Yankee 2.0 : home improvement

Homemade cleaning products -- laundry and dishes

Anne Cross — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:07:00 GMT

I've been making my own personal and household cleaning products for a while now. I've shared some of the personal care items (the famous salty toothpaste, vinegar hair rinse, shampoo and body wash), and thought I would share these household cleaners with the Dollar Stretcher Community.

Laundry detergent

1 cup grated castille soap (I buy it in bulk at www.soapsaloon.com)

1 cup borax (laundry aisle of grocery store)

1 cup washing powder (laundry aisle of grocery store, Arm & Hammer brand)

Mix it all together and use 1/4 to 1/2 cup per load. Easy, eh?

Laundry whitener

A few drops of bluing (found in the laundry aisle of my grocery store) added to water brightens your laundry without bleach. Adding a few drops of bluing to a mix of 1/2 cup bleach and 1/2 cup water super-brightens your whites.

Dishwashing detergent for dishwasher

1 cup borax

1/2 cup baking soda

1/2 cup washing soda

Dishwasher rinse

Use straight white vinegar (distilled) instead of that expensive Jet Dry stuff.

I really like making my own products for many reasons -- I know they aren't tested on animals, I'm not using tons of plastic (I put everything into re-usable glass containers), they're really really inexpensive, and they're not using tons of caustic chemicals.

If you don't like these recipes, there are lots of others out there! Happy washing!

One woman's trash is some man's treasure

Anne Cross — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:49:00 GMT

I've been furiously de-cluttering my house in order to ring in 2009 in a clean and tidy house. The area I left until last was my icky (some say creepy) basement. It's dirty (half dirt/half cement floor), dark, dusty, and dank. I have some cans of paint and tools stored down there, but mostly it has been a place where I've tossed empty boxes (from ebaying mostly) and avoided at all possible costs.

This November, however, I got a new furnace (boy has it helped in oil conservation -- I've gone from burning more than a tank a month to about 1/2 a tank a month). So that event spurred the total clean up. I posted ads on Craigslist and Freecycle for the boxes and packing materials and had people take a lot of them. Then the guys who took out the boiler cleaned up the dirt and hauled that and the rest of the empty boxes away for recycling.

I still had a couple of barrels' worth of debris, a whole lot of scrap lumber, miscellaneous odds and ends that I haven't used in seven years (beach umbrella, motor oil, electrical bits and bobs), and a bunch of copper piping. I know that copper has some value, so I posted an ad on Craigslist to see if I could find someone who would clean the rest of the junk out of my basement in exchange for the copper piping. I had a bunch of responses, and went with a very nice (and strong) gent who hauled EVERYTHING out, saying he knew someone who would buy whatever I had to dispose of.

So, the old saw, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" holds true here. If you have stuff that you think is of no value, don't put it in the landfill as the first response -- there may indeed be someone out there who would like to take it off your hands at no cost to you..... even if it's a pile of dirt!

Simplifying

Anne Cross — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:46:00 GMT

As I was clearing out my penultimate remaining junk room (such a danger in a big house -- just stashing stuff in piles and closing the door to deal with "later"), I was listening to NPR and there was a feature on people who are called "the new simplifiers" -- people choosing to get rid of excess, opting to limit their usage and material footprint on the world -- dollar stretcher type people.

I was doing my own part to simplify -- I made a huge box of old paperwork to be shredded (old contracts, students' records, bank records -- things that couldn't just be recycled), tested all the old ink pens (most didn't work and I threw them out, but made a big pile of the ones that did), and put all the office supplies in a box and brought it down to my office space (I will never have to buy another paper clip as long as I live, made a HUGE box of things to bring to Savers (before the end of the year, so I get my charity tax credit), and listed a few things on freecycle (already got emails from people for two of the things -- including empty boxes and packing peanuts).

At some point in a more prosperous future, this room will be a bathroom. I think having all that junk in there blocked me from thinking about it becoming that, and having it really empty should help the transformation occur (if only removing all the junk would make the $3,000 or so it will cost to turn it into a bathroom magically appear!)

I also have an ever-increasing pile of things that I think have some sort of value and that I hope to sell on ebay. The pile is sort of daunting, though, and I think I might embrace the holiday spirit and just box them up and bring them to Savers or list them on Freecycle. I'm really ready to have all this excess material "stuff" out of my environment.

Simplify! Simplify!

La plus ca change....

Anne Cross — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:03:00 GMT

The past few months have been pretty tumultuous. I'm no longer selling my house. The main reason I was doing it was to move in with my boyfriend, and we both realized it wasn't a good idea for many, many reasons.

Although the economic benefits for me would have been great on a short-term basis, in the long run I was very anxious about not having equity (not to mention indepence, my own space, etc...). Since I've made the decision to stay, I feel like I had betrayed my house, which always stood by me, and kept me warm and safe. We're making up now. :)

My friends at Countrywide (they hold my mortgage) keep sending me refinance letters, which I have studiously ignored. However this time, I called to see what they could do for me. And surprise surprise, they can actually do quite a lot!

I'm going to re-finance at a lower interest rate (down from 6.237 to 5.78), and roll in my home equity loan ($14k), and the remaining credit card I have ($10,000 -- I've been living off it the past month). Due to an escrow shortage and applying rollover to the credit card, my monthly payments for those three bills had been $2200. My new monthly mortgage payment will be $1600.

Honestly, I don't even know where I came up with the $2200 each month -- eating lots of beans and finding odd jobs here and there helped. This lower payment will give me a lot of relief.

I still have the $73k in student loans to deal with, but I'm going to defer them for another year. I'm hoping for an increase in income through my business -- it's an ongoing hope... but with no other debt than a mortgage and student loans, I feel like I'll be in a good place psychologically. Plus, if worse comes to worst, the value of my house is still about equal to the total debt I owe.

So look for more posts from me about low-cost historic homeowner ideas!

Should I sell my house?

Anne Cross — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:21:00 GMT

I moved into my dream house almost seven years ago -- it's a four-storey Victorian row house with marble fireplaces, pocket doors, mahogany banisters... it's gorgeous! It needed a lot of work, and I have it about half-renovated. Brand-new kitchen, gorgeous historic wallpaper, stripped wood-work. But -- but... I'm living beyond my means. My mortgage payment (due to reckless refinancing) is about 75% of my monthly outlay, and is more than twice what it originally was when I bought the house with 25% down seven years ago. I've kept tapping my house for equity and kept hoping that my job situation would improve. And it's not -- I am really stretched, and I am giving real thought to selling the house and all the stuff that goes with it.

It's such an emotional decision, and I haven't decided 100%, but I think it's probably the right thing to do. I'm self-employed and living month to month. I keep scraping by, but I am not living comfortably, and I'm working as much as I can right now. My (new) boyfriend and I have discussed my moving in with him (to his brand-new, very comfortable, no renovation work needed house), and that is what has put this whole plan in motion. I owe about half of what my house is worth (so I own two of the four floors, is the way I see it), plus a TON of student loans. If I could sell my house and all my stuff and move in with him, I would be totally out of debt, my monthly expenses would be about half of what they are now, and I would be living within my means.

It seems like the rational thing to do (maybe not the moving in with the boyfriend, but if not that, at least getting a little condo or even renting an apartment again), but it's such an emotional decision. I love my house, it is so special, but I'm walking around in a hat because i can't afford heat. And I've been waiting two years for my business to thrive, and it's still not happening.....

I welcome any thoughts as I make this decision.