Green on a Budget

Several weeks ago, my husband Keith and I began Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at our church. We've been married for 14 1/2 years, and the past two months are the only months in our marriage where we both sat down and planned specifically what we wanted to do with our money. How in the world have we survived without going bankrupt? Probably we should have but were too ignorant to know it. The first month's budget creating process was non-eventful. Dave said to expect an argument. Didn't happen. Until this month. The argument revolved around the money we spend on food and other household products. While I would love to continue fussin' and fummin' about that argument, that's not really where I want to take this post.

Instead, I want to talk about how "green" I am to cutting back on expenses. First, let me say that I am not an opulent person. Yet I always purchase products that make my life easier, and they do not necessarily have to be the most cost-efficient. I teach full-time, and if I can find acceptable short cuts to housework, I use them.

Well, after the argument yesterday, I read an article in a Farm Show paper about a recipe for "green" and cheap laundry detergent. A nun in Minnesota, Sister Clara Stang, created a recipe for laundry detergent that costs only .05 a load. I did a double take. I probably spend anywhere from $10-$15 per month on laundry detergent, and that isn't counting any trips to the dry cleaner. What the article did was peak my interest in finding economical, doable, environmentally safe solutions to easing my monthly expenses at my local discount store.

Today I began my quest for the "green-cheap" ingredients of laundry detergent. The first ingredient I needed to find was A&H washing soda; thankfully I have a husband who informed me that I can't find that in Tifton, Georgia. Seems no store, even our local discount store, sells it. One must order it. Lucky for me my husband uses it in some of his "science" experiments. I think I'll save those experiments for another blog, but let's just say that rebar, a wading pool, rusty metal, water, jumper cables, and a car battery can be unsettling the first time you see them together in your driveway.

The next two ingredients I researched online: 20 Mule Team Borax and liquid castile soap. Borax was easy to find at our local grocery store and cheap--3.73 w/tax for a box. Then I found Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap online. It even comes in different scents: peppermint, lavender, eucaplyptus, and one for babies. I found the whole range of products for a reasonable amount on CVS.com. Searched Amazon and other online distributors, but the best deal for me was at CVS, especially if they had some in stock locally. So this evening, off I went to find some lavender- scented Dr. Bronner.

I entered our newest CVS (just opened in January) to see if they had it on the shelf. My first aisle was the laundry aisle. Nothing doing. Quite a few overpriced, small jugs of laundry detergent, but no Dr. Bronner. Then on I went to the shampoo aisle, as I had read in someone else's blog that castile soap worked wonders for the hair. No luck. Then I went to the natural products aisle, thinking that any environmentally-friendly product would have to be natural. Uh-uh. Not there, either. So finally I broke down and asked the lady at checkout if she could order a product for me that I saw on CVS.com or if it would just be better to order it online. After all but saying I'd be better off trying to find it myself, she went into her back office to presumably look on their store inventory. She popped out once to ask me how to spell Dr. Bronner. When she returned, she came quietly. Seems they do carry Dr. Bronner after all, but not on any aisles I previously visited. And they only had one scent: Peppermint. We both sniffed the product to see if it would be an acceptable smell for clean clothes. After we agreed that it would probably fade quickly, I went to the front to purchase my find.

$13.49 for 32 oz. (Oh, yeah, for all you Dave Ramsey disciples, I had $6 in CVS Extra care bucks, so I only paid a little over $8). That's a little steep, but I only have to use 1 oz. of the product in each gallon of detergent I mix. Each load uses one cup of the detergent. Once I find the rest of my products for my own experiment (minus rebar and a car battery charger), I'll figure out if this "green" product really will be cheap and worth the trouble. Oh, yeah, my husband, Mr. Know-it-all-Eagle Scout, took one look at Dr. Bronner (which I pronouced with an "ah" sound and he pronounced with a long "o"), he told me, "Hey, that's the stuff I used to carry when I went backpacking. It's really good for the environment.

Here's Sister Clara's as-yet-untried-by-me recipe:

13 cups of hot tap water
4 Tbs. of Arm & Hammer washing soda (not baking!)
2 Tbs. of Borax
1 oz. of castile soap
(optional) few drops of essential oil for scent

Pour hot water into empty 1-gal. jug. Add ingredients and shake to mix. Sister Clara says 1/2 cup for a small load an 1 cup for a full load.

P.S. Keith says to read Dr. Bronner's label--it was good reading around the campfire. Really.