Desk to Baking Station Repurpose

     My favorite room in the whole house has to be the kitchen.  The best part about kitchens is what comes out of them, but it’s always nice to have a nice one to work in.  I love my kitchen.  I love the big bay window with the deep sill that is going to (hopefully) become a tiny kitchen herb garden.  I love the white tile and black grout counter tops.  I love the fence panel on the wall that serves as my pot rack, and the strip of lace that is the window sash. 

     But there are a few things about my kitchen I am not too thrilled with.  The counters are too broken up.  The sections are a bit small for prep-work.  Not impossible to work with, but small.  They’re particularly troublesome when I need space to roll out something.  In the case of making tortillas, it goes so fast, that I need to be streamlined in my rolling, cooking, flipping, and stacking, and there just isn’t any stretch of counter top quite long enough to do that.  Also, rolling out very thin or sticky dough on tile is just not happening, and a cutting board that size or pastry board that size is more expensive than I currently can afford. 

     I happened to have an old desk that belonged to my Gramma.  I’m a terrible pack rat.  I’m getting better, but I will hang onto something I really don’t even like just because of who gave it to me, who it once belonged to, or the memories associated with it.  I also hate to throw anything away.  I think I get that from my Gramma who grew up during the Great Depression, was widowed during WWII, and remarried my granddad, a staff sergeant in the newly formed USAF.  She never threw anything away.  Everything could be given a new life as something else, mended, etc.  

     In the case of the desk, this is the desk my Gramma taught me to sew at.  It held her sewing machine and sewing oddments, pattern pieces, rag bag, button box, etc., for longer than I’ve been on this earth.  Granddad brought it to me along with a whole lot of other odds and ends shortly after Gramma passed away.  I have been using it ever since as a sewing station and office desk.  So this, at least, was a fully functional sentimental piece that had a place in my life. 

     Sentimentality aside, it was ugly.  So ugly.  It was that really unfortunate shade of maize/gold that seemed to be popular way back when.  I’ve seen kitchen appliances that color, it was one of the Pyrex colors, and it’s very vintage.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s ugly.  Also, the paint was flaking, the once shiny and “modern” but now dated bits of hardware were flaking and tarnished.  It fit just perfect in a bit of spare floor space at the end of the kitchen counter, though.  Once Pa put it up on some casters, it was also a very good work height. 

     It became a catch-all for odds and ends that had no home in the cupboards, and when it was time for baking something or making tortillas, I’d clear the top, roll it out into the middle of the kitchen floor, and use it like an island.  I have a pastry mat that I would put on it to roll stuff out on, but it’s a thin bit of sturdy plastic with no way to anchor, so it would slide around.  I’d cuss.  It’d slide some more.  I’d cuss some more.  You get the idea. 

     Both to encourage myself not to just pile stuff on top of it, and to make it more useful and attractive, I decided to make it pretty and turn it into an actual baking station.  One of the first things I had to do was decide what to surface it with.  We thought about getting a thin sheet of stone from one of the local stoneworks places, but I was kind of worried about the weight.  I thought about beeswax, because it’s pretty, smells nice, and is edible.  But I didn’t want to have to keep reconditioning it all the time and I wanted it to be nonporous enough to scrub if necessary. 

     I went to Wood Magazine and a few other places to try to find out what finishes would be food safe.  Turns out, any of them that dry to a hard finish are food-safe once they’re completely dry and cured.  Since polyurethane is non-porous, I figured I’d use that for my final finish.  I built up the finish 5 coats deep, so it should be smooth and durable for many-a, many-a. 

     I forgot to take a before picture until after I had already started taking the hardware off the desk and sanding the drawers.  This picture really doesn’t do the original color of this thing justice. 

     This color is called wisteria blue, by Behr, but I think they were a little confused.  I think it looks like purple, lavender if you want to be particular.  But either way, it is almost the exact color of some of the wisteria blossoms I’ve seen.  I have a wisteria just outside my kitchen window.  It’s one of my favorites, even though a lot of folks consider it a nuisance.  Wisteria and those little purple flowers that seem to pop up all over the place that, when we were little, we’d nibble the ends of the blossoms to get the nectar out; they’re the inspiration for the colors I’m bringing into my kitchen. 

     For the drawer pulls, instead of painting the old hardware, which wouldn’t have updated them in the slightest, I decided to make my own drawer pulls out of rope.  While you’re cutting, tape off the cut ends to keep them from fraying on you.  It makes them easier to cut and easier to tie later. 

I tied a knot in the center, then tied off each end after I'd pulled it through the screw-holes where the handles used to be.  

Centering the center knot is just a matter of loosening and tightening carefully to get it right where you want it after you’ve knotted the ends in place.

