clean clothes - the natural way

Have you ever wondered if laundry balls really work? They claim that if you add them to your washing machine they’ll clean your clothes without detergent. They do sound great – for the pocket and for the planet – but a quick online search and sadly it looks like they are not that great (Choice Magazine, as well as many bloggers, say laundry balls give same results as washing with just plain water).

But one thing they did do for me was to get me thinking. What’s so bad about laundry detergents? And is there a better way to wash your clothes? I’ve found the answers I was looking for in a Natural Cleaning & Home Detox Workshop. Turns out laundry detergents have some really nasty things in them. Some I’ve found particularly shocking: 

• Sodium: Used mainly to bulk up laundry powders due to its low cost, sodium has devastating effects to plants in general. As it’s very hard to remove sodium from wasterwater, it is a contributor to soil salinity. You can read more details about the bad effects of sodium here.
• Phosphate: Phosphate in itself is a good thing. It’s a fantastic fertiliser. It’s essential to agriculture, which in turn is essential to feeding our hungry world. Phosphate is a limited non-renewable resource so, just like oil, the day it runs out it will run out forever. So it rarely seems wise to waste phosphate in cleaning clothes rather than fertilising crops. Another downside of sending phosphate down waterways is that it stimulates growth of blue-green algae which is toxic for humans, animals and plants.
• Optical whiteners: These vile dyes stick to your clothes, adsorb UV light and convert it to a blueish light, giving the impression that your clothes are clean – without actually cleaning them. They can cause rashes in sensitive skin and are harmful to aquatic life.

In the workshop we were given recipes for several natural cleaning products and I decided to start off with a natural laundry detergent recipe:

1 cup washing soda

1 cup bi-carb soda

¼ cup pure soap

8 drops eucalyptus oil

2 cups hot water

Dissolve washing soda in hot water.  Gradually mix in other ingredients, blending well. Transfer to a well sealed container.

The end product is sort of like a thick paste with a fresh scent of eucalyptus. I add 2 heaped tablespoons to each load and it cleans as well as any regular laundry detergent. It dissolves easily, so you don’t get any white detergent marks as you sometime get with laundry powders.

The other thing I liked is that all ingredients can easily be found in any supermarket (no need to find specialised health shops!) and the overall cost of my homemade laundry detergent is only a fraction of the cost of commercial ones.

I’ve now been using my homemade laundry detergent for over a month and I’m loving it! Even my hubby, who is sceptical about it all, is happy with it. We are saving money, the planet and still walking around in clean, fresh clothes. There is no way I’m ever going back to commercial laundry detergents!

In the workshop they recommended ½ cup of white vinegar as fabric softener. I’ve tried that too and it works quite well, especially with towels (I bet no fabric softer will get you fluffier towels). It leaves no residual smell of vinegar in your clothes at all, but it does in the washing machine itself. It’s not a problem if you have a big well-aerated laundry area but as mine is a little bigger than a cupboard, the smell is a tad overwhelming. I’ll keep testing out natural fabric softener recipes and will post one suitable for small flats once I find it!

80s party

I’ve been busy the last month planning an 80s party for my husband’s 30^th birthday. Most of our friends, including ourselves, grew up in the 80s so I thought would be a good opportunity to bring some childhood memories back.

I’m quite happy with what I’ve managed to do with a low budget and recycling/reusing as many materials as possible. I made two big statement pieces – a Pac Man maze and a Donkey Kong screen – and complemented them with cassette tapes, VHS, LPs that I’ve found at Reverse Garbage.

The food was largely based on 80s finger food. The cake and sweets followed the arcade videogame theme.

Cocktails were huge in the 80s but they can be quite messy and time consuming to prepare fresh at the party, so instead I’ve decided to make jelly shot cocktails.

It was great to see the great lengths people go to dress up and get in the theme. In the links above you’ll find how-tos and tips on how to organise your own 80s party. Hope you can pick up an idea or two for your own totally awesome 80s party!

80s party decoration

I made two big statement pieces for the decoration of my husband’s 80s-themed 30^th birthday party:

This Pac Man maze mat was a great addition to the theme but not only that, it was perfect to protect the carpet from the inevitable drink spills!

The base of the mat were three BBQ mats (the ones that are used to protect the floor from fat drippings etc) joint together. Another option would have been a black tarp, or anything else that is black and big enough to cover the area you’ve got.

