Eat Your Sands

Save Money by Hand-Washing All Your Laundry

One of the ways I have been experimenting with getting things done is to wash all of my laundry by hand. Supposedly clothes will last forever that way, and I find it especially helpful for washing those delicate synthetic clothes like my work uniforms.

Now, I'm not saying that I wash all of the family's clothing by hand. For one, it would take me quite a while to do that. Each load takes at least 10 minutes, and the overly large laundry basket full of clothes would take about 2 hours to wash. Really that's not longer than the machine takes to wash that amount of clothing. For two, spinning the laundry agitator takes quite a bit of upper arm strength, as I don't have a really good counter to use the washer with so the suction cups are usually not deployed. One arms spins the agitator, one arm stabilizes the washer.

I think it would be pretty easy to use outside sitting on the ground, or perhaps on a picnic or folding table. It has a small drain pipe which could easily hook into a larger and more permanent drain pipe, to take the laundry water away from the table area. Right now I have it next to the sink for easy drainage, and when I'm finished using the washer I drain the soapy water into the sink.

What kind of soap works the best? After doing a little bit of experimenting, I have decided that standard clothes washing detergent isn't awesome. It tends to be hard to rinse clean and also it really dries out my skin if I manually squeeze the extra water out of the clothes. What I really like to use is Meyers hand soap, which has a nice smell and rinses well. I previously used to make my own laundry detergent, and I may start doing that again in the future. Homemade laundry detergent, recipe featured here, has washing soda and borax as main ingredients so will require significant rinsing. I recently bought some bar soap to use on the clothes, if using fels naphtha or something similar you would grate a half teaspoon of flakes for each small load.

One obstacle I have yet to overcome is wringing, right now I do this by hand.

Whether washing cothes by hand or by wasing machine, bra hooks still catch on everything.

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The Prosper Experiment

Years ago I decided to try out peer to peer lending as an experiment to see how to invest some money. I originally started with $100 in lending club and $100 in Prosper. Since that time, lending club stopped allowing Florida residents to be lenders, so have dumped them. Prosper seems to not have a problem with my residency

In the last 6 years I have added more lending money to my Prosper account, so that I now have a total of $1000 invested. The money has grown, it says that its growing at an 8 percent return rate, but the balance shows that I have $1400, all invested in loans. That's kind of amazing, because other than the occasional email statements I had completely forgotten that I had this account. And Prosper had been quietly reinvesting my money into new notes.

The downside to this investment is that it is really quite difficult to get your investment back quickly. To withdraw your money, you have to turn off auto investing, and then wait. And wait. And wait. Which makes sense, as most of these loans are over a 5 year time frame. As your money becomes liquid again it can quickly be transferred back into your checking account.

Egg Suzette

One day I went deep diving into my antique cook book collection to try to find out some more interesting recipes to cook eggs, as I had a surplus of duck eggs to deal with. We had been loving the scrambled eggs and egg salad sandwiches. But honestly, I was getting tired of it.

But check this out, the finished picture is on the bottom left.

Yep, you got it. It's deviled potatoes made with eggs and sour cream. The kids also love this recipe. I like to scoop out the cooked inner potato, give that to the rabbits, then pour the eggs mixture into and around the potato shells. Then add cheese and bake in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes until the eggs are cooked.

The internet says Princess Diana used to love this recipe and would eat it every morning for breakfast.

Another kiddie pool water garden

Decided to put together a nice little pond garden at a friend's house so as to have something to look at. This served the purpose of encouraging me to put to good use an extra kiddie pool and to repot some overgrown cannas. Both the cannas and the water hyacinth are edible perennials that look incredible when planted in the right place.
The pool was simply thrown onto that spot, which receives full sun for about 7 hours a day and dappled for the remainder. It has no overflow holes in it, so if a storm comes it is possible for water hyacinth to be washed out and released into the yard. I felt comfortable doing this, because this area of this property is not near any natural or unnatural standing or moving water sources. Water hyacinth is known for its exponential growth here in Florida. I like it because it is edible after cooking and edible raw for the rabbits, plus high in plant protein. It also has an amazing purple flower sometimes.
The Cannas were replanted in layers of rabbit manure, then mulch, then dead leaves lining the bottom of the pots. I have been perfecting this mix for a long time, and it works well for the cannas. The manure is so high in nutrition that the water in the pool promptly browned up, causing supergrowth of the water hyacinth. Not only that but a few days later tadpoles spontaneously appeared in the water. I suspect the parents were tree frogs, likely the Cuban tree frogs that also live at my place.
I also tossed a mosquito dunk into that water. I know, it's got genetically modified bacteria in it, but it is the most natural simplest prevention of mosquitoes outside of seeding fish. With the virus running rampant I wasn't about to hit the pet store, even supposing they would have something that would be able to survive in water that was likely to get very warm. Words have been said about burying the kiddie pool so the plants are more at ground level, but words are just that.
I look forward to building more of these in the future. The kiddie pool gardens seem to be a great way to keep the cannas warm in the winter and hydrated in the dry season. Maintenance is the same as every other garden - weeds have to be removed, extra water hyacinth may have to be eaten or composted, mosquitoes will have to be controlled.