     The next thing was to truly replace my pastry mat I wanted to try to recreate it on top of the desk.  My mat has inches and centimeters measured off along the edges and circles for common diameter crusts.  Those dang circles were the hardest part of this whole adventure, and I almost gave up.  They are not centered or neat, and my handwriting is atrocious, but they’re on there, for better or worse.  Eh, they’re no worse than my pastries, though, if I’m honest.  I can’t roll out a round pie crust or tortilla to save my life.  They’re all a bit wonky, so I reckon wonky circles ain’t no thing. 

     I also wanted to put some of my favorite recipes on the top that require rolling out.  I wanted to put my bread recipe on there, too, but I figured I’d better just stick with short and sweet.  A bread recipe comprehensive enough to be thorough would be crowded.

 

     I didn’t take pictures of the clear coating phase.  I figured it was a little irrelevant and unnecessary, since it’s still going to look the same, just shiny.  It took forever and stunk up the house something fierce, but fortunately we had a good stretch of lovely weather where I could keep the windows open all day. It takes about 3-4 hours between coats, and I had to do five coats, so that was a multi-day job, but the rest of the sanding, painting, knotting, and doodling was all completed in a single afternoon.  On a sunny day in Texas you can quite literally watch the paint dry. 

     And there it is.  I think it looks lovely.  I can stash my bread pans, pie plates, cookie cutters, rolling pins, and other baking specific tools in the drawers; have a nice smooth place to work; and it’s mobile!  It also complements my fridge’s makeover.  I’ll share that with you a bit later.  I’m still tweaking it and have learned a few lessons along the way with that particular project. 

     Go make something beautiful, and share it in the comments! I love seeing how people redo their old things into something new.  It gives me ideas and honey-dos!

Chicken fever!

Hey, y'all! 

     I’ve been bitten by the chicken bug.  I’ve got it bad.  I’ve wanted to have chickens for close to 20 years now, but the town I lived in wouldn’t allow anything considered to be a barnyard animal.  The regulations on post were the same, no barnyard animals allowed, with the exception of horses that were boarded at the post stables.  One of the first things I asked for when we moved to our little farm here were chickens.  Goats and rabbits are tied for second, but chickens... they’re like the gateway animal for all little start-up farms, aren’t they? 

     Well, here we are, a year later, and no dang chickens.  The barn had a lovely little coop built into the side of it that was easily big enough for a small flock of 8 or so hens and a roo.  It just needed to be cleaned out.  But, if you read an earlier post about the floods, it’s actually a good thing we didn’t immediately get those chickens.  They would’ve been soaked.  The roof leaks, the barn itself if partially below the floodplain for the little creek that runs next to our property line and over half the wood is rotten.  I would’ve felt guilty housing much of anything in there. 

     Rewind a few weeks ago and Little Bell had a tick.  I hate ticks.  They completely skeeve me out the way they just burrow their nasty little heads into you and hang on, and you never feel a thing!  Gah!  So gross.  Pa Bell was pretty displeased by it, too.  He made me pull it out, after we tried a few different methods of suffocation with no success.  He’s this big furry man’s man, and he made *me* pull the tick off our little guy. 

     Two days later, he’s asking me just exactly where I want my new coop and to decide how many chickens I want to order from the local farm supply.  Ha!  I’m gonna get my chickens!  Probably this summer!  Pa Bell decided the coop needed to be pretty close to where Little Bell’s play area is, and he wants to encourage the chickens to come hang out under the pecan tree where the swing is.  I guess that tick lit a fire under his butt that all my eyelash batting, sweet entreaties, and flat out bribery couldn’t manage. 

So here we go!  It’s a small start, but we’re finally getting started. 

The best thing since sliced bread!

     The best thing since sliced bread is... unsliced bread?

     Yes.  Yes, it is.  This stuff is delicious!  I had what I considered to be, and still think is, a dang good homemade bread recipe, but it is too crusty and rustic for a sandwich, in my (and my 3-year-old’s) personal opinion.  I have made sandwich rounds out of it, but they’re a bit tough and, though absolutely scrumptious, not really the thing for a PB&J or a grilled cheese. 

    So I went on a quest to find the yummiest, most scrumptious, soft, fine-crumbed, homemade sandwich loaf around.  I was recommended various recipes by several people, but none of them were the loaf I was looking for.  I tried French bread, Italian bread, Amish bread, soda bread, wheat bread, cornbread -- not, really.  I didn’t try cornbread for a sandwich loaf, but you get the idea.  Nothing was quite what I wanted. 

     I follow a few different blogs on Facebook, and this one posted a post about how they might just have accidentally made the best sandwich loaf ever, and they’d follow up with a recipe if it turned out to be true.  A week or so later, there it was:  Happy Accident Sandwich Bread.  I had to try it out, but it called for stuff I never have.  Powdered milk?  Potato flakes?  Instant yeast?  Dangit, y'all!  So I guesstimated, did some actual real math.  I hate math.  Googled a lot, surfed baking discussions forums, and finally gave it a try.  The first time, I subbed corn starch and flour for the potato flakes, and used powdered milk, because I actually had some leftover from a homemade cream-of-anything soup substitute I’d tried.  It was yucky, but it was a learning experience.  Anyway, back to the bread. I had read that any starch could be subbed for the potato flakes with similar results.  Wrong.  But it was definitely delicious, albeit dry and dense.  So I vowed to try again using actual potatoes, because potato flakes are an abomination.  Gak! 

