Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Squeeze the Grocery Budget, Clean Naturally-ish

Here I am, at the end of the month, looking for ways to yet again squeeze the grocery budget. I'm trying to spend at most $600 a month on groceries. Now, with 3 days left in the month, I have 2 gallons of milk left in the fridge, but am running out of staples. To me, the word staples equals budget buster.

Window Cleaner. I'm almost out of it. I know, it's only about $2.50 a bottle, but it all adds up. We use a lot of this product, as we have many French doors and mirrors, at just the perfect fingerprint height. So, rather than buy a new bottle of the stuff (at our grocery store, they don't stock the big refill bottles), I decided to start making my own:

Glass Cleaner
Mix together the following:
1/8 cup vinegar
1/2 cup ammonia
one quart water.
And don't dry your windows and mirrors with paper towels, use crinkled up newspaper.
Add 3 drops blue foodcoloring if you must have the Windex tint.
Just kidding about that last part.

Drain Cleaner
Pour 1/4 cup baking soda and 1/2 cup vinegar into the drain, cover the drain until the fizzing stops, then flush with boiling water.

As a part of the fall changes in our household, I'm trying to use less and less chemicals. Better for the family, the environment, and less expensive. Motivator for this change: We flea bombed the house about a month ago (I kept picking fleas off the head of my youngest, which totally freaked me out), and after airing out the house, for the next week, our two older kids complained of headaches. This is worrisome to me. So if anyone has any "safer" suggestions for dealing with fleas, please let me know. I've been sweeping salt into the cracks of our wood floors, which is supposed to kill them, but alas, I'm still finding the little critters now and then.

So, anyone have any other recipes, post away!

1 comment:

StuntMom said...

For another great cleaning recipe, check out the August 18, 2005 post for Stuntbec's diaper wipe recipe. They are so much cheaper and nicer than the comercial wipes.