Are You A Do-It-Yourselfer?


Bini
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I've been reading a DIY blog and I am totally intrigued. The idea is to save money and be healthier by doing "it" (whatever it is) yourself. There's all kinds of DIY project tutorials out there, from making your own toothpaste, to making your own household cleaners. I started doing the latter one but haven't tried the DIY toothpaste. If you're a DIYer, what things have you tackled and was it worthwhile the time and effort involved? I think this is a great way of having preparedness, too.

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My you have a lot of questions this morning  :)

 

It depends for me, some things I will hire out or buy in a factory finished state, while others I'll do myself.

 

I have tried DIY toothpaste, not my preference.

 

I have built bookshelves and desks and pantry shelves and such and have been very pleased with my handiwork as has my wife.

 

My wife always likes to grow as much as she can for a garden which I suppose could be considered partial do-it-yourself groceries.

 

I have done a lot of online learning that is very independent compared to traditional classroom learning which could be considered a form of DIY education I guess.

 

But you know there are certain things like toilet paper that I've never felt the need to make my own.

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I make my own cleaning supplies.  What I buy now at the store is White Vinegar, Borax, Washing Soda, Fels Naptha, Dawn (blue).  I put orange peels in the vinegar which helps boost its cleaning power and also softens the vinegar smell.  I've been pleasantly surprised at the results I've gotten from spraying the shower with vinegar after showering.  Even old mildew stains are going away.  I like the homemade laundry soap, its saved us lots of money since I started making it.  I haven't found a homemade window cleaner I like yet.

 

As for other DIY things.  We garden and each year the garden gets bigger.  We started with Square Foot Gardening and now are moving on to the concepts in Back To Eden Gardening.  I bottle fruit every year and I need to buy a pressure cooker so I can bottle the veggies.  Hubby also needs to build a root cellar for the potatoes and carrots, onions, etc.

 

I have always sewn, mended, etc.  I knit socks and clothing.  I am only one person so I can't produce everything our family needs but I do make a dent in the family budget.

 

Hubby has always done car repairs and home repairs.  It took him about two hour to fix the furnace a week or so ago.  But it saved us $100.  There isn't much he can't fix around the house when he has the time.

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Mine is in almost direct correlation to the amt of money I save.

$8 on toothpaste? Not gonna do it.

$7500 on building my own fence? Yep. Sho nuff.

$500 on culturing antibiotics? Or $750 in labs? Ditto.

$100,000 & change in tuition over 5 years via homeschooling? Check.

Clothes I'm borderline with.

I have a reeeeeally long inseam.

Which makes things like jeans cost over $100, and everything else is worse.

To have jeans & other pants tailor made from scratch is $80 (where I live).

So most of the time I just spend $100 on off the rack clothes, even though they're more expensive.

Because it's easier to click "add to cart" than to go in for fittings.

Q

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I'm my father's daughter... I will pay good money to hire out everything I don't like to do myself.  And that includes making toothpaste...

 

But, I am proud to say I make my own dog shampoo.

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I'm my father's daughter... I will pay good money to hire out everything I don't like to do myself.  And that includes making toothpaste...

 

But, I am proud to say I make my own dog shampoo.

But then do you hire someone to wash the dog?   :lol:

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Yes, I'm not about to make toothpaste. But I'm leaning towards being more of a "crunchy" mama... If you don't know what that is, Google it :)

 

 

Anatess, I don't do yard work but I'll plant a flower, though my husband doesn't mind getting out there and mowing the lawn. If he one day said he wasn't going to do it anymore, we'd hire a lawn care service, but as of now the sitting-mower isn't such a horrific chore for him.

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Bini, when you first said DIY - to me that means repairs around the house first. Out of necessity and desperation I learned how to replace the innards of the toilet. That didn't solve the year long problem of water, water every where - so after asking my across the road and up the mountain trail neighbor to come show me where my water shut off to the house was, turned off the water, went and bought a whole new toilet and replaced it.

 

It isn't that hard to do. Messy - and for some it can be a really icky, stinky job. I cleaned the old toilet thoroughly, and followed the directions from the set of How To Do It books I had bought from a Used Book Store years earlier. 

 

I have replaced locking door knobs - closet knobs. Removed the cupboard doors, removed the hinges and placed in de-greaser to clean, sanded and painted the doors. I even replaced ALL of the outlets in my home. Learned quickly to do this job in the daytime and flip the main breaker. 