     But... last time I made bread, my Kitchenaid mixer started smoking and dripping oil.  It has never been the workhorse that Kitchenaid used to be.  About the only thing that mixer had going for it was it was so pretty!  I love the way Kitchenaid mixers look, but their quality has definitely deteriorated over the years. 

     And that attractiveness comes with some design flaws.  Dough would creep up and wrap around the shaft where it goes into the motor housing, getting grease in the dough and dough in the spring.  If that didn’t happen, the dough would walk up the sides and flop out of the bowl.  Also the whole dang thing would walk across the counter if I didn’t stand there and hold it.  It would do that with anything stiff.  And stuff was always flying out of the bowl, no matter what I was making or how much or little was actually in the bowl.  And once it started smoking, leaking oil all over my counter, and otherwise becoming something of a risk to run, my husband told me to get a new mixer. 

     Of course, I said, Okay!!

     I searched and read and Googled, and went with what seems to be the mixer of choice for home bread bakers all over.  Bosch Universal Machine.  It came with a blender, which I probably will never use, but it also can make up to 14 loaves of bread in a single go.  Do I ever make 14 loaves of bread in a single go?  Nope.  But if it can handle that much dough, then it ought to have no trouble with my normal bread recipes that are usually between 2 and 4 loaves, or my pizza dough recipe.  I’m not going to lie, it’s not nearly as pretty as my Kitchenaid.  Honestly, I think it’s really ugly, but it’s definitely a better design and I have no functionality complaints.  I spent about the same price, too, so I'd call it a better value, since, you know, it actually works.  I wish they were paying me for this LOL.   

     I finally got to try that recipe again, with some of my own variations.  I’ve included the original powdered milk/potato flakes measurements.  I like having options.  If you’ve never made bread before, don’t worry, it’s easy.

* 2 ½ t yeast

* 1 ½ c warm water - I used the water from cooking the potatoes)

* 5c flour - divided - I used bread flour for higher gluten.

* 2T sugar

* 3T powdered milk OR scald 1 ½ c milk and use it in place of the water above

* 1 ½ t salt

* 4T softened butter

* 1c (give or take) mashed potatoes OR 1/4c potato flakes & 2/3c warm water

* 1/4c honey

* 2-3 T melted butter - You won’t need this till it comes out of the oven

     In your mixer bowl, mix the yeast with the warm liquid, be it milk or water, and let it start to do its thing.  I stare at mine until I see it starting to multiply.  I don’t know why.  Instant yeast doesn’t need this step, I’ve heard.  I have never used instant yeast, though.

     While you’re waiting, measure out the rest of your ingredients.  Have 2 c of your flour off to the side, then with the other 2 ½ c, mix in the other dry ingredients.  Mix your butter, mashed potatoes, and honey together, too.  It just makes things easier to me. 

     By now, your yeast should be merrily multiplying in your mixer bowl.  Dump your dry and wet mixes into the bowl with the yeast.  Turn on low and mix till it is all incorporated well.  Start adding your reserved flour a little at a time, until your dough is still tacky to touch, but nothing comes off on your finger when you touch it. *update* we have decided we prefer it a little more moist.  I leave it tacky enough to where just a little bit sticks to my finer when I touch it.  The bread bakes up softer.

     I know the picture is a little hazy, because the inside of the lid steamed up a little, but that's part of the beauty of it.  There is no escape!  No flour flying, no dough leaping from the bowl, just a machine doing its job, functioning as intended.  Thank you!!

     Turn the mixer on medium/medium low (2 on the Bosch, 4 or 5 on the Kitchenaid.  Some people say 6, but that's probably not good for the motor.), set a timer for 7 minutes and let it go.  I would have to stand there and hold the Kitchenaid on the counter and babysit the dough.  The Bosch just shooed me out of the kitchen and said, “I got this.”  If you knead by hand, I guess this would take closer to 15-20 minutes.

     Take the time to get out a relatively large bowl and drizzle a little oil in the bottom, maybe clean up a bit.  After the time is up, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead 5 or 6 times by hand, shape into a ball, then place in the oiled mixing bowl.  Turn the dough a couple times to make sure it’s coated, then put it somewhere warm to rise.  I turn my oven on preheat just before I turn the dough out to knead by hand for a second.  It let it heat up for a minute or so, not too long or you’ll start to bake prematurely, and use the slightly warm oven as a proofing box. 

