MaeLyn's Musings

I'm not usually one to make an $800 expenditure on a whim, especially when money has been so tight... but what else do you do when your washing machine breaks down? Yesterday, I was washing my normal load-a-day of laundry, and at one point the washer sounded a little odd, but I just thought it was slightly off balance or something. When I went to transfer it to the dryer, the clothes were still dripping wet - and obviously dirty! I ended up rinsing everything out in the sink, scrubbing a few spots by hand, wringing it as dry as I could, and then sticking it in the dryer. In the bottom of the washing machine there remained several inches of dirty water. I tried messing with the controls, putting it on spin cycle, hoping that would drain it, but it didn't, and I noticed an odor, kind of like my hair dryer smells sometimes, like an electric burning smell. My guess is that the pump that pumps the water out burnt out. I eventually managed to figure out how to drain the old machi...

Due to financial concerns, several months ago I started making my own laundry detergent. I received the recipe in a Relief Society meeting, and next time I ran out of laundry detergent, instead of buying more, I purchased the ingredients for the homemade stuff, which all together, was cheaper. What's the recipe? Well, it is posted in several places on the internet so I don't know who to credit with coming up with it, but here it is: 1/2 C. Washing Soda (It's like baking soda, but I found it in the laundry aisle at WalMart.) 1/2 C. Borax (I actually already had this at home because it really helps when trying to get out ink stains.) 1/3 Bar of Fels-Naptha Soap. (This is good laundry soap, other recipes suggest Ivory, or other types of soap.) Grate the soap. Heat 6 C. water and then add the grated soap and stir until the soap is melted. Add the washing soda and Borax, then stir until the powder is dissolved. Remove from heat. (One recipe I found suggested letting ...

It's funny how you don't really appreciate something until you lose it, but it is true. Oddly, the opposite is also true - you don't really realize how bad something was until it suddenly becomes wonderful. I have been having trouble with my dryer for months. It usually took 2 - 2 1/2  hours to dry a load of laundry, and then suddenly, even that wasn't doing it. At the end of the cycle, the clothes were still wet and I had to run it a second, even a third time to get completely dry. Also, the dryer started making loud squeaking noises every time the drum turned. A couple months ago I strung up clothes lines, because clothes got dry just as fast (and a lot more quietly) drip drying as they did in the dryer. Then the weather got cold and hanging clothes outside resulted in things like this: Steven was an angel and tried to help. We tested to see if the dryer was getting hot, and it did seem to be hot when I tested it after it had been running a few minutes, but ...

This morning when the kids awoke, I heard an early moan. "I don't have any pants to wear" two of my children groan! This fills my heart with much dismay - I just washed laundry on Monday. Do my kids not have four pairs of pants? I try to find some, but I can't. I know that most of them received pants for birthdays recently.  Do clean pants into the hamper go? They haven't been dirty from rain or snow. Do their pants have holes from crawling the floor? That's never stopped them from wearing before. So away to the store I must go today To buy more pants so my children won't say...     "I have no pants to wear today."