Quick Tip: Go Green, Save $$, DIY Pledge

My bottle of DIY Pledge. Practicin' what I preach!

Let's get honest here. I hate the smell of Pledge. I hate it so much that for years I didn't use Pledge to dust my house with, I just used a multipurpose cleaner, or Windex to dust my house with. And that's all well and good, I suppose, but when I stumbled across this recipe for a DIY Pledge/Dusting Spray and saw that you could add your own essential oils - basically your own scent - I knew I had to give it a try. 

Let me get even more honest... I hate dusting. It's time consuming, and I have to handle a damp, stinky rag and then my hands dry out and get crusty and dust goes flying everywhere and I start sneezing and then the dog starts sneezing... it's a mess. And we live in an old house, so lots of dust accumulates very quickly, especially recently when it's been too warm to run the heaters but not hot enough to run the air conditioner, so I've had the windows open every day with the ceiling fans going... yeah.

I cannot take credit for this recipe, I'd love to, but alas, cannot. I'm going to share with you my biggest secret weapon... my YouTube subscription to a channel called "DoItOnADime." Her name is Kathryn, and she is probably the most amazing youtuber out there. She is my absolute favorite, and I get all excited like a little kid whenever I see a new video from her.  Seriously, she will change your life. 90% of my tricks come from her. She's changed my life. Click the link above and go meet her, her husband Charlie, their son Carson and their doggie Luna! You'll love her, I promise!! She has so many wonderful cleaning tips and organizing tips and recipes and she's a Goodwill/Thrift Store queen....she's amazing. I can't praise her enough. She's a nice enough person that when I message her to tell her I've tried another one of her tricks, she messages back! Big deal for this girl!!

Now, when Kathryn said she used this, I knew it had to be like liquid gold. 

All you have to do is mix:

2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
1/2 teaspoon of essential oil (whatever scent you like. I use lavender, but you could use citrus, or whatever floats your boat!)
1/4 cup of white vinegar
1 1/3 cup of water. 

I just mixed everything in a bottle I already had, and because I have everything on hand that I needed to make this, it cost me absolutely NOTHING.  Money Spent: Zero Dollars and Zero Cents. Now THAT is how you save money!

Give her a good shake and spray away. I use a regular cotton cloth, like an old cloth baby diaper (clean of course) or one of my husbands old undershirts (over time they thin out and he can't wear them anymore, and thats when they become phenomenal cleaning rags), or a nice microfiber cloth (you can get them at the Dollar store). I have found that since I've been using this, dust doesn't go flying around so easily, I don't sneeze when I'm dusting, neither does my Tabby girl, and the best part of all, it seems like I don't have to dust as much. Like it used to be an ever other day thing having to dust my furniture. Honestly, hand to the Bible, I dusted on Friday (we had friends over) and haven't touched my furniture with a dusting rag until today, and really didn't need to. And I have DARK furniture scattered all throughout my house. I love this stuff! Thank you SO MUCH KATHRYN for sharing this on your channel!!


I hope this works as well for all of you as it does for me, and for Kathryn! Give it a shot, and let me know how it goes!!

Thanks for stopping by The Simple Life again today!! Don't forget about my Home Style Evolution series, new posts every Transformation Tuesday! 

Save Money; Skip Fabric Softener

*gasp!* But Missy, I like my fabric softener. I like for my clothes to smell nice.

And I don't??? (that's sarcasm, by the way:)

 Seriously, is there any body out there reading this that DOESN'T like for their clothes to smell nice?

What I'm about to share with you may ruffle some feathers, and may not be well received by some, but trust me on this, it works, and every dollar you save adds up.

This post required a little online research on my part, because I haven't purchased fabric softener in years, and today is Monday, clothes laundry day (who am I kidding, every day is laundry day) at my house, so I figured today would be a good day to share!


So, here's my tip. Ready? Ok. Take a breath, it'll all be fine.

Heinz White Distilled Vinegar

Skip your fabric softener. USE VINEGAR.

Yes. Vinegar. White, distilled vinegar.

Eeeew! I don't want my clothes to smell like vinegar!  It's a valid argument. You would think, as strong a smell as vinegar has on its own, that washing your clothes with it would cause your clothes to smell like a deviled egg. But it doesn't.



