Recipes for around the house!!

Hey guys,

I made a post a while back about when I was experimenting with homemade shampoo and deodorant. I also added a recipe that I had for homemade laundry soap. I still love that recipe, by the way, and will never use any other laundry soap. If you missed it you can see that here. 

So after using the shampoo for roughly 6 months, I really love it! I only have to wash my hair about once every 5 days, unless I am doing rough work and stuff falls in my hair. Then I have to wash it more often. It is gentle enough to use everyday, but you really don't need to. Commercial shampoos strip your hair of natural oils, making your glands work overtime. This shampoo cleans your hair, but does not strip the oils completely. This is good. This means that you wash your hair less. This also means that you have to be patient when first starting to use this shampoo. For the first two weeks with this shampoo I still had to wash every day and my hair constantly felt gross and heavy and oily. The second two weeks I graduated from washing daily to every other day, but the second day my hair felt really nasty. The second month, it gradually got better. After that, my hair started to feel normal again, and I just started washing it when it felt dirty. After about 4 months I realized just how long I could go without it feeling dirty. After I rinse the shampoo out, I put apple cider vinegar 'with the mother' mixed with water (1/4c vinegar to 2 cups water- do not use on colored hair! Just use coconut oil.) on my hair to condition it. Once a week I deep condition with unrefined coconut oil. I just put two tablespoons in my hair-starting at the ends and working up to about 3 inches below the roots of my hair- and let sit for 30 minutes before washing. 

Here is the recipe:
Note: I use an 8 oz bottle, so this recipe has the measurements for that.

• Fill bottle 2/3 full with Dr. Bronner's Liquid Castille Soap (I use peppermint, you can use whatever scent you want. My husband uses citrus.)
• Put in about 1 tablespoon of raw honey and 1 teaspoon of vitamin E oil. 
• Put in any additional essential oils you want- do not exceed 10 drops with scented soap, 30 with unscented. 
• Fill the rest of the way with homemade coconut milk. 
• Shake before use. 

Homemade coconut milk:

Put 1 cup unsweetened coconut flakes and 1 cup water in blender. 

Puree for 3 minutes. 

Strain out coconut flakes with several layers of cheese cloth. 

Homemade deodorant was another story. I could not get the recipe right. If I used corn starch I broke out and if I used tapioca flour it always melted! We hated keeping our deodorant in the fridge, so we just went back to regular deodorant.

Side note- Dr Bronner's soap can be used for anything involving cleaning. I also use the peppermint for mopping (hands and knees kind) when I am deep cleaning my dads house. I am amazed at how awesome it is! I can clean the floor twice with the Mr. Clean Liquid Muscle and then when I use Dr Bronner's more dirt still comes up! 

Last thing of the day: Homemade "Swiffer" wet pads

Needed: 

2 rolls Bounty Basic paper towels (or any 2 ply paper towels that are NOT select a size) 

Floor cleaner (I use Mr Clean Liquid Muscle)

White vinegar

Baking soda

Warm Water 

Something to store in- old swiffer wet pad containers or Sun washing powder bucket w lid

5 gallon bucket

1. Rip off paper towels in sets of 3. So 3 paper towels are connected.

2. Fold those 3 paper towels at the seams. So you will have a pad that is the size of a paper towel, that has 3 layers. 

3. Fold each one in half and put in storage container. If using old swiffer containers, you will probably need 4-6.

4. In a 5 gallon bucket, put in 1/2 c floor cleaner, 1/2 c white vinegar, and 4 tablespoons baking soda. Add about 2 1/2 gallon of warm water. 

5. Pour this cleaning solution over paper towels.

6. After 1 day, pour out excess liquid.

That's it! You can use them right away of course, but after one day you want to pour out the excess liquid so the paper towels don't break down. I find they are best when used within 1 month, so you might want to only make 1 roll of paper towels worth if you won't use 40 in 1 month. 

Mollie

First update in September!!!!!

