Today I made strawberry freezer jam (recipe from the pectin envelope) and all-natural all-purpose / floor cleaner. I blame peer pressure and serendipity. The peer pressure was because all of my friends seem to be eschewing grains and chemicals, making their own foods, lotions, and cleaning products. I’m actually not particularly against chemicals in their rightful place but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to cut down a bit on the harsher or more harmful ones – especially the ones that don’t work very well anyway, as with the Swiffer cleaner I’d been using on the laminate floors here or the anti-soap-scum stuff. (I’m not giving up my grains, though!!) This cleaner actually does seem to work better and didn’t leave my house smelling strangely. (However, it does smell like alcohol – I left the essential oils out because my supermarket doesn’t seem to carry them. Maybe I’ll check Whole Foods. Meanwhile, the cats don’t seem to mind.) Next time I clean the bathrooms, I’m going to try spraying it on, sprinkling on baking soda, and then scrubbing. It also turned out that the velcro-ish strips on the Swiffer mop hold a microfiber cloth in place nicely – I have some very lightweight ones, in a texture similar to dryer sheets, though they are washable and reusable.
The freezer jam was because I did want to get out of the house for a bit, so after going to pick up the alcohol and spray bottle for the cleaner, I was thinking of going to DSW for summer sandals. I’m not really supposed to be spending money on clothes, now, though (despite buying a suit the other day). It’s a gorgeous day, so I decided instead to go out driving on a back road through some pretty scenery, just to be out and around. There was a strawberry place a couple miles up the road, so I went there and picked a couple of pounds, then bought some freezer pectin after realizing I had more berries than we’d eat before they went bad. (We’d just finished a couple of pints of them, and I still have grapes and a pineapple.) It took maybe half an hour and is supposed to keep for a year. I wonder if the sweetness will tone down a bit, though – that’s a lot of sugar!
By the way, it was cheaper to buy a 24-oz bottle of shower cleaner than to buy a 14 ounce empty spray bottle. (A no-scrub cleaner was even cheaper, but that stuff is harsh and I wasn’t sure dumping a bottle-full of it down the drain would be a good idea.) Then it turned out Ted already had a spray bottle stashed away, so I guess now I have shower cleaner.