I use the same amount of vinegar as I would fabric softener, and add it in at the beginning of my wash cycle, in the same place I would put my fabric softener. The smell is completely rinsed away, my clothes are softer, my towels are out of this world fluffy -even my cheap dollar store towels. I do use the Downey Unstoppables in my laundry, but I am in love with the smell of those wonderful little things, and I buy them (and my laundry detergent, couldn't get the knack of making it myself) in bulk at Sam's Club. So I'm saving some more cash there!

It seems that the vinegar helps keep my white clothes whiter (I don't sort anything, everything gets washed on the cold water cycle and I've only had an issue with color bleeding twice in the 10 years since I was 15 and started doing my own laundry), and my colorful clothes brighter. Reds are redder, blues are bluer... you get what I'm sayin'.

 Vinegar gives you the same effect as fabric softener, and is greener, and cheaper (but I'll get to that. Hang on a titch). I'm not a "green" freak. I'm not into all the environmentally friendly stuff, I probably should be, but I'm not, sorry. 

Vinegar -as some of my coming posts will tell you- is a household necessity in my home. I clean something or wash something using vinegar EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. And it works better than anything I can buy at the store.


So let's do a little price comparison, shall we?

A 51 oz bottle of fabric softener (about 61 loads) costs $3.99 at Target. I do at least 1 load of laundry a day, most of the time two. So 51 oz would last me around a month, maybe a month and a half. In my online research I found up to a 170 oz. bottle for $15.31 on eBay. They say it will last up to 197 loads, doing a load a day that will last you about 6 1/2 months. Or like me, two loads a day, around 4 months.  WOW, that's a deal! Let me go to eBay right now!!! I'll buy it in bulk!

STOP! Wait! I'm not done! I purchase a 128 oz bottle of white distilled vinegar for $2.37 at Save a Lot (typically the big bottles of vinegar are on the bottom shelf at the grocery store, I buy one every time I'm at the store, whether I need it or not, I'm hoarding vinegar.) And how many loads of laundry does it do? Well, as I do around 2 loads of laundry per day, every day, without fail (I wash something every day, clothes, rugs, bedding, curtains, dog beds... my washer runs constantly. I'm a clean freak, what can I say?) my 128 oz bottle that I purchased for less than $3 lasts me 8 months. Yes. 8 months.

(I'd like to add a disclaimer here. I use one bottle of vinegar for laundry and laundry only, and use another bottle to mix my DIY household cleaners etc.)

I saved $12.94 cents and have enough product to add to every single load of laundry for 2 months longer than the 170 oz bottle of fabric softener. $12.94 is a huge amount of money to save, to me anyway! Even if you buy the 51 oz bottle of fabric softener at $3.99, buying the vinegar still saves you $1.62. Either way, you are saving money! And we all know how HAPPY that makes me!!

The best part of this, to me, is that it's hypoallergenic. I have eczema and dry skin so badly on my shoulders and arms and so when I was growing up my Mom was only ever able to use certain kinds of laundry products (I use ALL detergent, because it, too, is hypoallergenic. My husband likes the kind in the blue bottle with the orange top because he says it smells like candy. I say he needs to see a head-shrinker.), or otherwise deal with me scratching my arms and back until I bled. When I started doing my own laundry at 15, we had settled on a brand of detergents from Amway. I used them up until Aaron and I had been married about 2 years, and after a while, with money being tight, I chose to stop using the Amway products because of their expense. I fiddled with different kinds of detergents for a few months until my mom suggested I start using ALL and Vinegar. BOOM! I haven't had an issue with my detergent or fabric softener making my eczema worse in the 2 years that I've been using these products together.


So whether you want to save $13 or $2, whether you have eczema, or whether you just wanna see if it'll work, give the vinegar a try. It WILL save you money and it WILL NOT smell up or hurt your clothes, towels, rugs, bedding etc.


I swear by this method. I will continue to use vinegar as my fabric softener for the rest of my life. It is wonderful, and inexpensive. And who could ask for more?


Thanks for stopping by today!
Happy Laundry Day! (I'm headed back to my mountain of laundry right now!!)

In posting this, I mean no ill will toward any company that produces a fabric softener. I simply have learned to adapt to what I need in order to not itch like a crazy woman, and look like Baloo from "The Jungle Book" scratching up against a tree. The ALL Laundry Detergent company is not perking me for mentioning their product, and neither is Heinz, or Amway. I pulled the photograph of the vinegar jug from Google. Thanks Google. I use whatever off brand of vinegar I can find, because it is cheaper and vinegar is vinegar. Also, vinegar does not expire or go bad. So stock up on it!