Cindy once told me about an amazing strategy to save
money. It was called the SOOS method, and it was VERY effective.
SOOS?
“Stay Out Of Stores!” she’d said.
It’s a valid concept. How often have you ventured out to
the store to get milk, only to return home with party plates, Magic Mesh (the
amazing screen door, as seen on TV) and a pet hermit crab?
And maybe the milk, maybe not.
In our house, there are three things we go through more
than anything else.
1.
Laundry soap
2.
Hand soap
3.
Chicken broth
Trips to the store for these three things used to result
in the purchase of emergency supplies for non-emergency situations and
infomercial gadgets that never worked as well as they said they would.
After a few simple adjustments, we were able to embrace
the SOOS method. Guess what? It really does work!
Here are three of our favorite solutions.
Laundry Soap
This detergent recipe has kept our family of six (that’s
10+ loads per week) laundered for ten months at a stretch, sometimes even
longer. All for less than one Andrew Jackson!
The basic recipe involves combining these items:
Note(s)
***The Oxy Clean is usually the most expensive ingredient, but if you get it at the dollar
store, you can reduce your total cost for the recipe to around $12.
***If you like a strong fresh scent for your laundry, you
can throw in a canister of those Downy Unstopables beads. I think Gain makes a
similar product.
Rumors indicated that the Fels-Naptha soap could be
quickly and easily shredded in the food processor, but this did not work well
for us. In fact, we almost broke both of our food processors in our attempt, so
we’re content to use the traditional cheese grater method.
Line a large bucket with a plastic garbage bag and
pour in all the ingredients. Remember to close your eyes and hold your breath,
because there will be a big cloud of powder initially!
Stir the ingredients with a large spoon or yardstick, and
then transfer the mixture to a large storage container with a lid. (A plastic Utz
pretzel container is the perfect size!)
An old coffee scooper provides the perfect portion of
soap for a large load of laundry.
The website where we first discovered the recipe has a
more detailed tutorial about the process. They also offer a recipe for
dishwasher detergent. After our initial success with the laundry soap, we were
eager to try the dishwasher soap one. What a mess! It has taken a lot of
tweaking to make it work, and I’m not sure our silverware will ever be shiny
again. Recently, we realized that we’ve been using the same batch of it for
over a year, so it has definitely saved lots of money. Despite the savings, I’m
not sure I’d recommend the dishwasher detergent. Your mileage may vary.
Hand Soap
Hand soap is my favorite gift for teachers. It’s
calorie-free, clutter-free, and promotes health. Around the holidays, Bath and
Body works offers promotions on their yummy-scented liquid hand soaps. When
they go on sale ‘Five for $15’ I stock up. Sometimes they even offer a coupon
for $5 off purchases of $15 or more.
During the holidays, the store even provides customers with
perfectly-sized cellophane bags, cute tags, and decorative ribbons.
One year I over-bought. This turned out to be a happy
accident, because B&B’s foaming-style pumps are a much better fit for our
family’s needs than the traditional Softsoap style. When using the traditional liquid
soap pumps, the kids would always use too much. The water would run forever as
they’d try to rinse it off. The foamy style is more efficient and effective.
We’ve discovered an easy way to make our own refill mix
of foamy hand soap, and those pumps have been going strong for years.
Here is what you’ll need:
Before you get started, you might want to spend a few
minutes washing the exterior of the containers and the pump apparatus,
especially if you’ve been reusing the same bottles for a while. Ours tend to
get pretty grubby.
Combine the hot water and liquid hand soap in a ratio of
1:1 and gently stir the mixture. (Eventually, you can play around a bit with
this ratio—sometimes I do 2:1 or even 3:1, and nobody seems to notice a
difference.)
It is easier if you add the soap to the hot water. Doing
it in the opposite order will result in lots of bubbles, and you’ll need to
wait a long time for them to go away.
Fill the containers about 70% of the way, so that you are
leaving plenty of space for the pump.
Cap them up and deliver them to their locations.
(I usually refill ours every 6-8 weeks.)
Chicken Broth
This is by far my favorite money saving strategy, because
it maximizes resources and minimizes waste by recycling food.
When we have rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, or
any kind of chicken involving bones, we bag the corpse in a ziplock and toss it
in the freezer.
Same thing for produce odds and ends—the leafy part and the
stump of the celery stalk, the woody part of the asparagus, the ends and peels
of onions, any carrots and parsley that have been hanging out in the refrigerator
drawer too long and are on their way out. Bag it all and toss it in the
freezer.
When you’ve amassed at least two bags of chicken bones
and enough produce to fill your slow-cooker, toss it all in, throw in a few
tablespoons of minced garlic, a couple of bay leaves, some kosher salt, and
10-12 whole peppercorns.
Fill the slow-cooker to the brim with water and turn on
high for a few hours.
Then, reduce the heat to low and ignore it for another 12
hours.
Test the flavor and “strength” of the broth. If it’s not
strong enough for your preference, let it steep on low for another 6-12 hours.
Strain it, chill it, skim it, and pour it into quart-size
bags. (Label them first with the contents and date!)
Put the bags on a
cookie sheet and place them in the freezer. After about a day, they are
frozen-solid and can be rearranged in the freezer in a more convenient way.
Thaw as needed for recipes.
The steps listed above make this look much more labor
intensive than it really is—the total hands on prep time is less than 5
minutes. Then there’s a solid day of just ignoring it, and eventually the
bagging process which takes about 20 minutes. The joy you feel in your heart from
this “recycling” makes the effort totally worth it!
Savings in Summation
Although I don't know precisely how much money we've saved while implementing these three strategies, using them has definitely kept me out of the stores. Many thanks to Cindy and the SOOS method!
