Monday Monday, So Good to Me

I love Mondays. Since leaving the workplace, I have a different perspective on Mondays. After being with the family all weekend and having a great time together, it is good to face the laundry and to "take back the house" so to speak.

Monday is laundry day in our household. I would rather tackle it all in one day than do a little bit each day. It gives me the sense of getting something accomplished vs. cooking which is never ending. One thing that I do that seems to save me time and make the sorting job easier is that I sort the clothes into 4 large plastic garbage cans. Yep – the kind you put out at the curb on trash day. I hit on this idea years ago and I love it. First of all the clothes aren’t laying all over the basement floor getting stepped on and it is so much easier to sort and just pull a garbage can over to the washer and load it. I have one for darks, whites, light colors and one for good clothes such as dress shirts and docker type pants.

On Saturday I cooked up another batch of liquid laundry soap and I also made a double batch of the powdered version. IMO the powdered version may do a better cleaning job and with the weather being warmer I want to make sure that the soap does get the smell out of those underarm odors on t-shirts. I did read that if you put some of the homemade liquid laundry soap in a bottle and dilute it a little you can spray this on the underarms of t-shirts and it will take the smell out. I am going to try this but I am going to also add a little Blue Dawn Dish detergent and water to this and use it as an alternative to Shout.

In the winter time our clothes do not get very dirty but when summer comes and the church softball league revs up, I will then have some pretty dirty, smelly laundry. One thing I have noticed is that my husband's running clothes do get really clean and the smells are gone even using the homemade liquid laundry soap. Perhaps it is due to my use of liquid fabric softener (a very small amount) on any clothes that have to air dry.

Speaking of fabric softener, I bought some store bought fabric softener sheets about a year ago for $1.00 a box - 80 sheets. I purchased 8 boxes. I have been using them all year and haven't had much of a problem until last week. I was in a hurry and didn't cut the sheets in half and used a full sheet on a dryer load of my husband's dress shirts. Well, when he ironed one of those shirts for work (yes, he irons his own clothes - what a guy), there were some stains on the shirts. They looked like grease stains and my first thought was that my new washing machine had a problem. I did the nose test and each stain smelled strongly of fabric softener. I put some blue dawn dish detergent on each of those stains and laundered and they came out.

Hmmm. Now I'm wondering about those fabric softener sheets. I have several boxes left and I want to use them so I will only be using those on the dark clothes and I will make sure I only use half a sheet. I may just take the boxes that are left and donate them to the Food Pantry. Pretty soon I will be using only liquid fabric softener as I will be hanging clothes outside to dry.

The downside to drying clothes outside is that it will take a little longer to get all the laundry done but nothing beats the smell of clothes that have been dried outside. I am kind of tied to fabric softener as I do like the fragrance and the feel of my clothes after using softener. With not using a commercial laundry detergent that is heavily fragranced I find that my clothes just need a little bit of fabric softener per load to make them soft and smell great. I use about ½ tablespoon per load of either Downey or Snuggle that I have purchased on sale and with a coupon. The Fels Naptha soap that I use in my homemade laundry soap recipe does seem to soften the clothes somewhat so I only need a minimal amount of fabric softener.

Now on to spring cleaning. I have been working hard to diligently use up my store bought cleaning supplies so that I can now use the homemade alternatives. I have been collecting recipes from books and the internet and am anxious to try a few. One such recipe is for a bathroom cleaner that uses equal amounts of Blue Dawn Dish detergent and vinegar that you put in a bottle and spray on the surfaces instead of store bought bathroom cleaner.

As to Dawn Dish detergent, it works so good on so many things that I noticed that you can now purchase Tide with Dawn Dish detergent in it.

My other task today is planning. I have yet to plan out the month of April and I need to get that done. Left unplanned I will not be able to get focused and get projects done.

We had company over the weekend so my house is clean and I can focus on planning and laundry today.

I love Monday, especially when the sun is shining and it is warm outside. I love spring and looking out my window and watching robins, cardinals and sparrows feeding from the bird feeder. I never seemed to notice this much when I was rushing out the door at 7:30 a.m. to get to work.

Life is good.