Channeling my inner American

I love Pinterest, it has become a bit of a thing to be honest. Mostly I adore other people's talents from afar and gain inspiration for projects I will likely never complete. The ability of people to come up with fun and creative activities for children, reinventing things others would throw into a skip into something beautiful, or useful, or both is true creativity.

I have become very interested in the cult of make your own ..... soap powder, fabric softener, stain remover, floor cleaner to moisturiser, lip balm or sugar scrub. In the current economic climate, and with a family of 4 growing girls it makes total sense to me to economise on things that aren't so important. I wouldn't think of buying cheap loo roll or chocolate, they are important, but floor cleaner? Who cares if it does the job? Why pay top dollar for a premium loo cleaner if a few pence worth of white vinegar does the same thing?

I looked at several excellent blogs such as Food.com and A Bowl full of lemons with fantastic ideas, but there are tons if you search, pinterest has thousands of great ideas. I made my own washing powder (laundry soap) following one of these great ideas. The American sites have two main recipes, one for liquid soap ( too fiddly and too much storage required) and powder. This was usually a combination of washing crystals, Borax and grated household soap.

I don't see the point in grating soap as we have soap flakes available in most supermarkets so I used these.I couldn't get Borax but online I discovered that Biotex is the same thing.

After a little experimentation I discovered that equal parts of each of these was the best combination. I use one scoop per load and have to say I am very happy with the results so far. The washing smells clean without smelling fragranced and I have now added a home made laundry softener to finish it all off too.

I use one cup of warm water, half a cup of white vinegar and one third of a cup of cheap hair conditioner. mix well and decant into an old bottle or clean milk container for storage.