I’ve used blue and white masking tape to mark the maze. It’s a really easy material to work with as it always gives you a straight line and if you make any mistakes you can always peel it off and stick it back on without any damage to the mat.

The little ghosts where made out of cardboard drums covered with fabric (I’ve found everything for a bargain at Reverse Garbage). To make the eyes, draw two circles in an A4 paper with a black circle in the middle, and use blu-tack to stick them on.

My bookshelf was the perfect base for this Donkey Kong platform. Each platform and set of stairs was made with cardboard that I painted in black. I then used red and blue masking tape to add the details.

To make Donkey Kong himself, Mario and the barrels, I’ve simply printed them off in A3 size and paste them in a piece of cardboard. Because the original images were quite small, enlarging gave them this great pixelated look.

To complement these two big statement pieces, I’ve scattered cassette tapes, VHS, LPs and 80s movie posters – everything from Reverse Garbage. They make great conversation topics and the LPs even double up as big drink coasters!

80s party food

The menu of my husband’s 80s-themed 30^th birthday party included finger food that was in vogue in 80s. At least according to uncle Google, that is:

·         Sushi

·         Egg with mayo

·         Mini quiches

·         Prawn cocktail

·         “Hedgehog” (half-pineapple cut in half, covered in foil and used as base for food on toothpicks) with cheese cubes, salami sticks, olives and cherry tomatoes.

These are all so simple to make as you can basically buy everything ready, plate it all up before your guests arrive and then just enjoy the party!

For my 80s cake I sticked to the Pac Man theme. A ready-bought sponge cake was the perfect base for it. Cut off a big slice, cover it with yellow icing and voila, a perfect Pac Man cake!

I also made Pac Man ghost cookies and scattered them around the cakes. If you google-image “Pac Man ghost cookies” you’ll see the amazing work of other (more talented) people. Mine were a simplified version, as icing is definitely not my friend. I couldn’t find a tulip cookie cutter so I used an egg cookie cutter and cut the wavy bottom of the ghosts with a little paring knife. Writing icing pens did the trick to add colour to the little fellas without the messiness of proper icing.

Cocktails were huge in the 80s but they can be quite messy and time consuming to prepare fresh at the party, so instead I’ve decided to make jelly shot cocktails. These couldn’t be easier to make. Simply replace ¼ of the water with a spirit and there you go. Don’t be tempted to replace anything more than ¼ otherwise your jelly won’t set. My chosen jelly shot “cocktails” were:

·         Mango daikiri: mango jelly + Bacardi rum

·         Cosmopolitan: raspberry jelly + vodka

·         Caipirinha: lime jelly + cachaça (Brazilian rum)

Overall, I wouldn’t call it an elaborate menu, but hey who said the 80s was anything about good taste?

japanese cloth bags (furoshiki)

A friend of mine sent me this post on traditional Japanese cloth bags that replaces plastic bags (in Portuguese I'm afraid, but I later found furoshiki instructions in English too).

The furoshiki technique consists of folding and tying knots to a piece of fabric to make it into different types of handbags, carry bags and even gift wrapping.

Come to think of it, I do remember my grandma using tea towels to wrap lunch boxes (bento). They were handy to carry and could be used as tablecloth when eating – perfect for picnics!

I can see how they would be handy as shopping bags too, especially for those small, unplanned visits to say the local veggie shop. Chuck them flat folded in your hand bag and quickly tie the knots at as you arrive at the shops.

I sewed two pieces of fabric together using the same method I’ve used for my hand sewn cushions. My furoshiki fabric was about 110x110mm (it took me ages to hand sew it, I really should look at getting a sewing machine).

For my next furoshiki project, I'll probably go with a thinner material or perhaps one instead of two pieces of fabric. When sewn together, my furoshiki fabric was so thick it was hard to tie small knots. In the bags where the knots are inside, I basically have no room left for anything else other than my mobile . :)

cushion madness

It’s official: I like sewing. Which is quite a biggie for someone who, until three months ago, was only capable of resewing buttons.

My new pre-loved couch gave me the inspiration and my softies projects the confidence to give a bigger project a go – cushions! I decided to take photos of each stage and post step-by-step instructions to hopefully inspire other button sewers to give it a go.

