The hills are alive...oh wait it's just the laundry.

We do a lot of laundry. That is not an understatement. One of the life lessons you learn when you are a TPSI family with seven kids is that boys get dirty. (In case you were wondering, we have four boys and three girls) In fact, I am convinced that our three year year old (Number 5) is a hidden artistic genius, who views clean clothes as a blank canvas on which to create his latest abstract masterpiece with his chosen medium....dirt.

If our piles of laundry were mountains, poets would write sonnets about the sheer awesomeness their presence inspires. To be clear, our kids are not necessarily any more dirty than average. In fact per person, we generate about the same as any average individual. However when there are nine people in a household, one of them being a seven week old ( i.e. seven weeks at the time of writing this blog)....those of you with newborns know that a newborn produces about twice the normal amount of laundry...mostly from puking all over your fresh clean shirt....you get the picture.

Now before everyone sends me messages about being green, and needing to conserve water, and protecting the environment etc....let's get a few things straight. First, one of the things we invested in was a high efficiency front loading washer (yes, which we bought debt free...more on debt free living in a later post) Second, we also bought a GAS dryer (also debt free) which did cost a bit more up front, but has saved us loads in energy bills! Before I get into the numbers, I have to say that I was sold on the first load when our gas dryer completely dried out a SUPERSIZE load of towels in 40 minutes!

Just to give you an idea of how much a gas dryer saves on electricity, our last bi-monthly hydro bill was $175.62, that's $87.81 a month. Or monthly gas bill is averages about $90 in the winter and $65 - $75 in the summer. We also have a gas stove and a natural gas barbecue which we use all year too. In our area our water bill averages about $42 a month. Which is pretty good considering the amount of laundry our house of budding abstract artists, extreme dirt bikers, mud pie bakers, and backyard gymnast produces. Not to mention the lawn cutting, dandelion pulling, garden planting TiPSI dad and TiPSI mom.

Anyway, as you can imagine, we do a lot of laundry. Which requires a lot of laundry detergent. The interesting thing is that we got into making our own laundry detergent because we have a lot of sensitive skin issues. Making our own detergent allows us total control over the chemicals that get into our clothes and onto our skin. By the way these formulas are also septic safe and environmentally friendly!


So here is the math:

Or initial outlay involved buying a 5 (US) gallon bucket at the local Home Depot. The recipe requires Borax and Washing Soda (not to be confused with baking soda!!!) Which we picked up at the local Walmart. We also bought a lid for the bucket....which we also got at Home Depot.

5 (US) gallon (17L) bucket = $5.95
Lid = $3.95
Borax = $4.49
Washing soda = $5.99
Ivory soap (10 pack) = $4.29

Which brings us to a grand total of $24.67 initial cost.

I should point out that after two years of making our own laundry detergent we are still on our first box of Borax and Washing Soda and only our second (10) pack of Ivory!

Here is the recipe,

On the stove, heat 2 litres of water (not to boiling, just warm)
Grate 2 bars of Ivory soap into the warm water. Stir frequently to dissolve.
In the bucket dissolve 1 cup washing soda and 1/2 cup Borax in 10 litres of HOT tap water.
When soap water is dissolved, add to bucket. Mix really well. (These days I use a paint mixer bit that I have for my cordless drill, but that is unnecessary)

Let the mixture set over night, and stir well again in the morning, or any time.
To keep things manageable we still re-use the last laundry jug we ever bought and pour the detergent into it.
This makes about 5 months worth of laundry detergent for us!

A couple of things to note, if you want you can fragrance your detergent with a few drops  of essential oils...I like to use tea tree. Also if you want to get your whites whiter you can use something called blueing agent...I have not been able to find any and I have been wanting to try it so if any of you out there know where to find it, let me know!

The original recipe calls for a bar of Fels Naptha soap, but we replaced it with Ivory because of the skin issues I mentioned earlier.
Just in case any of you were wondering.....yes we did get this recipe from the Duggars, and yes we are big fans, but we are perfectly content to let them keep the title...in other words, no we are not going to try to beat them.

Well, look at the time! Next week, all work and no play makes people tell me to have more fibre. Balancing life, work and everything in between.

TiPSI Dad

Give us this day our daily bread....in five minutes or less.

There are few things more appetizing in this world than the smell of fresh baked bread. Thanks to modern technology experiencing fresh baked bread is as easy as throwing six ingredients into a bread maker and pushing start. You know that you have one lying around somewhere...or if you don't you can always join your local freecycling network! Freecycling is one of the greatest things since, well since sliced bread! Freecyclers are folks who would rather see their still useful stuff go to someone who will use it instead of a landfill. Just look up freecycle.org and check it out.

