Bodacious Borax

Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. It is usually a white powder consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve easily in water. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax)  Blah, blah blah....whatever the heck that all means but that's for all of those people out there that want to know what it really is.  Here's the (as my students say) fly part of it.

As you can see on the box it's been around since 1891.  I talked to a friend of mine who is about my parent's age and he was telling me how his mom was told that baby formula was better than breast milk.  As I began to really think about this (Don't freak, I'm not a deep-thinker, just mildly obsessesed with all of this craziness.) I realized that in the 60's-ish all of the convenient foods and products became really popular and frankly I can't blame them. They had to do so much stuff from scratch and in such a time-consuming manner that when the easy stuff came out I'm sure the popularity just sky-rocketed.  Now we all are going back to natural which isn't any new concept because as the Good Book says,

  "What has been will be again,
   what has been done will be done again;
   there is nothing new under the sun."  Ecclesiastes 1:9

The Big Man upstairs really is wise, don't ya think?  Ok, moving on...

You can read this all on the box you buy but I'm going to give them a little bit of free advertising here.  Check out all of these uses.
1) Make this awesome Laundry Detergent
2) Dishwasher Detergent
3) I accidentally discovered that it polishes my silver jewelry.
4) Wash baby clothes
5) Get stains out of clothes
6) Toilet bowl stains, we have an upstairs toilet we don't use much and we have really hard water.  There was a pretty nasty hard water ring basically growing in my toilet and I had no idea how to get it out.  I poured some Borax in and left it for about a week (oops!) and scrubbed the toilet bowl and up it came!! TA-DA!
7) You know how you get that funky smell in the garbage disposal and some people say to throw a half of a lemon down there?  Yeah, that idiots.  I'm sorry if you are one of those people and it works for you but I tried it and had the disposal on for like 4 minutes and it still didn't get ride of the whole thing so I just had this rotting lemon sitting in my disposal, which doesn't really help the stink much.  Pour about 1 Tbsp. of Borax down the drain, let it sit for about 15 minutes, run hot water and the disposal and WA-LA!! 
8) Washing delicates
9) Getting ride of hard water stains (see #6)
10) Getting rid of stains in carpet or rugs
11) Boost the cleaning power of your dishwasher
12) Laundry boosting aka improves cleaning power of detergent
13) Bathroom/Kitchen cleaning and deodorizing

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!  And the best part is that 4 lbs of this stuff costs about $3.50!!! WHAT?!?!?!  Yep, you heard me right......go getcha self some!!!

Dishwasher Detergent

Hate spending money on dishwasher detergent, residue on dishes, food left on dishes?  Get ready for this one!  My new buddies at diynatural.com have done it again!  I'm telling you they are geniuses!  Check it out and then see below for my suggestions: Dishwasher Detergent  AND the best part is that it has some of the same ingredients as the laundry detergent plus two other CHEAP things. 

Stacy's Simply Sensible Suggestions:
1) As they suggested, I used Lemishine since I found it at my grocery store on the dish washing stuff aisle.  Again, I have really hard water and the recommended amount was leaving residue on my dishes so I added some more and it did the trick.  I made some for Mama and put in 3/4 cup of Lemishine and she likes it.  If you don't have hard water I would start with the recommended 1/2 cup and add some later if it leaves residue.
2) They say to shake it the first few days and they are joking.  I am infamous for not ready directions, if you don't believe me call Mama, I'm always getting myself into some kind of mess.  My wonderful hubby bailed me out of this one by smashing the plastic container it was in on the kitchen floor and the running it all through the food processor.  If you add more Lemishine later on do the shaking, stirring thing again unless you want my husband coming over and busting up your plastic containers. 
3) I had rice in mine as they suggested and it didn't help with the clumping.  I didn't put it in Mama's and she of course followed the shakin' and stirrin' directions and it didn't clump.
4) Remember vinegar?  The miracle liquid?  It's about to strike again!!!  The best thing since before sliced bread really is a great rinse agent. 

Have fun and for goodness sake, quit reading this blog, get off your lazy bum and wash those dishes!!!!