I Didn't Take Advantage of Grove Collaborative's Free Offer

I got out my debit card and typed my address and card number in all the boxes. My cursor hovered over the "submit order" button. I looked over my order one last time. To buy or not to buy? Buy or not to buy?

If you follow any of the popular health/wellness blogs, you've probably heard about Grove Collaborative's new customer offer. The offer is: if you place an order of $20.00 or more, they will send you a free cleaning caddy, free orange oil, free glass cleaning bottle, and free walnut scrubbie. You also get free shipping on your first two monthly orders. 

My eyes got big at the sight of those beautiful, high-value freebies. All I had to do was sign up and buy $20.00 worth of stuff. I figured that the freebies alone were probably worth $20.00, so what the heck. I could order cleaning tools that would last a long time instead of buying consumables. It would be an investment. Plus free shipping! I could pick out my items, buy them, and then cancel after the first month. Well, I signed up with my email. I picked out $21.00 (as close as I could get to $20.00) worth of pretty cleaning tools, which amounted to three scrubbing brushes. Then I asked myself, do I really need this? Between the free and purchased goods, the average price per item was $3.00. I asked myself if I would buy it at a regular store for $3.00.

a) Cleaning caddy. While it was nice, I knew I could get a similar caddy at the thrift store for $0.50. I already have a cleaning cart that I use for storing cleaning supplies, anyway.

b) Orange oil. I already have orange oil.

c) Glass spray bottle. Although I think this would be cool, I already have plastic cleaning bottles. I can understand the health benefit of using glass bottles for drinks, but you don't drink cleaning fluid. There are no advantages to using a glass bottle, especially if you re-use plastic bottles like I already do. In fact, there is a DISADVANTAGE to glass cleaning bottles, and that is that they are breakable. Plastic bottles won't break if you drop them on the tile.

d) Walnut scrubbie. I already have scrubbies that I never use.

e) Dish brush. All of the brushes I picked out had pretty bamboo handles with some kind of all-natural bristles. That aside, I already have a dish brush. The white plastic one I have is easy to clean, unlike the wood would be. Plus I can buy a replacement at Walmart for at or under $3.00.

f) Tile brush. Again, I could probably buy one of these at Walmart for at or under $3.00. I've actually never used a tile brush and don't have one. But the fact that I've never bought one might hint that I would never use one.

g) Glass cleaning brush. I thought this was cool, and I might be able to make my own replacement head instead of buying it from Grove when the first one got old. However, then I remembered that using newspaper actually works very well for me, and newspaper costs $0.00.

After I went through each item, I still tried to justify myself in buying it.  Even if I had no reason to buy the stuff for myself, certainly I could give it as a gift! But then I remembered that I could buy almost everything at Walmart for half the price. For the number of items, it would be a very pricey gift. After looking over my order, thinking, and rethinking, I finally decided to not buy.

In the end, I saved myself $21.00 on (albeit pretty) things I did not need. Sometimes the free stuff is worth it, and sometimes it's not. If you like all-natural products and buy them anyway, Grove's offer is open until Tuesday, January 17th. If you like that sort of thing, it really is a good deal. I just didn't need any of it.


Sidetracked By.... Everything

If you are trying to save money for a goal, it's important to stay focused. When EVERYTHING is a priority, nothing is a true priority. I see this a lot with food (I want healthy, I want local, I want cheap, etc. etc.), but it can happen with anything. The cleaning supplies are a great example. I like nice stuff just as much as anyone, but having paraben-free candles or eco-friendly cleaning supplies is not all that important to me.

Every $20.00 (or every $5.00 or $10.00, for that matter) that I spend on non-priorities is $20.00 that I will never get back to spend on things that are important and/or fun for me. I don't hate all-natural products, but if I had to choose between organic cleaner or generic cleaner PLUS $3.00 to spend on thrift store books, or ebooks, avocados or herbal tea, I would pick the generic cleaner every time. YOU TOO have a choice about how you spend every dollar. 

