DIY's Gone Wrong

Most of my DIY's are homemade cleaners. I'm not crafty or creative, but I like trying to find better (less expensive) ways to clean without throwing a bunch of chemicals in my septic system.

Believe me, I've had more than my fair share of 'terrific' homemade cleaners that for whatever reason I didn't like, or didn't work the way I would have wanted (or imagined). It's frustrating because not only did I spend time doing it, I also spent money on the ingredients. We don't have a bunch of money thrown on our bed that we roll around in every night. Know what I'm saying?

Fail #1 - Homemade Powder Laundry Soap

I went with powder for two reasons - #1 I don't have a place to store a 5 gallon bucket of laundry soap and #2 I didn't want to mess with cooking anything. This seemed to work, but in the end our clothes always smelled not quite clean. So I have a very large amount of this borax, washing soda, and some kind of laundry soap bar still hanging around the house. So, today, I threw some in the toilet. It worked. Maybe I could dissolve it and throw it in an old shampoo bottle or something so I can squirt it instead of using the powder that won't stick to the sides. Something to put on the back burner for now. I think I'll use it for this purpose though. I mean why buy more crap if it works?

Since I made this I found a smaller recipe for liquid soap that I've made and like. I make my own soap bars and the cooking part doesn't bother me. Kind of fun.

Fail #2 - Dishwasher Tabs

The first fail was they didn't stay in tablet form. The second was they really didn't work in my situation. We do have hard water here, so that may be the problem. But once again, now I have a lot of powdery ingredients taking up precious space. I repurposed a parmesan cheese shaker and am using it like Comet. I used it in my kitchen sink the other night and it works well enough for me to use the remainder as scouring powder.

Fail #3 - Shampoo Bars

You can read all about my shampoo bar fail here. There isn't much recovery needed from this fail though. I still have awesome smelling bars of soap that I can use. Since I made these at 8% superfat, and they are loaded with tea tree oil they will become the bar of soap that sits on my kitchen sink. A loss for my hair equals a win for my hands!

Fail #4 - Sweetened Condensed Milk & Homemade Creamer

A two for the price of one fail! I stepped into the world of trying to make homemade sweetened condensed milk, and then homemade creamer (of my own design). You can read about my process here. Sadly, when something like this goes wrong it's a total loss. Down the drain & in the garbage it goes. It will not stop me from attempting this again though!

So, what do you do with your DIY/homemade fails? Does that stop you from trying again?

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