I have found ways to
make incredible soap for laundry and for shampoo. I only use my shampoo
bar now for my hair, and I rinse with my homemade vinegar as well. My
hair is soft and not falling out as much as it was, which is wonderful! The
laundry paste I created is wonderful, and cleans the clothes marvelously.
I get nice bright white clothes if I use the bleach substitute I found
how to make. So, all in all, I have found ways to make what we need to
keep out household going with things I can make. Most of my laundry
cleaning supplies needed washing soda, and I even found a way to make this
using regular baking soda, so that is cool too, though it is less expensive
just to buy the washing soda.
I did learn to use my drop spindle and spun some alpaca
roving into yarn. I liked the yarn, but wasn't crazy about how slow it
was to make it. I had to do the "spin and park" method, which
wasn't as relaxing and fun as I had hoped, so I purchased a spinning wheel. I
found some alpaca fiber at an estate sale, so am excited to spin some yarn on
it. I just watched some YouTube videos on how to card and clean the
fiber, so am excited to try my hand at spinning. I found a Hitchhiker
spinning wheel, and it seems to run smoothly, so am excited to try my hand at
spinning on it. It didn't come with written instructions, so I had to
find a YouTube video about that as well. Thanks goodness for people
liking to post things there!! Without it I would definitely be
in a mess with all the things I like to learn about.
I have also found videos on something called Rocket Mass
Heaters. This looks like a very economical way to heat a home.
It uses about 1/10th less wood to heat as a regular wood stove and
can be converted into a cooking surface and oven. I think it is a great
idea. One can also build one outside, so it can be used in the summer to
cook on and even heat water.
I also looked into cob construction of homes, and various
other ways to build that are economical and uses renewable resources and can be
built fairly rapidly. I wish I were younger so I could physically do more
of this and have the time and resources more at hand to accomplish the dreams
in my head :(, but who knows, I may still be able to accomplish all of this, or
something even better!
I would still love to have chickens, alpacas, goats, and
a small farm to meet all of our needs, but my health is getting bothersome, and
I have had other commitments come up so I can't get into all of this at the
moment. My husband and I are committed to helping our daughter and
grandchildren for the next several years, so we have put all the other things
on the back burner until then. In 5 years, or so, we can look for our
dream place, and move to where we will spend the rest of our lives. By
then we should have enough money saved back to have a nice down payment, and
have everything planned out to what and where we want that place to be.
In the mean time, we will continue to dream and plan.