     Let it rise about an hour.  The lady at Homestead Chronicles had an amazingly helpful trick to know when the dough is done rising.  Poke it.  If the dent your finger made puffs back out after a little bit, it’s not quite ready.  If the dent stays after a minute or so, it’s ready for the next step.  That is SO much more helpful than “let it double,” because I don’t know about y'all, but I suck at eyeballing it. 

     Take this time to grease two standard loaf pans.  Once your dent stays, turn your dough out on a lightly floured surface and squash it down really well.  Get out all the bubbles you can.  Roll it out with a rolling pin then roll it up into a log.  Cut the log in half, tuck the ends under, and put them seam side down in the greased pans.  I’m sorry I don’t have pictures of this part, but my hands were covered with flour and bits of bread dough.  I didn’t have mine dry enough, so it was a bit sticky.  The bread is still delicious.

     Find somewhere warm to let them rise again.  Same criteria as before:  about an hour with a successful dent test.  It was a lovely warm day, so I let mine rise outside on the porch railing.   I don't like to use the oven for the second rise, because I want the oven preheated so I can bake it as soon as it's ready.

     Start preheating the oven to 350 a little while before your second rise is done.  Bake for 25-35 minutes, give or take.  Listen to your nose.  It’ll start to smell amazing, be beautifully golden brown, and sound hollow when you tap the top.  Melt your last few tablespoons of butter.  When the loaves are done, turn it out onto a cooling rack and paint the tops with the butter so they’ll stay soft.  If you want it crustier, just skip that part. *update* I wrap the loaves in a flour sack towel to keep them from cooling too fast.  This seems to keep them even softer.

     Everything I’ve read says you need to let the loaf rest all night before you cut it so it can cool completely.  I read that if you cut it while it’s still hot, you let so much of the moisture escape as steam that the bread becomes dry and crumbly.  Since that has been one of my biggest complaints about homemade bread, I told myself I was going to wait this time.  But dang it’s awfully hard to wait when that fresh-baked bread smell is filling the house.  My loaf came out of the oven around dinnertime, and I was able to hold out till around 9 p.m. to slice it LOL. 

  

     Look at that crumb!  Heaven!  And it smells so good.  This is why I will never, ever be skinny.  

     It is AMAZING.  This is it.  The winner, grand champion of homemade bread recipes!  Man... I had my first slice with just plain, unsalted, butter.  Then we had some sliced for sandwiches for lunch.  Even with mayo and mustard on it, it didn’t fall apart like every other sandwich bread recipe I’ve ever tried.  It didn’t get soggy or brittle.  It is PERFECT!!  This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt when his monster came to life!  I AM VICTORIOUS!!!!!

    Seriously, it’s that good.  I think I need to go have some with jelly now. 

Duds Suds - DIY laundry soap

Welcome back!

     It’s a breezy spring day on the farm, and I’m spending it doing laundry.  The windows and doors are open to let in all the sunshine and fresh air we can before the sun goes down.  It’s kind of amazing how fast the temperature can change after sundown here.  Sometimes as much as 50 degrees can separate the daily high from the daily low.  This would be a lovely day to hang a wash out on the line, if I had a line.  The breeze would flap the sheets like flags, filling them with the smells of sunshine, cut grass, flowers, and maybe just a hint of clover.  We’re still getting our ducks in a row over here, though, and a clothesline hasn’t happened yet. 

     Since I have some time between loads, I thought I’d share my laundry soap recipe and my experiences with homemade laundry soap with you. 

     The first recipe I tried was a five-gallon bucket full of liquid detergent.  I imagine y'all have seen the recipe before, 4c Washing Soda, 4c Borax, 4c grated soap (or 4 bars, or sometimes an amount of Fels Naptha or Zote is listed).  You melt the soap in a gallon of water, pour it into a five-gallon bucket, add the washing soda and borax, add some more hot water, stir-stir-stir-stir-stir until you’re just about ready to give up, then top it off with some more hot water.  ¼c per load was the recommended dosage, and it’s supposed to work better than commercial stuff. 

     It does work, and well.  It actually does seem to get stains out better than the commercial stuff, but it’s a bit of a pain in the butt.  First off, what happened with mine was, despite all that stirring, the soap floated to the top, solidified, and became a constant aggravation whenever I needed to do laundry.  I had to keep a big stick with my bucket, and every time I did a load, I’d have to stir the snot out of it to get it to even partially resemble and incorporated liquid.  Inevitably, there were lumps of solid soap in some loads, and no soap at all in others, just a solution of borax and washing soda.  Also, it doesn’t rinse out clean if you have soft water.  I didn’t at the time, but I do now, so that one just didn’t work out for me. 

