Dollar Store is a great place for generic Swiffer wet or dry refill pads. The dollar store is NOT a great place for dishwashing scrunches to clean out messy pots and pans. They fall apart after almost the first use. Pay the extra 50 cents and buy one from the local grocery store. I also bought the generic Oxiclean from the dollar store. I’m not sure if it works great by itself or not…I mixed mine with my regular Oxiclean to make it last longer. I just bought a new little bottle and will try it out alone this time. I’ll let you know if it works!
A friend suggested that I make my own bread. My kids eat bread like its potato chips! I know….it’s not healthy for them, but I love bread too so I get it! I made a half white half wheat recipe that I got from a neighbor (see my recipe page). It was a hit! I’m not sure if it saved me any money because my kids and some neighbors devoured all 4 loaves within 48 hours. At least they weren’t eating more expensive snacks I guess! They did say that they couldn’t make their lunches on this bread because it didn’t taste right. So I made white bread. Apparently I don’t make it very well because that bread sat around forever!
Another friend suggested that I make my own laundry soap. Again, I went out and bought all the different items required to make dish soap, laundry soap and a bathroom cleaner (think soft scrub here). My husband was concerned that the FBI was going to knock on our door based on all of the chemicals in our cart. Don’t panic, I used cash and wasn’t buying fertilizer! I didn’t love the dish soap as I didn’t feel it cleaned the dishes as well and I found myself re-washing things. We do have hard water so this may have been a problem. But then it started hardening up in the container requiring me to chisel out some each time to wash the dishes. I bent a couple of butter knives on this. I think I’ll stick with the store bought variety.
Laundry soap…it was suggested that the bar soap you add be either grinded up with a food processor or shredded with a cheese shredder. I tried the food processor…it didn’t work! Then I used the cheese shredder. It worked well! Unfortunately these chunks or shreds don’t break down very well in the washing machine unless hot water is used. Maybe it is because my machine is 15 years old, but I can only use it on limited loads. Again, not very helpful.
I thought the bathroom cleaner was fantastic! For the first use that was. It smelled great, it worked fine but then it turned into a solid mass. I can still use it, but I have to smack it around and then pull out some of the chunks and put them on the cleaning rag. I think I’ll stick with the store bought variety.
Come back next week and I’ll tell you other things I’ve found or learned in my money saving adventures!