Hey guys,

It has been way too long without an update! Time is just flying by working away on our little house. So for all of you just joining us, here is a summary of what has happened so far in the past year:

August-December 2013 Got interested in tiny houses. Decided we (husband and I) wanted to build one ourselves. We are both college students, him working full time and me part-time, so we thought this would be an awesome way to start our lives.

January-March 2014 Planned tiny house.

April 2014 Bought camper to tear down and use trailer for tiny house.

June 2014 Started tearing down camper

July 2014 Kind of got sidetracked with work and school. Worked a lot. 

August 2014 Tossed building tiny house on a trailer idea. Bought slightly bigger tiny house instead.

This has REALLY been a crazy year! First tiny house, then no tiny house until 2015, then tiny house, and then buy tiny house instead! Wow! We change our minds too much! 

However, we are in it for the long haul this time. We are renting until January and then we sign the papers to buy the house contract for deed. We will have it paid off in just 6 years! Not bad for buying our first house. It is costing us just slightly more than most tiny houses on a trailer cost to build. 

Okay so for some facts about the house that we are buying:

It is NOT a tiny house on a trailer. It is a (bigger) tiny house. It is 681 square feet. It has 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, and a small enclosed porch type room. It also has a covered back porch and a front porch/deck- I say deck because it is pretty big.

This is a drawing of the layout of the house

If you look at the drawing, you can see that there is NO hallway. To get from the kitchen and bathroom to the living room you have to walk through one of the bedrooms. Not a big deal, but it is sort of unusual. However, there is no wasted space! This house actually has some pretty cool history. In the 1940s a woman named Lula lived here, and she built a small restaurant next to the house. It was called Lula's Country Kitchen. The building still stands and a loft has been added and it is now a shed. In that same building around the 1950s a fallout shelter was added. It's still there. It's pretty cool. When the door is closed it just looks like floor and you can't even tell it is there. You open it and find a set of stairs and the door at the bottom leads into the shelter. It's just a giant concrete cylinder set in the ground, but it is still cool. Funny story actually- When we agreed to rent the house we were not told about this, and I took my best friend to see the house. We didn't look in the shed when we originally looked at the house, so when she came to see it she wanted to go in. The door in the floor was not shut all the way so we saw the door and were too scared to go down there. We made D and T go down there first. It was empty! :) The house was originally a 2 room house, just the current living room and smaller bedroom behind it. It also had an outhouse, which is still there and still in working condition if we ever needed it (on a side note, it has 2 holes! High class! ;D). In the 1950's, the master bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom were added. The basement was expanded and the steps to the basement were still outside the house. In 2013, Mr. S added an enclosed porch/3 seasons room, and in doing so enclosed the basement steps inside the house, next to the enclosed porch.

One bad part of this house is that it is so old. We originally thought we had to patch a small section of roof, redo a closet, put in a window and put in carpet and that would be it. We were a little wrong. And this brings us to- what we have been doing in the past month!

So, first we decided to tackle the roof first. The previous renters had added a closet to the master bedroom by added 2 walls to part of the porch. The closet has always leaked. We thought we just had to get under an eave and put some rubber roofing on. We soon learned the entire porch roof was rotten, so we decided to get rid of the closet and entire porch roof. The door that was to the closet is now sealed up but tearing the roof down is still underway. We still have a covered back porch and enclosed porch, though. 

Onto the inside! We put in a new window to replace the broken window. Next spring, all the other windows will have to be replaced too but that is not immediate. We also deep cleaned the whole house and started painting today! We have to paint the living room and both bedrooms. The kitchen and bathroom are the wood paneling. Next week the carpet will go in and then we just have to finish tearing down the porch roof and wait for the gas to be turned on and we can move in! :) Once the paint and carpet is put down, I will make another update with a video tour so you all can see the house for yourselves!

Mollie

Oh yeah, P.S., can ANYONE believe how fast this year has gone by??