     Next, I tried powder.  Basically, it’s the same recipe, but instead of adding liquid, you run the soap through a food processor or a blender to get it as finely powdered as you can, store it in an airtight container, and use 1Tbsp per load.  That one worked all right, but still not great.  The problem I ran into was similar:  the lighter, larger soap bits worked their way to the top of the container, while the heavier and finer washing soda and borax settled to the bottom.  It did dissolve better, though, and I didn’t have any problem with residue getting left behind on my clothes after a wash.  But I still wasn’t perfectly happy with it.  I had to keep shaking and stirring it every time I wanted to wash clothes.  Not a big deal, but just an annoyance.  I figured I’d try one or two more recipes, just to see if I could find one that was my perfect match, and if not, I’d come back to the powder, because having to shake it up is just a minor complaint, really. 

     Onward to laundry sauce, or as some people call it:  laundryonnaise.  I just call it a success.  You’ll recognize the recipe, because it’s almost the same ratios as the original liquid recipe I tried, but the concentration is different. 

1 bar Fels Naptha, or approx. 2c any soap, grated (Not Zote)

1c Borax

1c Washing Soda

4c Water

2 regular mouth quart jars

Optional:

* 1.5 to 3 Tbsp essential oil of your choice, or a blend of them.

     OR

1/3c laundry scent crystals (like Purex or Unstopables)

1.  Heat the water to almost boiling.

2.  While it’s heating, mix the washing soda and Borax together well and break up hard lumps the best you can.

3.  Add the grated soap to the hot water, stirring constantly.  Reduce the heat to medium and stir regularly until the soap is melted.  You really don’t want this mess to boil over.  It takes FOREVER to get all the soap off your stove.  It might be a good idea to do this when dad is home, so he can help entertain any littles you might have underfoot so you can pay full attention to this part.  Ask me how I know LOL

4.  Once the soap is melted completely, you can take it off the stove.  Mix in the Borax and washing soda, stirring constantly until completely dissolved.  This is also when you want to add your scent crystals, if you’re using them.

5.  Divide the mix evenly between your two quart jars. 
I imagine this could be done with a single half gallon jar, if you want to. 

6.  Add just enough water to bring the level up to the shoulders of the jars (where they turn in toward the mouth).  If you’re not using quart canning jars, I think this works out to be about two cups of liquid, total, but that’s just an estimate.  It doesn’t have to be exact, the consistency will just vary slightly. 

7.  Put the lids on and leave them to sit for four or five hours so they can separate.  Overnight works well, or if you start in the morning, forget about them till sometime in the afternoon.  Some recipes recommend turning the jars upside down so the liquid is trapped in the upper half the jar with the air pocket at the bottom.  This saves a step later, but spills all over you when you open it to blend.   (Remember how I said the separation was my biggest pet peeve with the others?) 

8.  This is when you add your essential oils, if you’re using them.  If you left your jars right-side up to separate, you’ll need to break up the solidified soap with a butter knife or something.  If you turned them upside down, carefully remove the lid, because your liquid is all up top. 

     If you’re using regular mouth quart jars, they will fit on most standard blenders.  Just screw the blender blade onto the mason jar and blend until it’s the consistency of mayonnaise and you’re done. 

     If you’re not using regular mouth mason jars, you’ll just have to dump yours in the blender, blend till it’s like mayonnaise, then put it back in your container.  

9.  Use one Tbsp for a large load of laundry.   

     A note on container sizes.  When you’re choosing your container, just remember you’re going to have to get a spoon in there.  And if your spoon isn’t long enough, you’re going to have to get your hand down in there, too.  Regular mouth canning jars are great for the mixing, but not for the getting back out.  My hands just don’t fit through there comfortably, and I have average sized hands.  Pa Bell rigged me up a scooper out of a tablespoon measure, a sanded down cut of wood, and some electrical tape.  I’ve seen some folks recommend those cookie dough scoopers with the silicone bottoms so you can just pop the dough out.  I want one of those. 

     A note on soaps:  Zote works, but not very well for us.  We have very soft water here, and Zote is a bit greasy.  It doesn’t dissolve or rise out well.  Fels Naptha works much better, as far as laundry soaps, but you can also use bath soap or homemade soap.  If you use homemade soap, I’d suggest steering clear of super-fatted soaps, especially if you have soft water. 

     ** A note of caution:  Do NOT put oxygen cleaners (oxyclean or similar) or baking soda to this recipe!  It will explode! **

     

     Price analysis:  Each batch will do about 128 loads of laundry.  My math skills aren't great, but I estimated about $4 per batch which breaks down to 3 cents a load.  I price checked Gain, which was my husband's brand of choice before we got married, and it would cost $9 and change per 64 load bottle, so close to $20, or 16 cents a load, to do the same number of loads, it didn't work as well at getting stains out, and smells like someone dumped a bottle of perfume in it.  

     And I know you want to know whether or not it works.  Yep, it works, and I think it works better than commercial stuff.  It got out dried in black mud from where Pa got the truck stuck down in the pasture and left his socks and shoes in the bed of the truck for a week before remembering they were out there.  It got off dried on blood with just a shadow left behind to tell it was ever there. 

