Lemons, Lavender and Good Clean Fun

They may not quite cut the mustard if you haven't cleaned your oven for six years (see The Elephant in the Room and How to Clean It) but lemons and Lavender were part of our grandmothers’ and great grandmothers’ household essentials.  Along with soda crystals and vinegar, lemon fruits and lavender flowers were used to remove grease and fat stains, clean and brighten sinks and fabrics, and freshen homes with their clear fragrances.

Nowadays we are all used to seeing small concentrated bottles of essential oils – including those extracted from lemons and lavender – on sale in health food stores, supermarkets, chemists etc.  Pure, neat essential oils are extremely concentrated substances and need to be used with care.  A little goes a very long way.

A brilliant range of essential oils designed for cleaning kitchens and bathrooms is available from fully qualified and practising aromatherapist Susan Barnard.  Her ‘Good Clean Fun’ range is very effective, simple to use, and has wonderful gingham design for labelling (see above left), with plenty of tips and wrinkles for using essential oils effectively. For more information, contact Sue Whall at Innerscents.

As well as cleaning mirrors, toilet bowls, drains and plug-holes, as shown on the product lable, both Good Clean Fun blends (Lavender and Tea Tree, and Lemon and Tea Tree) can be used in a wide variety of ways:

In Simple Scrubs to Make and Give, Stacy Karen includes a recipe for bathsalts which requires 1 cup of Epsom salts, 1/3 cup bicarbonate of soda, 2 tbsp sea salt and 8 drops of essential oil - the Lavender and Tea Tree blend would work well here.

Good Clean Fun Lemon and Tea Tree would be ideal in Kirsty's Citrus Kitchen Refresher, which you can find in The Cottage Mama's DIY Guide. 8 drops of the essential oil mixed with warm water and poured into a spray bottle are all you need. Shake up and "use this lovely spray as a refreshing spritzer on your dining table, counter tops, and appliances when you clean your kitchen! Spraying it around the garbage can area, or under the sink, will help eliminate odors."

Also featured in The Cottage Mama's DIY Guide is a recipe for an all-purpose cleaner, which I have adapted. For this, you will need:
3 tbsp Borax
a few drops of liquid dish soap
8 drops of lavender and tea tree oil blend or lemon and tea tree oil blend.

For general cleaning:
Fill an empty spray bottle nearly to top with warm water; add ingredients and shake to mix well. Use for counter tops, appliances, etc.

To clean floors:
Fill a bucket with warm water and combine liquid dish soap and Borax as above. Mix in the essential oils and use for mopping tile or linoleum floors.

Alternatively, you could try Tsh Oxenreider's formula for all-purpose cleaning spray, which can be found in One Bite at a Time. She's more of a vinegar kinda gal, and uses:
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 gallon (1 litre) water
a few drops of essential oil.

I'm impressed with tea tree's antiseptic properties, but I prefer the smell of lavender or lemon, so the Good Clean Fun blends are ideal when I'm concocting cleaners. Best of all, the product labels tell you "Never spend too much time doing housework." Naturally, I'm not going to argue with that.

To Market! To Market! With a Green Circle Grove Bag Giveaway!

Anyone else know that "To market, to market to buy a fat pig" nursery rhyme, or is it just me?

Meredith and Kristen from Green Circle Grove are sponsoring another super giveaway. Check out this beautiful Toile Market Bag they are offering to one lucky winner!

Note: Cabbage not included :)

This fabric market bag is made from sturdy "outdoor cloth".  It is 12" x 9" x 8" in a white on red toile print, which reverses to red on white toile.  The black cotton webbing straps are double-stitched into the top seam for extra strength.  Machine washable in cool water on a gentle cycle; hang to dry.  Rolls up to stick in a handbag or to tuck under a seat in the car.

Please be sure to stop by and visit Green Circle Grove's Etsy shop for a great selection of handmade soaps and fabric bags.

This giveaway is hosted by:

Meredith of Green Circle Grove

Ann from Summers Acres

Carol from Everything Home with Carol

Jenny from Black Fox Homestead

Alison from Mumtopia (that's me)

Mary from Back to the Basics and Mary’s Kitchen

and Lisa Lynn from The Self Sufficient HomeAcre

a Rafflecopter giveaway

7 Steps to Bargain Bunting

Whether you have a good reason to put the flags out or not, bunting is a lovely cheerful edition to any homestead, indoors or outdoors. Here's how to make it the Make It and Mend It way. 

You will need:

An assortment of scrap material, such as children's t-shirts, sweaters and pyjamas, shirts with frayed collars, bed linen, tea towels etc. For best results, use a colour scheme of no more than three colours and have a mixture of plains and patterns, bold and light shades.

Pinking shears, pins, sewing machine or needle and thread (if you have the patience of a saint).

Around 5 metres (197") of fabric tape, such as bias binding (you can make your own or buy rolls of it)

Cardboard, to make a triangular template of about 12cm by 15cm (4.75" by 6").

What to do:

The Elephant in the Room and How to Clean It

The elephant in OUR room - in our kitchen, to be precise, is our oven. This is because its arrival coincided with the birth of Secundus and the onset of PND. The oven remains unclean, despite vague attempts with lemon juice and good honest elbow grease. 

Katie, at The Kitchen Stewardship, has a whole article called How to Clean your Stovetop and Oven, the Simple, Safe, Frugal Way which is full of excellent preventative measures and natural cleaning tips.  Jeni Mullinix, author of Clean Enough, uses distilled vinegar to "remove grease spots on oven door window" and baking soda to "scrub oven interior", and these are simple, eco-friendly, frugal solutions for every homesteader.

