I'm Gonna Wash that Cost Right Outta my Budget!

Home Made Laundry Detergent

One of the things that Linda and I must do in order to survive out in the desert is to keep our expenses to a minimum. One of the ways we can accomplish this is to find ways to make things for less expense and less effort than purchasing the completed product.

Our latest adventure is in home made detergents.  We recently found several recipes on the Internet for making your own liquid laundry detergent.  The basic components of these recipes were all the same:

• Borax
• Washing Soda (Sodium Carbonate)
• Baking Soda (Sodium Bicarbonate)
• Laundry soap (usually in bar form)
• Water

These ingredients were combined in various ways and in different amounts to yield different volumes of detergents at different strengths.  If you omit the water, you can make a powdered version, as well. 

Linda prefers liquid detergent.  I was wanting to make the powdered version because it's much more compact without all that water, and weighs less.  To me, that's a step toward "living small" and frugality.  However, since Linda is the one who handles the laundry chores in our marriage, she gets to pick the tools she works with. The liquid detergent will dissolve easily in cold water, which is another way to reduce cost.

Additionally, we have to use "free and clear" detergents since the regular ones irritate Linda's skin. The recipe we use doesn't add any artificial dyes or perfumes, so it's naturally "free and clear."

The recipe we wound up using only makes 2.5 gallons of detergent, but it is ULTRA-, MEGA-, ÜBER-concentrated. The recipe says to use 1/3 cup in each washload, but we've already reduced that to 1/4 cup and we're using 1/3 cup only when we're washing my grungy, garage "play clothes."  Yeah, it's THAT concentrated. The super concentrated quality of this recipe satisfied my desire to do more in less space, so I'm cool with it.

Assembling the Ingredients and Tools

It seems that the availability of these raw ingredients varies from area to area and even store to store. My recipe uses the following components:

• 1 bar of Fels-Naptha laundry soap (or any other laundry bar, such as Zote)
• 1 16-oz box baking soda
• 1 c borax
• 1 c washing soda
• 9 quarts of water

Here are some links to Amazon.com if you just want to order online:





I was able to find these at my local Wal-Mart store for substantially less than what Amazon is selling it for.  However, if your local stores don't carry these, you can get them.  If you do order online, please use the links above since we get credit for the sales.

In addition to the ingredients above, you'll need:

• an 8-quart (or larger) pot
• a 3-gallon (or larger) bucket with a tight sealing lid
• Plastic cooking spoon for stirring. Wooden spoons can absorb the detergent.
• Cuisinart with grating attachment, box grater or sharp knife 

Putting it all Together

1.	Grate the laundry soap. The finer the grate, the faster it will dissolve during the next step. If you don't have access to a box grater or a Cuisinart with a grater attachment,  you can shave the soap with a sharp knife. It will look a little like shredded Cheddar cheese.
2.	In the large pot, add the grated soap and 1 gallon (4 quarts) of water. Dissolve the soap over medium heat.  It is very important that you stir it with the spoon slowly.  You don't want to create suds. Do not allow the mixture to boil at any time.
3.	Combine all the dry ingredients into one container.  This will make it easier to add it in increments in the next step.
4.	Once the soap has fully dissolved, begin adding the other ingredients 1/2 c at a time, making sure they fully dissolve before adding the next component. Continue to stir slowly. Repeat until all the dry ingredients have been incorporated.
5.	Continue slowly stirring to be sure that all the dry ingredients have dissolved.  Skim off any foam that that forms.
6.	Slowly pour the hot mixture into the bucket.  Again, you want to avoid agitating it.  You want to keep from creating suds if possible.  Unfortunately, I was not successful and made suds.
7.	Slowly add the remaining water (5 qt) to the bucket, stirring slowly.
8.	Cover the bucket tightly with its lid and allow to cool overnight. The mixture will thicken to a gel-like consistency.
9.	If you have foam that settles to the top of your soap, you can mix it in several times while it cools. This will melt some of the foam into the detergent. Once it has cooled overnight, if there is still foam left, you can either mix it in and shake your detergent before you measure it, or skim off the foam for a nice, translucent-yellow detergent.

After it cooled, we transferred it from the bucket into old detergent bottles that we give a shake just before we measure it out. You can fit most of it into three of the 100-ounce Tide bottles.