 

Why did I do all of these jobs? My then husband was too busy sitting in the bars drinking, and I was sooooooo tired of the toilet leaking water, the plugs to everything having to be taped to the outlet so they wouldn't fall out, the salt in the air (living next to the ocean results in salt in and on everything) corroding the locks - changed the locks then put tennis balls over the knobs. 

 

My kitchen sink would not drain properly - after taking a good close look, the drain pipes were not the proper size, or the correct configurations. I measured, and then during my lunch break at work (I worked at the hardware store), I put together a drain. Paid for it, and after work installed it. 

 

I also had a 1500 square foot garden. Then husband roto-tilled the land, we added a pallet of garden lime, he roto-tilled it again, then using re-claimed items I put together the garden. The fencing we bought. 6 foot high 2" mesh chicken wire. We had re-claimed t-posts and re-claimed rings for the t-posts. The three gates to the garden area were re-claimed, as was the single kitchen sink, garden faucets and an old kitchen counter that we put the sink and faucets in. The roof we put over it was also re-claimed - old aluminum siding. All of the wood used to frame the roof and sides were left over from a friends construction job, as were the nails. I bought new hoses to run the water from the house to the garden. Took 75' of hose, then I got old hoses and soakers from people who were tossing them out. Worked great for me. I knew that to use sprinklers was a waste of water. Too much evaporates in the air. I also used old carpeting that had been tossed out to make a walking path around my raised beds. Kept the weeds from growing, the slugs avoided it as did the deer. Oh, husband left the gates open and a deer found her way in. She only ate one cabbage. Took two bites and the second bite was mostly slug. Saw the remains she spit out, along with more spit as she exited the garden. 

 

I paid sale prices for the vegetable starts. The store I bought all of the starts from, was family owned drug store/ five & dime - I went to them with a proposition. If I buy all of my starts/plants from them, will they give me a discount? I bought 80 tomato plants, 4 different varieties and 3 different cherry/grape tomatoes. Got all the vegetables too (too many to list here). Total was $350.00+, they discounted it by 15%. The corn and snap peas I planted from seeds. Oh, I also bought marigold plants - several flats of them. 

 

I would have had a wonderful garden if then husband had not sabotaged it. You cannot smoke around vegetable plants, most especially tomatoes. You cannot even have smoked, have the tar and nicotine on your hands and then handle the plants. He knew this. He is the one who read it from the Organic Gardening magazine. Yet he smoked while he was in the garden. He touched the plants. He also power watered them. Holding the nozzle of the pistol grip to the ground and blasting the water into the ground. 

 

None of the corn grew. Only 1/3 of the bush and pole beans grew. None of the beets, carrots or radishes grew. Their poor seeds were blasted clear to China by his watering methods. 

 

I did get brussels, cabbage, and my cherry tomatoes. Only 4 of the tomato plants produced edible fruit. The rest got tobacco wilt disease and rotted on me. I tore out all of the sickly plants, and burned them all. All that hard work, money and that year the mosquitoes were the worst they had ever been. I ended up in the ER with so many bites. Only time in my life I never felt the needle when they gave me shots for it. The second time I just went to my Dr. To work in the garden I had to wear a huge brimmed straw hat that I sewed an old sheer curtain on, home made skeeter netting. I wore yellow rain gear three sizes to large - those skeeters bit me through my jeans and flannel shirt. I wore high top rubber boots - with the pant legs of the rain gear duct tapped to the boots. 

 

That summer was one of the driest and hottest for this area. I lost 25 pounds that summer. Sweated and worked it off. 

 

When my across the road neighbor showed me pictures of my then husband in the garden, the low harvest made sense. I didn't do a garden after that. Why? 

 

I have taught myself how to use power tools. All of them except the circular saw. That one is just too awkward/ heavy for me. 

 

Mom and Grandma taught me how to sew - on both a treadle and electric machine. Dad taught me to knit and darn. I have made my own laundry detergent, but it is powder - and for some reason powder just doesn't work well for me. I buy the cheapest liquid I can find, and only use 1/3 of the manufacturer's recommended amount. 

 

Now, 30 years later I am not able to do as much of the DIY repairs as before. Can no longer replace faucets, or fix drains, or even remove and install toilets. Can still do door knobs. I just have to sit in a chair to do them. 

 

I now live in a mobile home park, and do not own the land. I tried to have a veggie garden- in pots across the front of the double wide - but the slugs and the neighbor cats destroyed the plants. Had the handyman build me a ledge to put my planters on, slowed the slugs down but didn't detour the cats. So instead of veggies, I put in flowers. I am still battling the cats. I really want to plant the pansy's, petunia's, etc., but the soil is so polluted by the cat poo and urine. Sick cat poo and urine. 

