DIY Life

My oldest daughter was a great little artist. She loved to draw with markers and crayons, and whenever she could get her little paws on an ink pen, she would get artistic and draw not only on the paper, but all over her body and any clothing she had on.

Ink stains no longer have to be difficult to remove from your precious clothing, thanks to an awesome article that I found on Tipnut.com. The author gives us 10 ink stain remover methods for your laundry. Along with great tips to follow before you remove the stain, such as testing in an inconspicuous place first so that you don't ruin the fabric, there are 10 ink stain removers that should remove any ink stain from your stained laundry.

Funny thing about men: when it comes to choosing what to wear, you can be just as vain as most women. Surprisingly though, unlike women, most men have no problem wearing those same clothes with the 'just-slept-in-look'. For whatever reason -- cultural, spiritual, X-chromosome deficiency -- men don't like to iron.

Here's why you should make the effort:

Wrinkles can make clothes look cheap, and the way you dress speaks volumes about who you are as a person. Let's face it, clothes talk. Whenever you enter a room for the first time, it takes only a few seconds for people you've never met to form perceptions about you and your abilities. You don't have to utter a word; people peg you one way if you're dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, slacks and a sports coat, and yet another if you're wearing any style in a wrinkled mess.

Back when I was regularly paying $20 for a large box of Tide, I'd grumble to myself that there must be a better way. And there is! When I switched my baby from disposables to cloth diapers, I had to do a lot of research on how to get them diapies clean without leaving any residue. Along the way, I discovered there are lots of super-affordable and eco-friendly alternatives to get your laundry clean.

My fav discovery so far is this detergent "recipe", spotted on the website for Sunshine Diapers, a Florida-based cloth diapering supply company run by a work-at-home mom.

Being a frugal person, I am always trying to save money. I can't stand wasting my dollars on things that I can only use once before I have to throw it away. I cut my dryer sheets in half so I get two loads of fresh smelling laundry instead of one. My clothing smells just as nice as if I had used an entire sheet.

How about eliminating the dryer sheet altogether? You can eliminate fabric softener by adding 1/4 to 1/2 cup of vinegar to your load of laundry and amazingly, it works. It also means that your clothes are odor free. If you like a nice smelling garment, TipNut has an excellent article with instructions on how you can make lavender dryer bags that can be used over and over again.

All you need is some cotton muslin or cheesecloth squares, some thread and some lavender. Sew your pieces of cloth together, throw in some lavender, and finish stitching up the bag and you are ready to dry some laundry. Best of all, when the lavender no longer has smell, you can crush it up and drop it on your carpet. Then when you vacuum, you'll have nice smelling rugs. I am so going to try this awesome idea! How about you?

In some areas, school has been in full swing for a month; in others, it only started last week. Either way, it's safe to say that plenty of college freshmen are just getting the lay of the land. Some have no idea what their major will be. Others know exactly what they want to do: design stuff.

Core77 has created a guide called Hack 2 School, for all those incoming design majors. It's worth checking out because, while its specific focus is industrial design, it has plenty of useful material for all art and design students, and even some ideas that will be appreciated by college students in general, like those for laundry, living in small spaces, and making good meals with few ingredients.

We all know that wool is warm, nice to look at and nice to wear. It is not, however, nice to wash. Wool is easy to shrink, easy to let get moldy, and just plain easy to ruin. What is the answer to the wool washing woes?

Tipnut.com has compiled a detailed tip list (imagine that) of how and how not to wash your lovely woollies. With tips ranging from water temperature to how to make sure you get it dry enough to prevent mildew, this list seems not only helpful but fairly extensive.

There are several tips on the best way to wash wool. Squish, don't squeeze or wring. Lukewarm to cool water is best, never hot. Our best household friend here at DIY Life, vinegar, even found its way into the wool friendly tips.

They also tell you what not to do. Did you know that baking soda could ruin wool? I didn't. Never use a hot iron, again, didn't know that and never, ever hang it dry or leave it to soak. From what I gathered these instructions are mostly referring to hand knit items.

Do you our lovely readers have any additional tips and ideas for washing wool? Or do any of you wool clueless reads, like myself, have any other questions? If so please leave your tip or question in the comments.

I tend to be a pack rat. I save everything. Well, of course I will use that someday. My husband always asks what I am going to do with that. Lately, when he asks if I can use something, the word yes always come out of my mouth, even when I mean no.

For years, I have been saving all my old bed sheets. I have quite the pile stacked up in my linen closet. I decided to do some searching to see if I could come up with some ways to reduce my pile and I found a list of 20 things to do with old bed sheets at Simply Thrifty. I knew of some of the ideas from my childhood and have used many of them as an adult. My parents used to cover all our garden plants and our grape vines with old sheets. My mom would take old bedsheets and the clothes we had outgrown and make rag rugs. I used to use them as a ground cover when I wanted to tan, as grease rags, cleaning cloths, dust rags as curtains and valances. At this very moment, I have a folded sheet hanging from Savana's window over the blinds so that I don't get woke up at 5 am just because the sun shine woke her up.

Join me after the break to see the list of bed sheet uses.

Have you ever forgotten your laundry in the washing machine overnight during the hottest part of the year? Have you inadvertently left damp clothing in your car's trunk or at the bottom of your hamper? Or worse, have you left wet clothes hanging on a clothesline only to have it rain on them, keeping them wet overnight or for a couple of days? If so, you probably know how musty and sour your laundry can become. Such circumstances can produce a pretty funky stink, and could ruin your good clothing.

