It’s been a very busy week in the household of H and J, with unexpected after-work obligations and a surprise opportunity for us to pal around for a day in the big city in the midst of it all.  One of those after-work obligations was a visit to the funeral home to support one of my co-workers in her loss.  I’m going to take a sidebar here:  when I say obligation, I mean it in the nicest way.  If I can claim any wisdom with my increasing age, one of things I have come to feel very strongly about is the importance of attending a visitation when someone close to you experiences a loss.  I’ve heard well-meaning people say “I just feel so uncomfortable about going.”  I say this in love: Get. Over. It.  Show up.  Your discomfort is nothing compared to the loss your friend has experienced, and all you have to do is walk in, hug your friend, and say “I’m so sorry.”  It matters, it really does, and I’ll admit in my younger past I’ve sometimes thought it wouldn’t really be noticed if I was there or not.  I’m sorry for that now, because in my own losses I’ve experienced how much it means to see the outpouring of love and respect for the one you’ve lost, even if there are too many faces to keep straight in your grief. And with that, Sidebar closed, but please really.. when the time comes, go.

So, the busy week. It finally wound down to my favorite kind of Saturday; the fluffy-cloud, sunny, no rush, read-a-book, maybe shop a little with Mom kinda day.  I did make another stride in my “Pure Food Pure Home” efforts.  I made my own laundry detergent!  I have been reading about it on the internet and it sounded too easy not to try.  There are two reasons I wanted to do this, first because it’s ridiculously cheap and second because it avoids extra chemicals, dyes, and fragrances that wreak havoc on sensitive skin (and septic tanks!).  If you’d like to try it, here’s your basic ingredients:

• 1 bar of soap.  Cheap-o is fine (I bought Fels Naptha in the laundry aisle, which is large enough to count as 2 bars)
• 1 cup borax (sold by box in laundry aisle)
• 1 cup washing soda (also in box in laundry aisle.  NOT the same as baking soda)

There are two preparation methods, powder or liquid.  I made the powder, primarily in consideration of storage space.  Directions for the liquid version are here if you want them, but all similar instructions I’ve read call for 2 to 5 gallon buckets, and my laundry room is a glorified closet, so I don’t have much floor space in there.  First, grate your bar of soap down to the finest flakes you can produce.  I had excellent success with my micro-plane grater, which also happened to be the same width as the end of the bar of soap.  It may take quite a few minutes to get all the way through the bar, but it’s worth it because the finer the flake, the better the overall consistency.

When you’re done, take the soap flakes and add 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of washing soda.  Because of choosing the large bar of Fels Naptha, I added 2 cups of borax and 2 cups of washing soda to make a double batch.  When it’s all together in the bowl, mix mix mix mix until it’s very well blended and you’re done!  Use about 1 tablespoon per wash load.  If you’re using cold water and are concerned it won’t dissolve, just dissolve your spoonful in a cup of warm water and toss in the washer while it’s filling up. At my current grocery store prices, the Borax is $0.46 per cup, the washing soda is $0.58 per cup, and the Fels Naptha was $1.99 or $1 for half the bar.  That’s $2.04 per batch!!  You could also lessen even that amount drastically by buying a package of several bars of whatever soap you want super-cheap at the dollar store, which several other bloggers have said works perfectly fine.  One batch of homemade detergent is enough to do about 32 loads – the same amount of laundry as that $9 bottle at the store, so that Plink Plink?  That’s the chunk of change dropping into your piggy bank!  I’ve read several comments that suggest adding a scoop of Oxy Clean to the mix, but I’m going to try it without first, since I don’t add that to every load now anyway.

I’m working progressively on going Green where I can (I wonder if it counts that I found the cutest lime green ice bucket with lid at Tuesday Morning that happens to be the perfect size to store my laundry detergent?).  My overall recycling efforts leave a lot to be desired, partly because I don’t have curbside pickup like I do for my trash.  I know, that sounds awfully lazy, but I’m out of town during the day at work, and unless there’s been a change I’m not aware of, the recycling center is closed when I’m home.  However, we do recycle at work, I use my canvas shopping bags whenever I remember to, I recycle any grocery bags for cat litter disposal and other tasks, and I just bought a nifty pen made 89% from recycled water bottles.  We don’t buy cans or soda bottles and we filter our own water, plus as mentioned we’re trying to use more gentle and environmentally friendly products where we can.  Every little bit helps!

All of these changes I (we) have been making are great, but I don’t want to focus on the re(de)fining God is doing in my life just to become a better version of me.  How wasteful!  I want to become less of me, not just physically but also in importance.  Part of the reason I want to be fitter, leaner, and Green-er is so I can have more energy and resources to give away to help others.  My workplace is also astoundingly supportive of those sort of efforts, encouraging us to serve in Christ-centered opportunities and backing that up with the time and resources to make it possible.  So, I am considering an opportunity that has arisen for a mission trip this fall.  More details on that later, but it is overseas and would provide a wonderful opportunity to love on some people who need it.  I’ve heard a person or two say they’d rather help someone in their own town or state who needs it than to travel far away.  I say each one go where opportunity opens up to you.  There are 4.3 million Kentucky residents.  Accounting for elderly and children, if even 50% of us volunteered our time in some way, I think we could cover the state and the world both.  So, I’d appreciate your prayers, and please know you’re in mine!  I don’t know all of you personally, but if you were drawn here to read what God is doing with me, I believe it’s because He’s got fantastic plans for you too.  And please, feel free to share a link to the blog with your friends on Facebook or through email or any other way.  We’ll all encourage one another. Blessings!