Unless your oven looks like this:

Needle-snappin' Roxanne Retro Headband

The first thing that caught my eye when browsing for hair accessories to sew on AllFreeSewing was that this one is labelled retro, the second is that it can be made out of denim. Both serious plus points, topped off by the fact that Maureen Wilson of Made by Marzipan (who created this pattern) calls it the Roxanne Retro Headband, which makes me think of that old Police song: ROHHHHHHHHHHHHHHXXXXXXXXXXanne. 

Alas, the only denim I have left is faded and ripped, and I don't think the distressed look goes well with this style, so I opted for red polka dot jersey, left over from making a t-shirt earlier this year. Although I strongly dislike sewing with stretch materials, I thought this project would be a good way to use up this lovely fabric. The fabrics Maureen Wilson recommends are cotton, denim or linen, however, and next time I will follow that advice.

Happy (non UK) Mothers' Day and Creative HomeAcre Hop

Hope everyone enjoyed Mother's Day. It was a really special day for me back in March (we celebrate it earlier in the UK). The little gifts were lovely but the best thing was what I learned. You can read about The Gift of Mother's Day here. 

Anyway, fanfare!

It's time for 

 The Creative HomeAcre hop

which is hosted by:

Alison from Mumtopia (that's me!)

Manuela from A Cultivated Nest

Mary from Back to the Basics and Mary's Kitchen

and Lisa Lynn from The Self Sufficient HomeAcre

That means that when you link up your posts each week, they will be viewed by even more people! Each host will be sharing her own picks for Featured Bloggers. This gives everyone a better chance of being featured  and increases your exposure to new readers. Be sure to check all of our blogs to see if you were featured!

Mumtopia's Featured Post

The post I have picked to feature this week is Dear New Mama by One Organic Mama because it absolutely is the kind of letter I could have done with reading eight years ago when baby Prima arrived. I know many of you were celebrating Mothers' Day this weekend in the US and elsewhere, and I think One Organic Mama's post is spot on. 

I hope her message will bless all mums, new and not-so-new! 

Aromatherapy for the IMproper Housewife

Before I became more homesteady, I used to celebrate whenever Flash all-purpose cleaner was on sale. Normally I couldn't afford to treat myself to some Febreze freshness, but if it was on special at Asda, I would splash out on bright green "New Zealand Springs" or vivid purple "Relaxing Lavender" TO THE MAX. The kitchen would not only be clean, it would smell clean. I felt like a Proper Housewife when I used these products.

However, since I began the frugal journey of making my own washing powder, dish soap and the like, I have really noticed how strong these perfumed cleaners are. Not so much in terms of cleaning power, but more in terms of the chemically smell. Using fewer artificial fragrances in day-to-day jobs has increased my awareness of them all over the home. I'd rather be an IMproper Housewife.

Short-cut bias binding

Making your own bias binding is right up there with grating soap. Had I not ordered a few metres from Ebay before Christmas and been mightily disappointed with what I got, and, were I not determined to Make Do and Mend, I would probably not bother. However, the patchwork blanket I've been working on for Prima requires some kind of edging and DIY bias binding is certainly cheaper than ribbon.

Last time I made bias binding, I rushed it, and the edging on the patchwork blanket I made for the King and I does kind of shout that from the rooftops. 

This time, I decided to be more methodical and precise. On my side was the fact that the sheet I planned to cut up has faint stripes down its length, which acted as a useful guide. Furthermore I had consulted with Mrs Forward, and, when creating bunting, she doesn't cut on a 45 degree angle to make her strips on which to attach the flags. 

DIY Window Tricks and Treatments

One of the main things I notice once the weather starts to improve (apart from how much better I feel) is just how filthy our windows have become. Gone are the days when Secundus used to blow his nose on the curtains, but certainly, our windows were in bad need of a spring clean and spruce up this weekend, so I thought I'd share some tips and tricks I've found useful.

1. Jenni Mullinix, author of Clean Enough, recommends you wipe down your windows with coffee filters (at least, that's what they did when Jenni worked at "a well-known coffee house"), or a squeegee. She uses distilled vinegar to clean glass of all kinds.

2. 1 cup white vinegar and two cups water in a clean spray bottle is what Dana White uses, and it's safe for her kids to use when helping out round the home too, as she points out in Teaching Kids to Clean. (available via my Freebies page). Dana labels the spray bottle and lists the ingredients on the outside so she doesn't forget the ratio of vinegar to water when re-filling it. I also add a squirt of dish soap to the mix.

Simple Pleasures #7: My Desert Island Books

Just as music can lift your spirits (All Over the World by ELO) or plunge you into darkness (A Letter to Elise by The Cure), so can books change your mood. And while I have a playlist for various occasions, such as the gym, housework, and dancing in the kitchen, I also have a tried-and-tested shelf of books which bring me comfort and joy. 

These books are like old friends: familiar, but always with something new to tell you, something to spark off an idea or give a different perspective on things. I guess they would be my desert island books - I wonder if any of them are part of your reading collection too?


Pretty Nostalgic Home: Happy Days from Vintage Ways by S Legg and N Burnett. 
States that "Homekeeping is a worthy job". Asks us to consider "What is real need?" Focuses on life's simple pleasures. Last month's book of the month.

The Lord of the RingsTrilogy by J R R Tolkein. 
Epic quest in which you can completely lose yourself. Escapist fantasy, yes, but there is so much attention to detail it seems quite plausible. I love the different languages Tolkein creates.