But back to feeding the multitudes with loaves and sandwich meat (one of our kids has a fish allergy so we don't do fish).  When life is moving in relative order....relative being the key word (look for the post on Ordered Living) we usually get bread into the bread maker right around dinner time, set the timer, and in the morning we wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread.....I am getting hungry just thinking about it...how the butter melts right into the soft warm bread...mmmmm

Another little tidbit about us is that we whip our butter (no we don't get it straight from the cow, we buy the butter and we whip it in our kitchen aid stand mixer) whipping for about 10 minutes doubles the volume and keeps the butter spreadable. It is like getting two sticks of butter for the price of one.

Anyway baking our own bread saves a ton.

Here is the math: (keep in mind that our family goes through one loaf a day)

Buying bread from the store:

$3.49/ loaf x 7 days = $24.43week

$24.43 x 52 weeks = $1270.36/ year

Home baked bread:

We buy flour in bulk for $15.29/ 20kg which lasts us about 2 months. It would last longer but we also bake cookies and cakes, not to mention the pancake breakfasts.

So $15.29 / 2 = $7.65/ month on flour.

Yeast costs us about $6.00 for a 5 month supply so that is $1.20 a month we spend on yeast.

The other ingredients like oil (2 tsp per loaf) and water are so small that their cost per loaf is negligible

So, $7.65 + $1.20 = $8.85/ month

Which means that baking our own bread costs us $106.20 a year!!!

That is a total savings of $1164.16. That is a lot of dough.....maybe even a mortgage payment! You will never look at a gingerbread house the same way again.

How's that for food for thought?

Next week, keeping it clean....with homemade laundry detergent.

TiPSI Dad

Stewardship, or in other words, I'd rather be an ant.....

I once read a story when I was younger, about a bunch of industrious ants and a freeloading grasshopper. The basic premise was that the ants worked all summer while the grasshopper played and did no work. When the winter time came, the ants were able to sustain themselves with the produce they worked for all summer, while the grasshopper was left in the cold. In one version of the story, the ants let the grasshopper share with their bounty and the grasshopper learns his lesson. In another version the ants are partying so hard that they do not hear the grasshopper knocking on the door and he dies.

On that note......I have to say that this post has so far, been the hardest one to start...I am not sure why. However the topic this week is stewardship. I guess the reason this post is a bit slow in starting is that there is so much to say about stewardship. So much in fact that perhaps I will have to revisit the topic a few times. In short, stewardship is taking care of everything that God gives us. If we consider that everything we have has been given to us by God, then things start to take on a whole new perspective.

This includes both time and money. The first question I usually get when people find out that I have seven kids is "are you done?" or some question of the sort...the second most asked first question is "WHY?"

After the slight moment of awkwardness that usually follows, the next question they ask is "how do you afford all those kids?" to this question I usually want to ask, "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SPENDING YOUR MONEY ON???????"

Seriously, I have no idea how people say that they can not afford more than one or two kids!! ESPECIALLY when so many of those families have both parents working!!! Someone once told me that you either trust God or you don't. But even if someone doesn't have such faith in God that they can tell a mountain to cast itself in the sea (Mt 21: 18-22), most people do not realize the things that they waste their money on.

Let's do the math:

According to salary.com, the average entry level salary for an administrative assistant is $35,000 a year.
Let's say someone enters the work force at 25, and retires at 65 with a salary of $80,000 a year (which I know is considered still pretty modest for some) at what time will the train traveling eastbound meet the car heading westbound......sorry, had a flashback to first year calculus there.....

Seriously though, over the course of that persons career, they will have earned an average of $50,000 a year, over forty years.

$50,000 x 40 yrs = $2,000,000!!!

So over the course of a forty year career, a person will make TWO MILLION DOLLARS!!! The question is, what will they have to show for it?

Financial stewardship is all about thinking twice before spending that dollar. But before you get the idea that financial stewardship is about not spending any money, let me clarify a few things:

First, financial stewardship is about spending money wisely, not not spending, for example, sometimes it is more wise to spend a little bit more for better quality than to save a few dollars buying something that is not going to last very long.

Second, sometimes NOT spending money at the right time is WORSE, like trying to save money by not getting an oil change....for three years....

And finally, financial stewardship means spending money you HAVE, as opposed to money that you don't have.

Well that's enough math for now....too many numbers makes my brain hurt.

Next time I will talk about a HUGE money saver......and how we get our daily bread.

TiPSI Dad