You know you have a good life when...

...you realize that you are fortunate enough to catch 99.9% of the pens that go through your washer BEFORE they end up in the dryer.  (We just won't talk about those sneaky lip balms.)

...and a 9-year old girl invites herself to your house to color with you (and she's not even related to you!!)...


Yes, my life is pretty good.

Smelly Clothes? This is the BEST STUFF EVER!

Smelly?  Stinky?  If you spend any time working out, or if you have kids who do sports, you know exactly what I'm talking about.  With today's man-made fibers, I have found it more and more difficult to actually get the smell out of our workout clothes.  Buttercup's Five Fingers seem to get stinky pretty quickly, too.  So, whether they end up smelling like a locker room, like musty towels, or stinky feet, it is so frustrating to realize that my favorite workout clothes aren't coming out of the laundry clean-smelling.    Honestly, when it comes to the kids' t-shirts, I've been giving up and tossing them after a while, but really, we can't afford to do that very often and certainly not with anything that cost more than the "4 for $10" t-shirts from Walgreens.

Little did I know my solution would come in the form a sweet woman who worked at REI.  One day a few months ago, I was browsing through the store with my daughter and chatting with one of the ladies who works there when we started talking about how stinky workout clothes can be and how frustrating it is to try to resolve the situation.  The saleslady promised that she had the solution...Penguin Sports-Wash Laundry Detergent. 

The best stuff ever for stinky, smelly clothes.

...I'll admit to being skeptical, but I was desperate and willing to give it a try and I am so glad I did because this stuff really works!  It is "high-efficiency", so it even works well in our front load washer.  I have actually used a bucket for pre-soaking in the case of the super stinky stuff and for shoes.  Once you get the stink out of the items, using the detergent in your regular load does the trick.

So, whether you're dealing with workout bras, football jerseys, or your daughter's oh-so-cool Five Finger shoes, this stuff is the BEST EVER!  I'm just sayin'

Day 99 - Solving your laundry dilemmas is definitely productive!

Silhouette Madness...More Labeling Because I Can...Plus a Frugal Tip

I have been having fun with my Silhouette Machine again.  This time, I headed back to the laundry room and the kitchen.  I know, I know...labeling your laundry room?  Really.  Oh, yeah.

Hey, I spend a lot of time in my laundry room.  Don't you?  I'd already gotten rid of the boxes in favor of these cool cannisters, but they needed a little more.

To cut the cost of this project, I used black contact paper instead of black vinyl for the badges.  (You can use black contact paper for "chalkboard" vinyl, too, it is just not quite matte.) Then I just topped them off with white vinyl lettering. 

Love how the white vinyl pops off the black!

I think they turned out really well.  I love how fun, yet simple they look.

Then, a few days ago, I found this awesome soap dispenser at World Market.  It is glass...and it is Mrs. Meyer's so it smells divinely...truly, isn't it fabulous? 

Mrs. Meyer's Wash Up - Love This Dispenser!

With the cool soap dispenser on the one side of the sink, I decided to add a little focus to my dish soap dispenser.  I love this dish soap dispenser.  I've had it for years and years. 

Just jazzed up with some basic black lettering.

(Can you tell I don't like the original packaging that most things come in?  Seriously...I switch out my laundry stuff, I switch out my liquid soaps...maybe I have an issue?  Nah...)

Finally, here is my frugal tip for you.  If you work with the vinyl cutters (Silhouette or Cricut), you know the challenge of weeding the excess vinyl (or the paper or fabric you've cut).   I've been using an exacto knife, but sometimes the fine work was challenging.  I was really tempted to buy one of those weeding tools that go for upwards of $14 on the websites when it occurred to me that I could get exactly what I needed at my local Walgreens for about $4.   

 

For a lot less money, you can use drugstore dental tools to weed your vinyl!

Did you figure it out?  They're drugstore dental tools!  You can easily use your handy-dandy dental tools to weed.  Pretty cool, right?  Yeah, I thought so!

Dingy Whites? Sunshine Orange!