If you're not focused, you can get sidetracked into spending money on things that are not important to you. People will start pushing their own priorities on you (probably unintentionally) and you will lose track of YOUR goal. Pretty cleaning supplies are not a priority to me, but looking at the beautiful pictures and high-value free items made me think otherwise. "This will be a good way to upgrade my home supplies," "It will make cleaning more fun," "I deserve to have nicer stuff than Walmart," "My bottle brush is getting squished on one side, so I need a replacement," "It's so hard to reach the corner of the windows with my crumpled newspaper," "We can afford it," and a million other voices told me to get the freebies. I had seen this particular offer on several blogs and Instagram feeds that I love, and those messages had been working on me for the past week. "All the cool people are doing it" was the last message I got.

What happens when I spend $20.00 every week on "upgrades" that are not part of my goals? Nicer clothing, newer books, a magazine here and there, another herbal supplement. Organic rice, another animal for my hobby farm, new organizers for the stuff I have. There are a million things I can think of that would be fun to buy. Sometimes I buy this stuff, but every purchase should be a legitimate investment and wise use of money according to what I value. It would be nice to wear brand new clothing, but when push comes to shove, I don't really care. $1000+ per year can make a HUGE difference in your life if spent wisely. Just $20.00 per week can have that big of an impact. Can you think of a $1000.00 item that you would like to have? Cut out $20.00 of non-priorities per week (that includes grocery items, people) and you will have it at the end of a year. Do you truly care about the stuff that you are buying? Remember, YOU HAVE A CHOICE. Every time you buy a "meh" product that you don't need, you are sacrificing a "wow!" product that would truly make your life more enjoyable.

Thoughts for the day.
-Bethany

*Once again, I don't mean to bash all-natural stuff or Grove Collaborative. I think they are offering a great deal to people that regularly use those kind of products. Some day, I might stock my cabinets with all-natural cleaners and diapers and paper plates. That being said, I thought I would share and document my "no-buy" moment and reason behind doing so.

Hello folks! I know about every other homemaking blog out there has a laundry detergent tutorial, but I thought I'd do my own anyway. It is so cheap and easy to make, and for the two of us, a five-gallon pail lasts a LONG time.

Homemade Laundry Soap

½ cup borax
1 cup washing soda
5-6 oz. soap, grated
3 gallons water
5-gallon bucket with a lid

Instructions:
1. Measure out the borax and washing soda. I would recommend storing these items in a glass or otherwise air-tight container, because in a humid area it might cake up, dry out and be impossible to measure.

2. Grate the soap. A lot of recipes call for the use of Fels-Naptha, which is a wonderful soap. However, Hubs and I don't need stain-removing power in our laundry soap (I just use a spray-on stain remover when necessary), and $3 per bar makes it less frugal than just using regular soap. In the picture below, I used free hotel soap and some homemade soap chunks. I used a Kitchen Aid grating attachment to grate the soap. This is a LOT easier than making soap shavings by hand, and a lot faster, too.

3. Add 1 quart of water to the soap, and bring to a boil. This will dissolve the soap shavings.

Make sure you're using a large pot... otherwise it might boil over!

4. Put the rest of the water in your five-gallon bucket. At this point, most recipes tell you to put the borax, washing soda and soap water in the bucket, and stir to dissolve the soda and borax. Because my soda was clumpy (thanks, humidity), I thought it would be better to dissolve it in the hot, soapy water, and THEN pour everything into the bucket.

6. Pour everything into the five-gallon bucket, and mix well.

I chose to top off the bucket with water, in order to get more soap out of the recipe.

7. Let the soap sit overnight before using. The next morning, it should have a gel-like consistency. Mine usually turns out a little watery (probably because I use normal soap, and/or add more water), but still works great. I keep a normal laundry detergent cap in the bucket for measuring. For large loads I use two caps-full, and for small loads I only use one cap-full.

Today I'm going to let you in on a little frugal secret that I learned recently. It is how to make that fun foaming hand soap that you can buy at the store. I am okay with using a bar of soap, but Hubs prefers liquid soap and I know that bar soap can get messy with little ones.