The Cost Breakdown

Assuming a standard measure of 1/4c per load, this recipe will yield about 160 loads.  At 1/3c for heavily soiled loads, it will yield about 120 loads.

Here's the breakdown of cost:

Item Name	Vol per Container	Cost per Container	Batches per Item	Vol per Batch	Cost per Batch
Borax	76 oz	$3.50	11.18	6.8 oz	$0.313
Washing Soda	55 oz	$4.25	4.91	11.2 oz	$0.865
Baking Soda	16 oz	$1.00	1	16 oz	$1.000
Fels-Naptha	5.5 oz	$1.00	1	5.5 oz	$1.000
Water	9 qt	$0.00	1	9 qt	$0.000

Added together, this comes to $3.178 per batch.  If we divide by 160  loads, we come to an astonishing

1.9 CENTS PER LOAD!

Wow.  Now, let's look at your average bottle of Tide.

On WalMart.com's web site, they sell a 100-oz bottle of Tide (64 loads) for $11.97.  That comes out to

18.7 CENTS PER LOAD

So, by making your own you can

save 16.8 CENTS PER LOAD over Tide!

Yeah, it's cheaper, but how does it clean?

In our testing, this stuff cleans exceedingly well.  We did a test wash of a load of whites.  Our whites don't get really grungy.  They're just underwear and undershirts. We were really surprised when the water turned gray/brown.  It was far darker than when we use regular detergents. I would say that it cleans at least as well as Tide, if not better. When washing my "play clothes," it easily performs better than the other detergents.  It not only cleans, but does a good job at removing the grease, too!

Conclusion

By making our own detergent, we can save quite a bit of money, and we have the peace of mind in knowing that there are no dyes or strong perfumes in it. Since there are many other uses for the raw materials, we can keep them on hand for other projects and take one more step toward being off the grid and being independent from "the system."

The Zombies are Coming

I'm sure I'm not the only one who will blog about this today.

This morning, at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," this nut job pulls a gun and starts shooting the crowd.  As of this writing, 12 are confirmed dead, and many more injured.

When captured by the police, he claimed that his car and apartment were booby trapped with explosives.  It seems that he just made it look that way to make the police waste their time.

What happened to this guy to make him completely lose his mind?

Recently, a man in Florida chewed off half of a homeless man's face, and didn't stop even after being shot several times by the police. He apparently was high on some drug. 

We have children and college students taking guns to school and going on shooting sprees, because they are depressed or are social outcasts.

What is this world coming to?  I don't know, but this seems to be signs of the coming collapse of our society. I blame it on our government.  We coddle our children.  We allow aberrant behavior. We seem to value the "feelings" of the perpetrator more than those of the victim.


What do we do to fix it?  I think the only way to fix this is revolution.  I'm not talking about guns and armies and death, but simply the fact that we need to just junk the entire government and start over.  Of course, this is a great threat to those who currently hold power, and they will certainly fight against that.

In the eloquent words of Thomas Jefferson:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."

I'd rather find a way to replace our faulty government peacefully.  Unfortunately, history teaches us that revolutions like that are exceedingly rare.  So, if guns and armies and death are what is required to fix it, so be it.

We need stronger and more "final" penalties. The media keeps referring to this guy as a "suspect" and "alleged shooter."  For cripes sake!  There are hundreds of eye-witnesses.  There is absolutely 0.000000000000% chance that this guy is innocent.  Honestly, I think for things like this, we need to bring back public hanging.  "Cruel and unusual," you say?  Well, I bet if we had more public hangings, people would think twice about doing this stuff if they were guaranteed to swing rather than guaranteed three squares and a college education that, since they are locked up for life, will be completely useless.

I don't have much else to say about this - I'm just saddened that our great country has declined this far, and am scared at the possibility that the end of our great nation could occur in my lifetime. So, it's time to get serious about learning to be self-sufficient and frugal, since it seems that those skills will be in demand in the coming years.

My heart goes out to all those who have lost friends and family to these......


ZOMBIES.

We are Google, We Don't Have To.

How Small Fry Get the Shaft

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, AT&T was a national conglomerate phone company.  They effectively had a monopoly on all long distance, and since local phone companies had no competition, there were often abuses done to their customers, and we just had to "take it."