 

The only planters the cats have not befouled are the railing pots on my porch. AND the huge pots on my porch that I planted yams in. 

 

Time to hunt down a huge bag of garden lime, mix it with the two huge bags of outdoor potting soil and get some flowers planted. I bought some deer netting. 1/2" mesh, 7' x 100' of nylon netting. Will put 1 x 2 board on the house to staple the netting to, and drape it over my plants. Think mosquito netting from a canopied bed. The bees can still get in. I will have hanging pots of flowers for the hummingbirds and butterfly's.

 

Bini, when I was a little girl - 5 to 7 years old, we were so poor that toothpaste wasn't on the shopping list (12 people in my family) - my two uncles and our two neighbors smoked cigars. Mom collected the cigar ash from them and mixed it with baking soda. THAT is what we brushed our teeth with. Me, I refused to use it. Even when threatened with a *whipping*, I wouldn't use it. The baking soda- yes, I would use that. Mom got bar soap that was brown lye soap. Harsh!! You washed with two wash cloths. One with soap and one with rinse water. You could not leave that soap on tender child skin for the length of time it took to rinse the cloth out.  We grated that soap, added it to boiling water to make a gooey liquid and that is what she washed laundry with. 

 

We also washed our hair in a very diluted solution of that. Then rinsed with vinegar and water. 

 

Did you know that blended up cucumber peelings in a bit of water is repellent to ants? I used a paste I made and globbed it on where my clothesline was attached to a surface. (Tree and house) Kept the ants (all sizes) off the line and consequently off my clothes. 

 

If you have 100% cotton white garment, that has a stain that didn't wash out - do not put in the dryer, hang it outside in direct sunlight and spray the stain with equal parts water (filtered of chlorine) and lemon juice. Make sure the stain is in direct sunlight. I have done this to my whites - cottons - that have had tomato based and mustard stains. Sometimes it takes twice, the mustard took three times. 

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If you have 100% cotton white garment, that has a stain that didn't wash out - do not put in the dryer, hang it outside in direct sunlight and spray the stain with equal parts water (filtered of chlorine) and lemon juice. Make sure the stain is in direct sunlight. I have done this to my whites - cottons - that have had tomato based and mustard stains. Sometimes it takes twice, the mustard took three times. 

 

You can pretty much do this to any color clothing but test for color-fastness first.  Don't do this to clothes that shrink... found out the hard way after my son's gi became doll-sized... lol.

 

But this is how we do this in the Philippines - we wash the clothes in soap and water and then we take a big metal sheet and lay all the soapy clothes on it, squirt calamansi (a kind of citrus fruit similar to lime) on the stains and let it dry in the sun.  After it is dry, we take the clothes and rinse them all out and hang them on the line.  They smell really good and stain is gone but colors are still bright.

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I would have had a wonderful garden if then husband had not sabotaged it. You cannot smoke around vegetable plants, most especially tomatoes. You cannot even have smoked, have the tar and nicotine on your hands and then handle the plants. He knew this. He is the one who read it from the Organic Gardening magazine. Yet he smoked while he was in the garden. He touched the plants. He also power watered them. Holding the nozzle of the pistol grip to the ground and blasting the water into the ground. 

 

If you\\\'re ever interested in growin tomatoes again... I get about 40-50lbs per plant.

I also smoked 2-4 packs a day during most of those years.

Both in my house (where I started the seeds and root toned clones), and outdoors (where the babies & clones all got planted)

Since nicotine is an insecticide, treating the plants with nicotine would make them not wholly organic... But it won\\\'t keep them from vigorous vegetative & fruiting.

Tomatoes are \\\"easy\\\" in that they grow just like marijuana.

And there are a gazillion and one helpful tips and tricks about growing marijuana both free & paid articles.

And they do AWESOME in 5gal buckets (drilled for drainage) in apartment style living.

Starting from seeds w peat pods indoors, or cloned off your best plants... Total outlay (including buckets, black gold, pearlyte, vermiculite, worm casting, blood meal, bone meal, insecticidal soap, and your own pee) is about $25.

The most difficult thing about toms is the light (for vegetative & fruiting cycles).

If he ratio is off, it doesn\\\'t matter how many tops you pinch, your vegetative period will be crummy, and no matter how long the fruit is on the vine... It just won\\\'t swell & ripen properly.

Which is why if you\\\'re growing quantity it\\\'s worth it to buy a sodium or halide light off eBay, and set your own cycles and / or time VERY carefully with your daylight hours / seasons if you\\\'re up north. Equatorial / southwest = no worries! but the contracted & extended daylight up north can ruin whole crops if you time your cycles wrong. : P Been there, and done that. 500lbs of green tomatoes was vexing. Gah.

