The FullCircles Blog

I am a freak about my litter boxes.  With 3 cats wouldn’t you be?  I clean my boxes every 2-3 days and I have found that I have been able to extend the life of the boxes using this green cleaning trick.

Simply sprinkle baking soda into the litter tray then add vinegar.  Let it fizz and then wash away with water.  Added bonus is that its green, it gets rid of the acidic urine smell and doesn’t add to it.  Your kitters will love you because cleaners offend their scented sensibilities.

How does this extend the life of the box?  Most of us use clay based litter unless you use some of the green alternatives/wood chips, clay litter will leave a residue on the bottom of the box.

If your box already has this residue try soaking the boxes for around 1/2 an hour and you will be amazed at how much of that stuff it will take away.  I have soaked 2 boxes 3 times to achieve a total clean.

Why bother adding baking soda to the box?  When you scoop the poop and clean the box regularly you shouldn’t have to use additives to keep the smell down.  The combination of vinegar and soda will eliminate those odours every time you clean!

Shelby Cooper is the Cheap Chick with Cheap Green Cleaning Tips

Sixty-One Uses of Baking Soda

via Sixty-One Uses of Baking Soda.

Posted by Amy Kuras on February 1, 2011 at 12:46 PM

While the economy is, allegedly, improving, many people have found themselves downsizing. Sometimes it’s a necessity. Their income has declined and they have to adjust to the new normal, but other times it’s something they do because they want to simplify and scale back the consumerism.

There are people following this all over the Internet to the point that it’s something of a movement. Buy Nothing Day on the day after Thanksgiving, a San Francisco group who made a promise to buy nothing new for one whole year, and a New York City blogger who pledged to not eat out for one full year. Which, if you live in New York, would be like going on a fast in the middle of a posh buffet.

The latest is a guy named David Hochman, who pledged, along with his wife and young son, to go a month without spending any more than $100.

They excepted their mortgage, utilities, and their son’s preschool tuition, but everything else, and I mean everything else, including gas and even Internet access, fell under that $100 spending limit.

They ended up discovering the wonders of Freecycle and the magic powers of baking soda, white vinegar, and hot water, and found that some of their more frugal habits stayed with them. Instead of rushing right out to a restaurant or loading up on groceries, they actually stayed home and entertained themselves with time they would typically spend shopping or on the computer.

Cutting back, whether on purpose or because circumstances demand it, does make you think a lot about what you spend and why. You may find that much of what you are currently spending your money on doesn’t actually make your life more fun.

Would you go on a spending fast?

via Family Who Lived on $100 a Month Spills the Secret | The Stir.

Image via Wikipedia

I have to wonder why I never knew how great a box of baking soda and a container of white vinegar could be.

This one is so simple that this post will be one of the shorter ones;-)

To free a drain and make it flow better, this is a Cheap Chick trick you can use every 6 months or so.

Pour baking soda into the drain. Pour small amounts of vinegar and let the scrubbing bubbles do just that until they stop and add a few more drops of vinegar.

Continue until the scrubbing bubbles stop and, voila – free flowing drain!

Brought to you by Shelby Cooper, the Cheap Chick!

I have actually worked this experiment for quite a few months.

Two miracle cleaners that you probably have in your home and don’t realize the potential of are vinegar and baking soda.

Baking soda and vinegar combined create a chemical reaction that actually does what the “scrubbing bubbles” claim to do in that bathroom commercial.

There are several ways to use vinegar and soda to clean your oven. The first time I tried this I just sprinkled the soda into the bottom and poured the vinegar on top. It worked great.

But, I had to address how to get the stuff up on the sides and on the top. So this week I tried again using a condiment squirt bottle.

I added the vinegar and then the soda and while it was reacting I was squirting it into the oven. End result was that it worked.

This is not the same as using oven cleaner and I can’t claim that it will make short work or is any more effective. The one thing you have to remember when green cleaning is that elbow grease and ingenuity are the added ingredients that get the job done.

However, overall, you don’t have to use rubber gloves and even though vinegar can be an overpowering smell the end result is that you won’t expire from the fumes.

For a severely soiled oven I suggest letting the ingredients soak for a while. I was simply amazed when the stuff in the bottom of the oven more or less just wiped away!

Shelby Cooper is the Cheap Chick!

Does it bother anyone that you paid extra for that green product only to find out that it didn’t work the way you thought it would? Sure bothers me. I just bought “green” dryer sheets;-(

I have been experimenting for a while now on laundry products to find out what works. Guess you know what I’m going to say next…a lot of it doesn’t work well at all.

So, here’s a Cheap Chick tip for people who want to get away from chemically laden dryer sheets or the need to run to the rinse cycle to add softener.

To soften your clothes while washing add about a 1/4 – 1/2 cup of vinegar to the load. No your clothes won’t smell like vinegar, you may even find them fresher. You don’t have to add it in the rinse, just at the beginning. To boost your detergents efficiency you can also add a 1/4 cup of baking soda which will also soften and freshen your wash.

But, the cheapest, cleanest, anti static dryer sheet that I have used so far is a piece of aluminum foil! That’s right, aluminum foil… No your dryer won’t blow up and no it won’t start receiving radio signals but, you will be able to use that piece of aluminum several times and your clothes won’t be static when they come out of the dryer!

I have been using aluminum foil for months now and the one time I deviate to try a new green product I went back to my home made green clean…so much for that $4.69! I can buy 4 rolls of aluminum foil and a pack of gum at the dollar store for that price…shame those sheets ended up in the garbage…at least they are biodegradable;-)

Shelby Cooper is The Cheap Chick!