Here's the secret of foaming hand soap: it's all in the pump. That's right! You can use whatever liquid soap you want, as long as you have a foaming pump container. I found two bottles of Bath & Body Works soap at a garage sale last year, both of which have foaming pumps. Or, you could go to Walmart and buy a new bottle for a couple dollars.

How to Do It
To make foaming soap, fill the container with water up to an inch from the top. That's right- I said water! Then add a tablespoon or so of liquid soap. You can use the fancy-pants liquid castile soap, but I just used plain old dish soap because we really like the scent. Hubs likes it because it cuts grease better than regular hand soap. Some people also add a little bit of oil to the soap, in order to preserve the life of the pump.

Then, swish the water/soap mixture around a little bit to blend, and screw on the top. Squirt out a little bit of soap to see if it worked. Voila! Using foaming hand soap is super frugal. Not only does it cost mere pennies per bottle, but there is less waste than with bar soap. Plus, it takes less time to make than it does to find a bottle at the grocery store.

This is one of those little "frugal accomplishments" that you can learn once and use the rest of your life. I can't say you'll end up saving millions, but you might save $0.25 a week. That's $13 a year! Plus you'll save a lot of mess and some time. This trick allows you to use the same soap for everything, and simplicity is always a goal at my house. Less to think about, more brain space for things that I enjoy. :)

Happy foaming!
-Bethany

I estimate that I spend about 30 minutes to an hour, five days a week washing dishes. That's 240 hours - ten entire DAYS per year- at the sink. Here are some ways I've found to make dish washing faster and more fun.

1. Rubber gloves. I bought mine ($2 at Walmart) for making mozzarella cheese, but one morning I went to do dishes and realized that I had several cuts on one hand. Putting a glove on the maimed hand, I finished washing without a problem. I decided to glove both hands, and kept doing so even after my cuts had healed. The dishes get clean faster and better than ever before. The gloves protect my hands, enabling me to use hotter water instead of constantly readjusting temperature. They also grip dishes better than my wet fingers which allows me to go faster and not splash water so much. They keep my skin from drying out, and I no longer have to wipe my hands (and therefore dirty towels) so often.

2. Ajax soap. This is the best brand we have found so far. It is second cheapest at Walmart, but keeps suds for a long time.

3. Washcloth hanger. I never knew these things existed, but they allow you to use the same washcloth over and over without it stinking. Simply rinse the towel and hang it up to dry between dish washing sessions. You can also hang bottle brushes and drying clothes on it.

4. Jar brushes. These are a couple dollars at Walmart- definitely worth it if you eat a lot of home-canned foods like we do. It's a lot faster than using a fork/washcloth combo, and jar brushes are more sturdy than bottle brushes, which have more delicate bristles.

5. An old toothbrush. I use this to clean around the hardware on pots and pans, and to clean other small areas.

6. Something to listen to. I almost look forward to dish-washing time, because it gives me an excuse to listen to some of my favorite podcasts, which include but aren't limited to Michael Hyatt's "This Is Your Life" and Joshua Sheats' "Radical Personal Finance". There are a TON of podcasts to chose from. The other day I listened to "The Anarcho-Yakitalism Podcast", by a 16-year-old yak farmer. Seriously?? Really, you can find anything out there. If the internet isn't working, I pop in a garage-sale CD: beginner Spanish, audio book, audio Bible, motivational speaker, or other interesting thing. Sometimes I listen to classical music or NPR. 

What are your dish washing secrets?

It's Linky Friday! Since I'm relatively new to housecleaning, I'm going to post a few links and tips by other bloggers on how to save money on housekeeping supplies.

Homemade Laundry Detergent - Tail Spin Farm

Rose left a comment on the RH Facebook page: "A little vinegar in hot water goes a long way towards making windows shiny clean - hardly ever remember using windex growing up..."

Are You Cleaning Out Your Own Wallet? - Mr. Money Mustache (warning: some bad language on this site! But he makes a good point.)

DIY Natural All-Purpose Cleaner - Wellness Mama

DIY Dish Soap That Actually Works - The Hippy Homemaker

DIY Natural Stovetop Cleaner - Sara @ Me, Redone

Whew! Can't wait to try these on my next cleaning day.

How do you save on household cleaners?