Leeching the soil is a pain on the ground, but in buckets it\\\'s super easy... Just put them in your bathtub, fill, and wait until the water runs clear to clean out all the toxins the plants are putting back into the soil. You\\\'ll end up with burned tips for a week or so from the excess water, but that self corrects. I usually do this right before the fruiting cycle, although sometimes mid vegetative cycle. Basically, whenever growth stalls out. Tomatoes are a lot like goldfish, in that regard; they\\\'re \\\"dirty\\\" plants pumping all their wastes into the ground. Leech it all out, refertalize with work castings, blood, bone, and urine, and shazaam. Crazy growth cycles returneth.

Anyhow... I grow tomatoes in the ground fairly rarely. On my boat, in my apartment, even in my house when O had ground to put the, in... All mean lots and lots of hauling water for container / deck growing (thirsty plants... They need 2 water cycles to totally saturate, then dry to bone dry before doing again... Which in heat can be twice a day, or 80s only twice a week). But I really prefer to grow them in buckets.

Upside: quitting smoking when I converted affected them not at all!

((I jar pasta sauce & tomato jam out of most of the crop.))

Q

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  • 4 weeks later...

Like Iggy, my first thought was home repair type DIYing.  My husband does a lot of that.

 

I made dishwasher detergent over a year ago and am just barely over halfway through the batch.  When my next container of laundry detergent runs out, I have the stuff already to make homemade laundry soap.  The only objection I have to the dishwasher detergent is that I have really hard water, so we have to be really vigilant about making sure that our rinse aid is full.

 

I like to garden in the summer, and am disappointed that Cleveland has such a short growing season.  I enjoy canning, though, too.  General provident living concepts are attractive to me.

 

I recently tried to make this, but it didn't work for me.  I couldn't get the grapefruit rind to process.  I tried a small-capacity food chopper, and then also my heavy-duty food processor.  In both cases, I got a little bit of powder, but mostly the rind got stuck between the blade and the bowl, and ended up actually creating an indentation on the inside of the bowl.  I never could get it powdered, which was a bummer.

 

My MIL doesn't use sponges for washing dishes -- she crochets her own cloths (about the side of a potholder).

 

I'm about to make a foray into composting, so I'm excited about that.

 

Toothpaste?  No thanks.  I don't sew either.  I can fix a button or turn a hem, and that's pretty much it.  I come from (and married into) a family of quilters, but it's really just not my thing.

 

I make my own pizza dough and have (on occasion, but not regularly) made bread as well.  I do a lot of from-scratch cooking.

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Wingnut: 

My MIL doesn't use sponges for washing dishes -- she crochets her own cloths (about the side of a potholder).

Wish I had a dozen of them!! My sister gets them from one of the sisters in her ward, and I love them. She took the ones I stole from her out of my suitcase last time I was there. 

 

Just finished making a protective fence out of 3/4" sched. 40 pvc and 1/2" mesh plastic deer netting. I have a raised-16" high by 16.5 foot lon by 24" deep wood flower bench. On this I have plastic planters - in three different sizes and shapes. For the last three years I have been battling with the stray cats in the area. They use my pots as potty's. The cat urine destroys the bulbs and makes the soil nearly unusable.

 

This fencing is 5' high and the netting covers the dianthus planted on the ground the full length of the bench. I bought dolomite lime and am mixing that into the soil contaminated with cat urine. The poo has been scooped out, bleh!

 

My established snapdragons are the deep red velvet ones. I will be cutting the blooms to put in the house, then replanting them out of the pots and into the ground. They are pushing themselves out of the pots! I have small snapdragons to replant into the pots, two flats of lobelia to plant in the ground on either side of the dianthus. Have rosemary to go into one huge round pot, and already planted the two large, blooming columbines. IF the garden center has more columbines I will buy two more, along with a flat of marigolds and a flat of petunias, a hanging fuchsia basket and if they have any sun loving begonias.

 

When it is time, will purchase and plant the bulbs: day lilies, glads, daffodils, tulips. The two years of cat urine totally killed them! Think I will plant them in-between the  dianthus this time. 

 

The ground soil needs to be freshened too - am removing all of the bark rock and tossing it liberally with dolomite - putting down soil, then planting the lobelia & snaps.

 

Have already put in 7 days of work - not in a row, had to stop when it rained and we had rain several days in a row. 

 

The days I did work, the temps were in the 80's - the full range too: 80-88!! Yesterday the predicted high was 72, it got up to 82 and my face and forearms & hands got sunburned. 