Lily Tomlin created the character Ernestine for the TV Show Laugh In in the late 1960s.  Over the years, she reprised her role several times, playing the snotty, nosy telephone operator that would make veiled threats to customers and was generally annoying.

One of her most famous lines that has stuck with me all these years is "We are the phone company, (snort, snort) we don't have to."

Well, after the big AT&T breakup in the 1980s and the addition of local competition from cable companies and cellular providers, the phone company is no longer the 800-pound gorilla that it once was.  As we all know, nature abhors a vacuum, and Google has decided to be be an 800-pound gorilla on the Internet.
 
I'm sure all of you have seen the ads that are on this blog.  One of my goals with this blog is to use it to earn extra income, and hopefully grow my readership to a large enough extent that I can use the income from this blog and my videos to support myself when we move to Texas.

This is a critical thing: I don't want to have to take a J.O.B. out there if I can avoid it.  I want to be able to devote my time to learning about homesteading, setting up, and building my house.  I want to be able to spend all my time with my wife; to essentially retire early, while at the same time, providing interesting or useful content to people on the Internet.

Well, the key do doing this is advertising.  So, I signed up with Google AdSense. They have a very strict policy about fraudulent click activity.  In fact, about a month after I created my account, I was told that it was disabled due to fraudulent activity.  I later found out that a few friends were clicking on my ads to "help" me, but it really hurt.

Google won't tell me specifically what led to the disabling of the account, just that there was "invalid click activity." I did some research and basically, once Google disables an account, you're basically screwed.  Sure, they have an appeal form, but many, many web site owners out there report that it's a bunch of BS, and that the initial disabling is almost always upheld, and that it's a de facto LIFETIME BAN from ever using Google AdSense again. So, I created a new account in Linda's name and set up the ads and posted a plea to NOT click on my ads.

All was going well, and I was looking forward to our first check issuance from Google.  The biggest source of revenue was my YouTube channel.  It had been steadily growing over the months. I'd get as much as $15/day some days from YouTube. However, you have to accrue $100 in ad revenue before Google will cut a check (or pay by Direct Deposit, as was our case).  I had just crossed the threshold of $100 and would have expected payment in August.  I was excited.  I was gonna frame my first dollar.  I was officially "in business!"

Until the morning of Saturday, July 7, 2012. I got an email from Google saying that my account had been disabled for "invalid click activity." 

WTF!  Right before they have to pay me?  This seemed rather convenient. So, I dug into the Internet again. Well, it's possible that someone was still trying to "help" me, but I doubt it.  Since most of the ad revenue I earned was from YouTube, and 99% of the viewers there do not know me personally, it's likely that Google is using one of their draconian rules to stick it to me.

You see, they have a policy that says that once an account is banned for invalid click activity, that they can subsequently ban any account that is related to it.  Being related to a banned account is grounds for banning!  It's like poison or something.

So, either there were people trying to "help" me again, I had a related account, or someone was click-bombing me.  Google won't say.  They refuse to tell me what activity got the account banned.  Hell, they could have just decided that they didn't like the spelling of my name. Since they conceal their reasons, they could use any reason, and claim it was a "violation."  All they have to say is that there was "a violation," and they can cancel my account.

Of course, this time, I filed an appeal. I filled out their form, and received this reply from their automated system:

Hello, This message confirms that we've received your appeal submission. We'll get to your appeal as soon as we can, though due to the high volume of emails we receive, it may take us up to a week or more to process it. If you've previously submitted an appeal for this account, you might not receive a response to this or future appeals. Also, please be aware that appealing the disabling of your AdSense account does not guarantee that it will be reinstated. If you have any questions or concerns about accounts disabled for invalid activity, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team Original Message Follows: ------------------------ From: theratracelosers@gmail.com Subject: Invalid Activity Appeal Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:53:26 +0000 01_Origin: helpcenter 02_FormType: appeal_form 03_Language: en 04_AdSenseLocale: en 05_IP: 174.101.253.183 06_ctx: 07_Name: Linda Douglas 08_CompanyName: The Rat Race Losers 09_AdSenseLogin: theratracelosers@gmail.com 10_PubId: ca-yt-pub-2071734717702928 11_ExampleUrl: http://youtube.com/user/TheRatRaceLosers, http://www.theratracelosers.com/ 12_13_14_date_day: 7 12_13_14_date_month: 7 12_13_14_date_year: 2012 15_AlreadyAppealed: no 16_OtherAccount: no 17_OtherAccountList: 18_WebAudience: People interested in off-grid technologies, or in automotive mechanics and other DIY jobs 19_UserGeography: I've had hits from all over the world, but the vast majority are in the US 20_UserAccessMode: home, mobile, and office 21_ScrapedContent: NO 22_ContentSources: I create all my content.  Either videos on YouTube or blog posts on the blog 23_NumAdmins: 2 24_UpdateFrequency: At least 2-3 times per month 25_BoughtTraffic: no 26_UsePayTo: no 27_TrafficSources: I promote my site on Facebook, as well as in all the videos on YouTube 28_AdvertiserValue: Persons looking for off-the grid technologies are often interested in other products and services that help in that end -- DIY tech, solar, wind, sites like Lehmans, etc. 29_UserIncentive: Some visitors know me personally.  However, I have told them EMPHATICALLY that they are NOT to click on ads unless they have a real, genuine interest in the product or service being offered 30_ViolatedTerms: No. Never.  We take the TOS for AdSense very seriously. 31_InvalidActivity: I don't know why you've disabled this account.  You won't tell me anything about why it was disabled, so I can't refute or defend or explain whatever it is that your system has decided is "suspect." I can attest that I, nor any person involved in the administration or content production of this site have **NEVER** clicked on any ads. We understand the importance of making sure that clicks are all valid, and we do everything we can to prevent invalid clicks. Please reactivate my account. 32_SuspiciousData: I dont have access to my logs.  My sites are both google properties (Blogger and YouTube), so you guys have more access to that information than I do. AutoDetectedBrowser: Internet Explorer 9 AutoDetectedOS: Windows 7 IIILanguage: en IssueType: appeal_form Language: en

While I waited for the appeal, I did some more research.  I discovered that it can take up to 30 days for an appeal top be reviewed, and that the best way to make sure that your appeal is approved is to follow up every couple days with additional information or proof that your ad clicks were not invalid. So, I started looking at my traffic reports to see what I could glean.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the web logs from YouTube.  Besides that, the log information that shows that a click on an ad occurred will be on the server that served the ad..not my YouTube page.  So, once again, Google has all the cards, and all the proof.  I can't access it at all.

Well, it didn't take long for Google to get back to me. Early on the following Monday morning, I received this:

Hello, Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you've provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program. However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we're unable to reinstate your AdSense account. Please know that, once we've reached a decision on your appeal, further appeals may not be considered, and you might not receive any further communication from us. Note that AdSense publishers whose accounts are disabled for violations of our Terms and Conditions are not eligible for further participation in AdSense. For this reason, you may not open new accounts. Also, accounts disabled for invalid click activity will receive no further payment nor any reissue of previous payment. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. We understand that you may want more information about your account activity. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary detection systems, we're unable to provide our publishers with any details about their account activity. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team

So, basically, Google just told me to stuff it.  No supporting documentation, no logs, no phone call, NOTHING. They could have saved time by saying "We are Google, (snort, snort) we don't have to."

So, my dreams of making money with my videos and blog were dashed.  Or were they?

I started searching for alternatives to Google AdSense.  I found one called AdBrite Exchange.  I signed up and put their ad code on this page.  Unfortunately, the targeting of ads is not as sophisticated as AdSense, so I expect a lower click rate and crappier ads. Bummer.  But the blog has not been the biggest source of  revenue anyway.  It's been YouTube.

Since YouTube is a Google property, small fry like me can only use AdSense for ads on YouTube. This means that I am effectively FOREVER BANNED from making money via YouTube.  So, I started looking for alternatives.  I found Blip.tv.  They encourage regular content from their producers and will allow ads on the videos!

So, I am slowly transitioning all my YouTube videos over to blip.tv. Here's the link to my channel over there.

The Rat Race Losers

I'm still building the new video channel, and thanks to a good friend who is a graphic artist, I hope to have some awesome graphics on that new channel soon, as well as here on the blog. While chatting with him, he said, "Ah, but moving to this new ad system will make the victory over Google that much sweeter. One day, when your site is huge, Google will come to you offering their AdSense service."

On that day, I will be pleased to say "We are The Rat Race Losers, (snicker) we don't have to."