     That would be another one for Pa, since he’ll cut himself doing something and sometimes won’t feel it.  With his spine messed up, he has nerve damage that has caused him to lose sensation in some of his fingers and toes.  And he’s not one to give me his laundry and say, “This stain is gonna need treating before you wash, okay?”  He just chucks it in the hamper in the bathroom, and I find it when I do laundry. 

     It will also successfully get out grass stains, cow poop, and smears of various fruit.  Little Bell still has some trouble maneuvering spoons, and he is rough-and-tumble when he’s outside “working.”  There’s really no telling what all this stuff has succeeded in getting out. 

     I've been using it for a few months now, and I have absolutely no complaints about it.  This one is our perfect match.  If you try it, let me know how you like it.  And if you find a way to make it better, I’d love to hear about it!  

* If you want to blend your own essential oils, 1 Tbsp is about 270 to 300 drops, depending on the size of your drops, obviously.  You can find all kinds of wonderful scent blends that tell you to blend a few drops of this, a few drops of that.  Just multiply it up till you get a large enough quantity.  3 Tbsp is a 2% dilution, which is considered a typical usage level.  4% is therapeutic level, and I would not recommend going up that high, unless you have a level of knowledge and understanding that makes you feel confident to do so.

Not Quite Paperless

I’m back! 

     I thought the first thing I would do once we finally got Internet installed out here in the willies -- actually, the funny thing is, we don’t live in the willies.  We live just four miles outside of a cute little town with some interesting history.  But for some reason, the Internet service providers don’t provide service out there.  Not even dial-up.  Our options were Hughes Net or increased data packages from our cell phone provider.  Hughes Net was the more economical, so we seriously downgraded our cell phone service, ditched the smart phones, went back to flip phones, and now have high-speed (within limitations) Internet via a satellite they plunked in our back yard. 

     Satellites have shrunk!  I remember when those bad boys were 6 or more feet in diameter and dominated the landscape of suburban lawns.  Ours is only about 16 inches across, give or take, and sits on a pole.   Unfortunately, said pole is right in front of my dadgum kitchen window!  It blocks my view.  Pa said he’d paint it like a flower for me.  Smart aleck. 

     Anyway, so we’ve got the World Wide Web at our fingertips again.  But what did I do in the month or more that I wasn’t here?  Well, since I work from home and am a homemaker, I wasn’t idle.  I typed my fingers dang near off with transcriptions.  It’s been an oddly busy year for me for typing.  I used to have months at a time with no work, and since Pa retired, I’m lucky to be able to take off on weekends.  One of the things I’ve been doing that was the most time consuming was getting us a little bit more paperless.  We’re not entirely paperless, yet, because I still love my paper towels for the grease tub.  They eventually wear out, but I can use the same paper towel in my can of Crisco for months before it finally starts to wear out.  I tried a bit of scrap cloth, but it left lint behind.  Obviously I used the wrong type of fabric.  I’m thinking a scrap of t-shirt might work better than the scrap of whatever it was that I used before. 

     Why do I want to go paperless?  Well, there are all the crunchy reasons, save the planet, save the trees, save the ozone layer.  Those are great.  Really, they are, and I’m tickled that my small efforts here at home will help reduce the landfill waste and tree consumption.  Maybe not by much, but eventually enough drops of water will fill a bucket.  My main motivation, though, was plain old save the money.  My husband will tell you that I’ll squeeze a penny until Abe Lincoln yells, and that is particularly true here lately.  Being on a fixed reliable income and augmented by a usually reliable flexible income, I have to try to make sure our expenses don’t exceed what we know we can cover with Pa’s retirement.  My income is usually put toward extras, unexpected, emergencies, and creature comforts.  His goes to the monthly old reliables:  food, mortgage, electric, water, debt, etc.

     Paper products are basically just pennies, nickels, and dimes that add up to dollars that we’re throwing in the trash can without even thinking about it.  Our grandparents, great-grandparents, and particularly our great-great-grandparents would’ve been amazed and dismayed by it, I think.  We’ve become so used to the idea of everything being disposable, that sometimes we’re appalled by the idea of reusing. 

     A few years ago, while visiting my friend Terri over at Blue House Journal, we were talking about a TV show she had watched about extremely frugal folks and she asked me if I thought I might ever be so broke or frugal-minded as to consider using cloth instead of toilet paper, and I was actually momentarily speechless.  (If you knew how much I can talk, you’d be amazed, really.)  The idea of washing pooey or pee soaked cloth just made me cringe.  This was also before I had my son, so you can imagine that bit of revulsion had to be rethought quick, fast, in a hurry once I had a little poop/pee/spit-up factory. 