If you have encountered this, you probably have also noticed that simply washing (or re-washing) the clothing doesn't always make that sour smell go away. It seems to get into the very fabric itself. Having found myself in just such a situation before, I experimented with a strategy to rid my clothes of the stench for good. All it takes is a little bit of hydrogen peroxide, and a little attention.

Wash your stinky clothes as usual, detergent and all, but add to the load about a third of a cup of peroxide once the machine is filled with water (otherwise you risk bleaching part of your load). I have found this works best in hot water, and as for the amount of peroxide, you kind of have to play it by ear. Larger loads (or particularly offensive-smelling smaller loads) will require a bit more peroxide, but a third of a cup has done the trick for me.

After the wash, make sure you thoroughly dry your clothing, or else the same problem will likely come back. Once dry, smell the formerly-offending bits, and if they still stink, you can run another wash -- this time without the need for detergent -- with a generous amount of peroxide. Also try using vinegar to fix it.

If this still doesn't work, then unfortunately it might be time for a new wardrobe.

I love laundry starch. It makes ironing so much easier. However, store-bought starch often can damage old linens or have a synthetic that does not decompose. Good news: it's super easy to make homemade ironing starch with natural ingredients that easily decomposes.

1 pint cool water
1 tablespoon corn starch

Dissolve corn starch into water and put into spray bottle. You can use other starches as well, but corn starch is most convenient. Also, the best kind of corn starch is organic starch since it doesn't have the extra chemicals that come with generic corn starch.

Regardless of what starch you use, make sure to shake before each use to redissolve the starch. If you don't plan on using it often, make small amounts or refrigerate the unused portion; however, make sure to let the mixture return to room temperature before you use it. See? I told you it was easy.

A great way to prove your independence when you go off to college is to show up wherever you go in fresh, clean clothes instead of rumpled togs that look they've spent a week at the bottom of the hamper. Staying on top of your laundry situation isn't very difficult and doesn't require a whole lot of expensive supplies.

Forget all those fancy laundry balls, ionizers, and other gadgets. All you need is a plastic laundry basket, some inexpensive detergent, a stain pre-treater, and some hangers. With the right tools and a few good habits, laundry day can be a snap.

I don't like folding my clean clothes, especially my shirts. To attest to this fact, I have a laundry basket sitting in the corner of my room that's literally overflowing with clean, but incredibly wrinkled t-shirts. Each morning, when I'm wasting time ironing that day's shirt, I think to myself, "if only I'd take the time to fold these darn shirts, I wouldn't have to waste my time ironing them every freaking morning. Why won't someone invent a shirt folding robot, and end my miserable plight?!" Unfortunately, the good people at Honda have yet to respond to my letters asking them to teach Asimo how to fold t-shirts, which means I'm stuck doing this tedious job manually for the rest of my life... or am I?

When I came across this video from Dan Pereda earlier today, demonstrating how to build and use your own t-shirt-folding machine, I nearly fell off my chair. It seems as though Dan has created a simple folding mechanism out of little more than foamcore and duct tape, and in so doing has solved one of the most pressing problems of all-time.



I can't wait to go buy some foamcore, and build one of these machines later tonight. I bet I can burn through my entire basket of t-shirts in less than an hour! Woo hoo! My life is finally complete! Thank you t-shirt-folding machine! THANK YOU!!!

A few years ago, I vacationed in a house full of chain-smokers. When I made it back to my own non-smoking home, I found that all my clothes smelled like I also smoked at least a pack a day. I like my friends, but not that smell! Multiple washings did nothing, and Febreze only helped a little bit, so I turned to Google in despair. I soon found a solution that seems nearly foolproof.

Many people already know that white vinegar in a small bowl will remove smoky or musty odors, and that you can put the bowl on a closet floor or shelf if those odors happen to be stuck in your coats and jackets. What many people do not know is that, if you put white vinegar in your wash water at the beginning of a laundry load, it will both freshen and soften the clothes being washed. The scent of vinegar will have miraculously disappeared by the end of the wash cycle, but everything will smell very clean. You don't need much vinegar: a half cup is sufficient, a full cup is plenty, and exact measurements probably aren't necessary. Don't forget to add your usual detergent, too!

You'll find more reasons to add some white vinegar to your laundry routine after the break.

Summer is always a challenge in our house. I am a Work at Home Mom which means once those school doors shut for the summer months, I am knee-deep in kids. My home currently rattles, nay thunders, with the foot stomps of a 14 year-old argumentative boy, a 10 year-old she-diva and an almost 3 year-old whirling dervish boy. Keeping them occupied and out of trouble is a full time job in and of itself. One way I have learned to cope with this is a Summer Chores List. Or SCL for ease.

The SCL might be something my kids have come to dread, but for me it is a hands off way to get some work in on my keyboard and the dust bunnies off the living room floor. Following is a simple way to figure out what needs to be done and just who can do it:

It happens to the best of us. You run a load of laundry through the washing machine with full intention to put it in the dryer as soon as its dry. You go back three days later to find a soggy smelly mess that needs to be rewashed. Once you rewash and dry the clothes you find that the washer still has that funky smell. How you do clean the washer when simply running obviously wasn't enough?

I found an easy cleaning answer. All you need is white vinegar, baking soda and a washer full of hot water. Add three cups of white vinegar and 1/2 cup baking soda to you washer that has been filled with hot water. (no laundry this time).