I had some seriously dingy white shirts.  Just keeping it real.  Actually, whites are the bane of my existence.  I've tried everything to keep my whites white.  You name it, I've tried it, with little measurable success.  I think we need a water softener, but, until then, we'll just have to deal with dingy whites.  I hate them.  I feel terrible that we stop wearing clothing that, with the exception of the color, is in really good condition.  But that is what happens because this is my real life.  My whites don't stay very white and become dingy.   The dingy clothes stay in the closet in favor of brighter, cleaner-looking clothing.

$1.62 later, I had this beautiful box of RIT dye.  Sunshine Orange, to be exact.

A quick jaunt to the utility sink and I had those dingy whites in a lovely orange bath.  I even threw in a Trader Joe's bag for good measure.  Impulsive, aren't I?  (I'm boycotting TJ's because they won't come to my city and they should.  Even worse?  They teased us by shopping properties and then pulling out.)  Anyway, back to my story.

Half an hour later, I put the formerly dingy clothes into the washer for a rinse/spin cycle and ran out to add them to the clothesline.

Look at these!  Four different fabrics (3 of which were 100% cotton), netted four different results.  Buttercup's cami seems more golden, doesn't it?  (It is not actually splotchy...the fabric was dryer in some places than others!)

Oh, the TJ's bag?  I love the way the dye highlighted the crinkles in the linen.  Now I'm going to line it and sew some abstract patch over the logo and start using it again.

Invaders, Heat Packs, and Oops!

You can never be too careful with an unmade bed in this house...there is always someone willing to take nap! Look at what happened when I left my bed unmade because I decided to just put the sheets back on the bed after they made it through the laundry this morning. I came upstairs with an armful of freshly washed sheets only to find out my bed had been commandeered by bed sloths!...and with a fuzzy pink blanket! What is up with that? They even had the nerve to express outrage when I kicked them out to make the bed. I guess I'll just need to be more vigilant in the future...these things can become a habit!


Look at these heat packs I made! Each is filled with rice and a little bit (in some cases, too much!) essential oil. You put them in the microwave for a minute or so and they become radiant heat packs. I made pocket warmers, a bed warmer, and two other warmers that I'm told by Superman and Buttercup are "neck warmers". Now, I don't know about you, but my neck never gets particularly cold...I was planning on using them as foot warmers, but, hey, I can be flexible. Anyway, everything was made out of scrap fabric: the two solid color ones were made out of the extra sweatshirt material I had from making those nightgowns I told you about, the pocket warmers were made out of leftover fabric from little gift bags I made, and the bed warmer is from flannel I had leftover from making Buttercup some pajama pants. These are really, really cool and if you tend to be cold, I highly recommend taking the ten minutes to make one!

Now, for our reality check. Not everything goes smoothly at the Nagle household. No, it really doesn't. I decided it was time to wash one of the couch covers that we had dyed brown (Klippan from Ikea, just in case you were wondering). I decided it would be advisable to wash it by itself JUST IN CASE any more dye came out of the fabric, so I tossed the slipcover into an empty washer...or so I thought. I thought wrong! Look at what happened to one of my formerly white ski socks and one of Valiant's formerly white socks and one formerly white washcloth!

It is Organizing Season...

I read that tag line at Jane's Apron and loved it (and told her so). The Christmas tree is down, the decorations are put away, and I am feeling light and free.

So, here it is New Year's Eve. I don't make resolutions, but the airy feel that comes from rediscovering all the space my home really has inspires me to keep going. I get our files in order, shredding the old, cleaning out drawers that have gotten disorganized with the lack of attention I've given them over the past few months. After feeling almost disconnected to my home by the change the holidays bring, I feel rooted again. I'm ready to get us all back on track, keep to our routines, and get things back to normal. Obviously, I'm not the only one, because people are writing about the same thing all over the blogosphere.

Like Jane, I signed up for Martha Stewart's Organizing Tip of the Day. (Do I think I want to be Martha Stewart? No, no, no...but I do like help staying on track.) Melissa, at the Inspired Room, posted her 4 Best Tips for Creating Order Every Day at Blissfully Domestic and I agreed with them all. Now that the holidays are over, I'll be back to my morning laundry routine, which sets the whole day on the right track. Pretty Organized Palace has 5 Quick things to organize right now to help us get started feeling light and in control as we go into 2009.

I'm ready to clean out closets, get back to sewing, and start planning our spring garden. The post-Christmas doldrums have passed and I'm ready to go.

Do you like to start fresh after the holidays? What do you do?