     And what about napkins?  We wash plates, silverware, cups, place mats, the table... so why do we wipe food off our faces or hands and suddenly it becomes something that needs disposing of rather than just washing off?  When I asked myself why, the only answer I had wasn’t very convincing.  Mostly it boiled down to “just because,” which really isn’t an answer at all.  So I figured we would give a trial run to some reusable fabric alternatives to paper products.

     I didn’t spend anything on initial fabric, because all the fabric I used was left over from my attempts at cloth diapering my son.  Yeah, those heebie-jeebies about poo and pee?  They just kind of vanished, at least concerning my little boy, (especially when I saw the price of diapers! Cheese and rice those things are high!) and past that it’s just splitting hairs.  Anyway, I had some flannel and muslin flat-folds that were just lying around not getting used.  I had good intentions of using them for dust and cleaning cloths, but who am I kidding?  I almost never dust, and I usually clean with my kitchen towels, of which I have a dearth, since my sister-in-law sent me a huge box full when we moved into our first apartment.  So these big squares of flannel and muslin were just taking up space. 

     If I had to buy the materials new, it still wouldn’t be very expensive.  Hit up Fabric.com or JoAnn’s on Black Friday (shop online, it’s so much more pleasant than fighting the stores), and you can get flannel for about $1-$2 a yard.  The muslin was about the same price regularly at Wal-mart when I got it about three years ago.  Muslin is pretty dang cheap all the time.  And you really won’t need much, depending on how many and how large you want your napkins or family cloth, as the Internet has dubbed cloth toilet paper.  I believe my pieces were in the ballpark of 5x7 and 4x8 for napkins and family cloth, respectively.  The 5x7 just came about because it was a fairly even division of the pieces of muslin I had on hand.  4x8 is about the size of two squares of toilet paper. 

     The best part about these two types of fabric is they’re woven, not knit, so you can start a snip, and rip it all the way down in a straight line.  No tedious cutting. 

I had to snip off the original edge stitches, rip them off, then snip and rip to the desired size.  It didn't take anywhere near as long as actually cutting out all those rectangles would've taken.  

      For both the napkins and the family cloth, I just edged.  I didn’t do a true hem, because really, who wants to sit and carefully fold, press, and hem all those edges?!  I mean, there were so stinking many!  I lost count.  Okay.  That’s a lie.  I started to count and then said a few colorful words about the futility of counting all those small rectangles of cloth. 

     Suffice it to say, we have never, ever, EVER come close to running out of napkins, no matter how long I put off doing laundry (which is usually only a couple of days max.  I do have a three-year-old boy and a husband after all.  They get so dirty.)

     Cute containers seems like a must to sweeten the idea of using cloth toilet paper.  I don’t know.  I guess I just wanted them to look as nice as possible in the bathroom.  That and who could resist No. 1 and No. 2 bins for a toilet paper substitute? 

     I cut up a pillowcase and made a pair of bags to line the used bin with.  There is a handle, too, so when I need to take the cloth to the laundry, I just grab the handle, pull the whole bag out, and drop the whole kit and caboodle into the washing machine.  I never actually have to touch the dirty ones. 

     To do this, I just traced the bottom of my container onto the pillow case and cut it out.  That gave me the bottom of my bag.  Then, I cut a strip the length of the perimeter of the bin and as wide as the bin is tall, with some extra to fold over.  The handle was double folded and top stitched and sewn into opposite corners.  That makes it kitty-cornered as far as the bag is concerned, but it was late when I was finishing them up, so it was a bit of a brain fart on my part.  It was faster than centering them on the sides, too. 

     I keep the clean ones on the back of the toilet.  Instead of folding them, I just criss-cross them to make it easier to grab one at a time.  Flannel tends to cling a little bit to itself.  Anyone who remembers felt boards or flannel boards from Sunday school story time should remember the nifty way the figures clung without Velcro.  That always seemed a bit like magic to me when I was a kid. 

     My husband was reluctant.  He was a bit skeeved out by the idea of using cloth, but he said he’d give it a shot.  I promised him if he was displeased with the experience he could switch back to toilet paper.  I still have a package in the laundry room, just in case someone in our family gets adventurous and decides to come visit us.  Unlikely, but it’s good to be prepared.  He has not asked for the toilet paper and has conceded the cloth is actually more hygienic. 

     So what have I learned now that I’ve been using these for about a month or so?  I’ll try to answer all the questions I had about using cloth toilet paper so that maybe I’ll also answer your questions, too. 

     I’m about to get really personal here, so if you don’t want to know, just go ahead and stop right here. 

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     Still here?  Okay, here we go. 

1.     One of the very first things I learned is that, despite my having more occasion to use toilet paper, my husband goes through an obscene amount of the stuff.  I had been using the cloth for a week before my husband decided to give it a try, and I never even put a dent in the large number of cloths I made.  I was starting to think I had just gone way overboard, and then he started using it, too.  Suddenly, in a single day, he had used the same amount it had taken me an entire week to go through.  No wonder I was buying so much toilet paper! 

