My favorite cleaning product

I'm not sure if there are very many people in the world who enjoy reading about cleaning products, so I debated whether or not to even write this post, but I decided I had to share about my favorite cleaning product!  

It seems almost every week I find another use for it. I keep a spray bottle full of it close by when I clean.  Other times, I just pour a half cup of it directly into the washing machine, dishwasher, or sink.

It has an almost indefinite shelf life.  It's non-toxic.  It's  inexpensive.  Have you guessed what it is yet?

Here are my favorite uses:

• To clean the refrigerator.  I learned this from my mom - wipe down the refrigerator shelves with a wash rag soaked in this product to remove undesirable odors.  
• To prevent or clean off mildew from shower curtains (non-fabric type).  To help prevent mildew, spray down the inside of the shower curtain every once in a while with this product, then just leave it to air dry (it doesn't leave residue).  If it needs a more thorough cleaning, you can actually wash plastic shower curtains in the washing machine.  Just run them through by themselves with cold water in addition to laundry detergent, half a cup of this product, and a little borax if you have it.  Don't put plastic shower curtains in the dryer though, just hang them back up wet - they will dry, and the steam from future showers will straighten out the wrinkles.  
• To remove cloudiness from drinking glasses.  Soak them for half an hour in a sink full of warm, soapy water with half a cup of the product.  I was so amazed when it removed the cloudiness and restored our glasses to their original sparkling clear condition.  Evidently, repeated washing in the dishwasher starts to etch glasses; the etching can become worse and permanent unless the residue is cleaned off every once in a while. 
• To mop the floor.  This product doesn't streak or leave residue.  
• As a rinse agent in the dishwasher.  Pour this product into the rinse agent cup in your dishwasher.  Not only does it help your dishes come out without water streaks and drips, but it is a natural cleaner for your dishwasher itself.  I had never used a rinse agent before, but I amazed how my dishes come out actually dry now!
• My new favorite: to clean stove top drip pans.  The drip pans on our range get dirty so quickly and the blackened residue takes a lot of elbow grease to clean off.  My husband suggested we try soaking them in soapy water with this product, like we do for the drinking glasses.  We left them to soak in the sink while we were gone at church one night, and when we came home, most of the residue just sloughed off!

Have you guessed what it is yet?  

White vinegar!

What do you like to use it for?

Homemade Yogurt!

I finally attempted to make homemade yogurt for the first time.  I had considered for a while, but the impetus to actually do it came because our milk was about to expire and I wanted to use it up quickly.  I think I will be making yogurt more frequently now!  Because it doesn't require much direct involvement for most of the process, I think it is worth the lengthy preparation.

I'm not going to lead you through the detailed process here, because I am just a newbie at it and am by no means a yogurt expert now!  I followed the directions in this Frugal Girl post, so you can go there for a detailed recipe.  For those who are just curious though, I'll fill you in on the basic process.   For my trial run, I fourthed the recipe and just used four cups of milk to make one quart of yogurt.  Basically, I heated milk up to about 185 degrees, let it cool to 120 degrees, and added a few tablespoons of store-bought yogurt (the starter - now that I've got it "started", next time I can just use a bit of the leftover yogurt I just made to start another batch).  Since I wanted to make vanilla yogurt, I also added a little sugar and vanilla at this point.  I poured it all into a sterilized quart canning jar, screwed on the lid, and placed it in our camping cooler filled with a gallon of hot water, where it stayed for three hours.  Then, I stuck it in the freezer temporarily (I read elsewhere that this improves the texture), then moved it to the fridge, and that's it!

Initially, I was wary of this process because it seemed unsafe to just let the yogurt sit there in tepid water for three whole hours.  However, as I read up on it, I became convinced that it is OK, because the sitting in warm water is really what makes the milk turn into yogurt; it is safe to eat I'm told.  Most recipes let the yogurt sit for much lengthier periods of time, actually.  Methods of keeping the yogurt warm during that time vary from using a cooler with warm water to a heating pad to a crockpot to a special yogurt maker.

I was pleasantly surprised to taste test my yogurt and discover that the flavor was very comparable to store-bought vanilla yogurt.  However, it wasn't as creamy and it had a thinner consistency than store-bought, although this is common with homemade yogurt; plus, I used skim milk.  Since the taste was still good, I think I will make yogurt more often!  If left unopened in the refrigerator, the jars of yogurt are supposed to last a month; once opened, around a week.  The cost-savings are great!  I figured it cost me around $0.75 to make one quart of yogurt.  I normally pay around $2.50-$3.00 for a quart of yogurt a couple times a month, so theoretically, I could save around $48 a year by making homemade yogurt.  Imagine the savings if you are feeding a lot more family members than our two!

Decorating with water beads

I've seen water beads used before, but I've never had any of "my own" to play with until now.  They are so soothing to run your hands through!  If you aren't familiar with water beads, they come in packets of little dry crystals.  When you add water, they expand to several times their size into perfectly round little balls that hold water.  You can use them for decorative purposes and they reflect nearby colors, but I've also heard that you can grow certain plants in them because the beads release water.
Anyway, I got to take home a floral centerpiece from a banquet we were at recently, and the vase had water beads floating in it.  When I topped off the vase with water a few days later, the beads looked like they had disappeared because they floated down.  I forgot about them and was quite surprised today when I dumped the water out of the vase into the sink and there they were!  They are supposedly reusable for years, as long as you rinse them off in-between uses, so I pulled some creativity out of the deep recesses of my brain to figure out a different way to display them.