplies you can prepare at home using simple and inexpensive ingredients. Oh, and then of course she wanted them to look pretty, so she made her own labels.

The laundry detergent is simply Borax (a self proclaimed "laundry booster"), washing soda (Arm & Hammer) and a Fels Naptha soap bar grated over a cheese grater. I believe she gets all of these in the laundry section of Wal-Mart.

The "recipes" for some of the other home-made products she uses the most are listed below.

All-purpose cleaner:

• 2 Cups hot water
• 1/2 Tbs Mrs. Meyer's All-Purpose Cleaner (not completely organic, but the ingredients are 98% naturally derived)
• 1 Tbs Borax

Carpet Cleaner: 

• 1 Tbs Borax
• 2/3 Cup warm water

Stain Remover:

• 1 Cup Hydrogen Peroxide
• 1 Tbs Dawn dish soap

Glass Cleaner: 

• 1 Cup water
• 1 Cup vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon Mrs. Meyer's 

The thing I admire about my wife with regard to this posting is that she has learned to take monotonous and undesirable tasks (aka, cleaning/laundry) and make it at least a little more positive. She gets satisfaction out of the fact that she's keeping our home environment a little safer, saving a little money, and being a little creative in the process. 

2012 Homemade Planner

My wife is easily the most organized person I know. She thinks it's normal and that it's easy, but I've actually heard somebody ask her if they could hire her to help them organize their house. Over the years, she has tried multiple variations of day planners to help her plan and organize her life. The problem is that she has never found a planner that had what she wanted, and over time she has developed criteria for a planner that has yet to be satisfied by anything off the shelf.

So, she made her own.

Upon looking at this first picture, I can imagine you might have thought, "Wow, that's big." Well, that is intentional. One of the criteria she has developed for a planner is enough space to consolidate many things in one place. For example, when you flip to the first page of her new planner, you see this.

Birthdays. We're horrible at remembering birthdays. My family is huge, so that doesn't help.  She wanted to have a page where she could put everybody's birthday in one, accessible place. Oh, but there's so much more she wanted in a planner. Flip to the next page, where the monthly planning begins, and you'll see this.

Goals and notes. It's really important to both of us to have spiritual goals and everyday goals to motivate us to live a meaningful life. I don't track my goals...I just like to think they happen over time. :) She wants to be able to set goals and gain the satisfaction of meeting them (hence the weekly checklists). You'll notice that there are only enough check boxes for one week. That's because directly below this page is the following:

The week. When building her template for the weekly page, she typed in only the things that she knew were constant every week. Everything else, including the dates, she hand writes in when she gets to that week. Each weekly view that you see here is accompanied by the monthly goals and notes page above. So, at the beginning of every week, she is forced to go back to the week before to review what her monthly goals are in order to write them down for the next week. Brilliant!

This planner was the result of many purchased planners that didn't satisfy her requirements for good organization and planning. She created these four pages using Microsoft Word and printed them all at home -- 54 pages total (52 weeks in the year, plus the birthdays page and the cover page). Then she took her pages to Office Depot to get them bound together with a simple plastic cover.

In the end, I believe it costed her less than $10 total (not counting the cost of ink from our own printer...not sure how much that would amount to), and she got exactly what she wanted. :)