2.  Smell.  How bad does it smell? 

     I think this was my biggest concern and the one that my husband voiced concern over above any others.  Actually, it really doesn’t.  There is a slight smell of urine sometimes, but that also depends on how frequently you wash the dirties.  If you do laundry every day to every other day, you probably will never notice it.  If you wait three to four days or do laundry once a week, you might notice. 

     We have a septic system, and it’s not recommended to flush a lot of toilet paper, or even to flush a lot period because too much paper will stop it up and too much water going into it will kill the bacteria or something.  They’ve got a saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow.  If it’s brown, flush it down.”  So we don’t flush after every use.  We also put toilet paper in the trash can, so there has been no negative impact on the aroma of our bathroom.  If anything, it actually tends to smell better in there, because the trash only runs once a week, and sometimes that’s how long the trash sits in there.  I empty the family cloth bin every other day.  

3.  Is it comfortable? 

     Okay, y'all.  I’m really going to get personal here, so fair warning in addition to the first fair warning.  If you’re a human who has passed puberty, you have hair on various bits of your anatomy.  Wet toilet paper can pill up and get caught in that hair and become unpleasant and uncomfortable.  My husband is a very hairy guy, and I am a normal post-pubescent woman, so this happens on occasion.  It’s even worse if you shave and can be just as bad if you wax, so there doesn’t seem to be any escaping the problem, unless you switch to cloth. 

     It’s also softer than paper.  Hemorrhoids are a problem for a lot of folks, but they particularly trouble heavier people and women who have given birth.  That’s a pretty big part of the population.  Toilet paper can be abrasive, no matter how soft it is, on them and folks spend a fortune on stuff like Tucks that are basically just little circles of cotton soaked with witch hazel.  Save your money.  Spend 99 cents on a bottle of witch hazel that will last you for a VERY long time, and cut up some soft flannel to keep in your bathroom. 

     In my opinion, it’s way more comfortable to use than paper ever thought about being. 

4.  And what about hygiene?

     Toilet paper gets weak when it’s wet.  It can tear at the most inopportune moment.  A little bit of pee isn’t much of a thing, but when the toilet paper tears when you need it the absolute most, that’s just unpleasant all the way around. Icky, uncomfortable, and just ... ew.  The cloth doesn’t get weak when it gets wet.  It’s just as sturdy as it was before. 

     Something else folks have started doing is buying adult wet-wipes.  They’re like baby wipes, only they’re marketed as an alternative to toilet paper.  Some of them even have containers that will hang on a toilet paper roll.  Cloth can be used wet or dry.  Some folks suggest keeping a spray bottle by the toilet, but our little bathroom is so small you can easily wet one in the sink if you need to without getting up.  Also, did I mention I have a three-year-old?  Leaving an unattended spray bottle is just asking for all kinds of shenanigans. 

     So I would say that, hygienically speaking, cloth definitely outperforms. 

5.   How much more laundry does it make? 

     That really depends on you.  Some people insist on doing a special load for the family cloth.  I can’t justify that.  It’s a 6x6 little bucket of small rectangles of fabric that for the most part just have a little bit of pee on them.  I don’t do a special load for my little boy’s sheets or clothes when he has an accident.  Once a baby starts eating solid food, their mess is no different from adult mess.  I have to remind myself of that, because in my mind there is a difference, even if it is just all in my head.  Once I got my head in the frame of mind that mine or my husband’s mess was no messier than our son’s mess, I just chucked them in with the regular laundry. 

     I do make sure to wash them with stuff that can handle a hot wash, frequently towels, washcloths, and cleaning rags that need a good hot wash to get good and clean.  I just toss them in, bag and all, and it makes very little extra work at all.  Once they’re clean and dry, I stack them criss-crossed, stuff them in the bin on the back of the toilet, and I’m done.  Very little extra work at all.

6.  What about that edging?  How’s that working out for you?

     Not as well as I had hoped.  The muslin I used for napkins took the edging just fine, and has not even attempted to fray past the stitching.  The flannel is more loosely woven, I guess, and it is actually unraveling past the edge stitching slightly.  It’s no great loss, since these were sheets I bought in 1998 that have been incarnated into several different things over the course of their life, and this was the very last stage of their evolution. 

     But when I replace them, which I will have to sooner than expected, I will do either a doubled folded hem or do two layers and top stitch them all around to create a solid seam.  The frequent washings need a little more durable hold than just the edge stitches can provide.  I still won’t feel too bad about it, though, because for the cost of a 4-pack of toilet paper, I should be able to get everything I need to make new cloths that will last most of the rest of my life.  I am not sure how much money that will save after inflation in the years to come, but currently, that saves me close to $300 a year on toilet paper and the napkins save me about $100 a year on paper towels or paper napkins.  I’d call that a frugal win. 

     If you have questions about using family cloth that I didn’t answer here, ask me in the comments.