 

Thank heavens for vinegar. Sponged my sunburn with vinegar then took a warm shower. No pain today at all! The sunburn needs to be slathered with moisturizer though  :P . This time will be wearing husbands safari hat and not my cute straw hat. The sun came through the straw and my scalp got burned as did my face! 

 

As for DIY on the fencing. I initially designed it, Husband and I brainstormed whether it would work, and how to get it to stay together. Together we put it together. My right arm, shoulder, and the muscles in my neck to under my collar bone are SORE -  can we spell: e x t r e m e l y   p a i n f u l l.  Had to take a muscle relaxant pill just to get to sleep last night, AND three Aleve. 

 

Now it is time to go shopping for the plants, some groceries and a hose repair parts - the small 3 foot length of hose that attaches to the spigot and then to the hose reel, sprouted all sorts of holes!! So many that not enough water travels down the hose to water the garden! I have a 50' hose that is 20' too long - will just make a 5' length to replace the leaky 3' length. The new hose bibs are 4' off the ground now - will need 2 more feet of hose.

 

So - that is my latest DIY project - think the next one will be to clean out the Husband's den, re-arrange his HUMONGOUS solid Oak desk, and 2 -2 drawer filing cabinets, go through the dozen boxes that have not yet been unpacked (moved here in Nov of 2010),

 

High temps predicted for today are 81. Wonder what it will actually be??? 

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  • 1 month later...

I make my own laundry detergant, foaming hand soap (very easy), and most household cleaners.  I've made and used dishwasher detergant, but it doesn't work as well as I would like so I don't make it anymore.  As far as personal items, I like to make mint chocolate whipped body butter (also very easy), I've never tried homemade toothpaste or deoderant, though I've thought about it.  I prefer to use straight honey as a face wash and a few dabs of coconut oil as a facial moisturizer before bed. If I have a problem spot on my face, I use aloe vera gel and tea tree oil mixed together, and that works pretty well. 

 

My husband and I love to garden, so we're constantly growing something, even during the hot summer months (I live in AZ).  Right now we have canteloupe, watermelon, zucchini, tomatoes, basil, pie pumpkins and cucumbers (for pickles).  We also have several fruit trees, including 2 peach (different varities which fruit at different times so we have peaches throughout the summer months), a plum, 2 cherry, 3 pomegranate, a lemon, an orange (mandarin), a guava, an avocado, and 2 apple trees.  Most of them are still young since we moved here 3 years ago but they are producing which is exciting! 

 

I like to bake goodies (muffins, granola bars, breads, rolls, desserts etc.) from scratch and my husband is an excellent cook, most everything he makes is also from scratch.  Since I can't bring myself to pay loads of money for a fancy cake, I make my own fondant and decorate the cakes myself. 

 

My husband is a super DIY-er when it comes to repairs around the house.  He's an engineer and a bit of a perfectionist so he'll do most everything himself.  He even built our chicken coop :)  I'm not a very crafty person, but I've made a few table cloths for the holidays, Christmas wreaths out of pinecones as gifts, painted a picture for the boys bathroom to match the shower curtain, and made dryer balls.  I 

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  • 2 months later...
Guest Kathleen O'Meal

Oh gosh, I'm a diy also...the toothpaste thing came of neccessity through this site http://mizar5.com/toothpst.htm

This has improved my dental health along with other advice found therein.

I'm wondering if Im reading differences in meaning here between self sustaining and DIY...probably they both go together somewhat. 

 

As for me, it all started when I saw things I wanted and needed, but wanted and needed them a little differently made.  For example, the beautiful 17,000.00 museum grade frame was quite not my vision.  So...I temp worked at a place  designed and molded the poly resin caps over wood and learned to do this for myself.

 

I have this yearning to know how and why things work so DIY ing follows I think.

 

The laundry soap thing is nice, but I find adding a tub of Oxyclean and some essential oil scents and even water softener for some folks makes it really nice and so much cheaper.

 

I think I have done so many DIY preparedness things to interest myself or help myself that I've come to getting a bigger kick out of lifting and helping others through my DIY efforts now.  For example, I just created this cool tall multiroomed birdhouse in repurposed barn wood...a DIY project....and it was great.  But...what was better was thinking about how this might help someone else create aviance for their surroundings who otherwise could not afford the treasure.

 

Same thing happens when I build this really cool indoor grow stand system for someone who needs a boost up on the nutrition scale, that will supply enough large salads and other green use for a family.  This is all DIY stuff.

 

just saying....

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