You will need:

• a cushion filler or an old cushion you’d like to revamp
• some fabric (at least twice the dimensions of the cushion filler)
• thread
• pins and needles
• a pair of fabric scissors 

I chose to use a patterned fabric for the front and a plain fabric for the back. I must say the hardest thing about the whole project was to choose only one fabric as there were hundreds I wanted to buy! The lovely lady at my favourite fabric shop advised me to go with cotton for my first attempt as it is easier to sew. She also said I should wash and iron it first. I would have, if it wasn’t for my eagerness to get started straight away .

Cut two pieces of fabric with a seam allowance of 1.5 cm, so 3 cm bigger than your cushion filler. My cushion filler was 30 x 50 cm so in my case, that was 33 x 53 cm.

With a fabric pencil or chalk (if you have one, otherwise a pen will do), mark the seam allowance on the back of one of the pieces.

Because I was over enthusiastic about sewing and had such pretty pattern to work with, I decorated some of its elements with colourful embroidery thread. I’ve used back stitches to sew along the birds and then cross stitches for some of the little yellow squares, but that’s really not necessary so if you want to keep things simple just ignore this step.

Place both pieces of fabric on top of each other, right side facing each other. Pin them together to hold them in place.

Thread the needle, give it a good knot and use straight stitches (ie needles goes up and down) to sew along the lines you’ve marked but leave one of the sides open so you can insert the cushion filler.

Once you’ve finished stitching along the lines, give it another good knot. Make a small diagonal cut on each of the corners being careful not to cut your stitches. This will help make sharper corners. Use the part left open to turn the cover inside out. Gently insert the cushion filler, being careful not to open up the stitches.

This part gets a little bit trickier. To close the part we haven’t sewn yet, fold in the rough end of both fabrics and sew it with ladder stitches. Basically, the needle starts from the underside of one fabric and goes parallely into the second and so forth, so that the stitches are not very visible.

Et voila! A brand new personalised cushion for a fraction of the price a bought cushion would cost.

One wasn’t enough to settle me down so I’ve ended up making another two cushions in the same style. The leftover plain fabric and spare buttons of long handed down clothes were the perfect excuse for a third - and a good opportunity to brush up on my button sewing skills.

recycling dumped furniture

I am often appalled by the things I find in the rubbish area of my building. Every week there are lounge sets, bookshelves, office desks, chairs – all in great condition other than normal wear and tear. I just can’t believe how some people can simply dump all these things and send them to landfill!

If I find any item that matches my own furniture, I take it home, give it a good clean, a small fix if needed, and reuse it. That already includes an outdoor dining set, two bookshelves, decorative willow branches, a brand new air-cooling unit and a couch/single bed.

Any other items in good condition but not matching my furniture receive the same treatment and goes on eBay for $0.99. It is a little bit of work to clean it up, take good photos, write up a nice ad and then organise the sale and pick up but it’s so rewarding to know nothing has gone to waste.

Still, I can only do so little compared to the amount of things that are dumped. Is there a better way to deal with this? Is there a way to make people think twice before sending good furniture to landfill? I’d be interested to know.

simple homemade christmas gifts

I can’t believe half of January is already gone! I hope it’s a sign that I’ve been having a good time. Either that or I’ve been really REALLY slack with my posts because here I am still posting about my Christmas crafts.

I’ve made these cookie jars for my work colleagues. As we didn’t have a kris kringle (aka secret santa) in the office this year, I had to come up with an affordable homemade gift to be able to give a gift to everyone rather than having to pick only a few people.

These charming glass jars actually came from my office. For some reason they don’t buy coffee in bulk and as a result we have two or three of these great looking airtight glass containers going to the bin every week. They are recycled but still... reuse comes before recycle!

So I’ve collected a few week’s worth of empty coffee jars, took them home and soaked them in water so I could remove the stickers.

I used scraps of felt and ribbons (most likely from previous Christmas gift wrappings) I had at home for the decorations. I baked a few batches of cookies and after they cooled down I filled up the jars.

Such a simple gift, so low cost and so fun to make. And made all my colleagues – and thus myself – so happy! Oooohhh... I miss Christmas already!!

recycled christmas tree

Not having to host Christmas this year, I went for much more modest, yet not less fun to make, decorations than the recycled christmas tree I've made last year. This is a project from Green Eyed Monster, and it costs absolutely nothing - to you or the planet - to make. All you need is one (or two) old magazines and some very, very basic origami skills. You could I guess spray paint it to fancy things up but I quite like the rustic, crafty look of the magazine pages.