I Bet You Would Have Never Thought!

I bet any of you that have known me for long would have never thought I would cloth diaper a baby or make my own cleaners.
Well these two thinks kinda have to do with one another. Once I started washing T's cloth diapers I starting having some problems with his little tushy breaking out. (I am sure he is going to kill me for this when he gets older!) Anyway so I have tried many different detergents "espically for sensitive skin babies" and no luck. So I started researching how to make laundry soap hoping I could identify what was making his booty red. I was VERY suprised to see how easy and cheep it is to make your own. I also realized that you can make ALL the cleaners you need for your house out of 6 different items (Washing Soda, Baking Soda, Borax, Vinegar, Bleach [never combine the two!] Dawn). So I am giving it a try, why not right. So for any of you that are interested here are the recipes I am trying first. I am starting with what I think are the most used and most expensive cleaners in the house

LAUNDRY DETERGENT
1 bar of soap (Ivory, FelisNepal, or something without oil or fragrance)
1 c of Borax
1 c of Washing Soda
1 c of Baking Soda
Mix all together and use 2TBS for a load of laundry or 1TBS for a load of diapers

DISHWASHER DETERGENT
2 c of Borax
2 c of Baking Soda

Really that is all. For the Fabric softner in your wash you will use white vinegar. You can put it in a Downy Ball or in the Fabric Softner dispenser. And for the Rinse Aid (Jet Dry) in your dishwasher you also use white vinegar.
This solves multiple problems for me. 1. I have 3 different laundry detergents I am using now (one for family, one for T's clothes and one for T's diapers). Not only does this drive me nuts, it sets us up to put the wrong thing in the wrong load and that causes problems! 2. I have to say this is better for the enviroment. 3. It is much less expensive, depending on the soap you use the laundry detergent is between 2-5 cents per load compared to 20 cents per load for Tide. 4. I don't have to keep a thousand different cleaneds on hand for cleaning day.
I have a realization I have come to recently, I think we make things difficult for ourselves. We have to have the bigger house, the more expensive cars, the name brand stuff.... And in doing this we HAVE to work, we lose time with our families because we have to work those hours to pay for things we WANT. If there is a silver lining to the recession thing I think it is that more families are spending time together, grandparents moving in with their kids and helping raise their grandchildren, and basically getting back to the way our Great Grandparents did things. And that was what I was trying to get at (before I got on my soap box!) I want to get back to a simpler way of doing things, the way it was done before all the short cuts.