Hershey Bar Multiplication

It's gimmicky and product-focused, yes, but this Hershey's Milk Chocolate Multiplication Book that we checked out of the library was a VERY fun way to introduce the girls to multiplication arrays!

The book mostly shows rectangles of Hershey chocolates set up in arrays--Matt had the girls do the same along with the book, then threw in some new ones for them:

They also did multiplication with grouping:

As you can see, they more or less got the idea!

Of course, we'll be doing the arrays and grouping with tons of other less edible stuff, too--pattern blocks, Cuisenaire rods, coins, counters, stones, and whatever else we find--but the kiddos were just as thrilled as I'd thought they'd be to play around with candy. I was also thrilled to note that they really didn't eat very much of it--certainly not an entire Hershey bar each, and I think that there were a total of three Hershey bars in play during the project. So much of the joy of candy is simply the access to it--PLAYING with CANDY!!!--and also the pleasure of touching it, smelling it, looking at it, and manipulating it into different patterns. Tasting the candy is pretty great, as well, but when you're getting so much stimulation from all those other aspects, then I think that it takes a great deal away from the need to just shove it in your mouth and keep shoving it in.

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Wood Painting and Soap Carving

a round-up of non-toxic methods to paint and seal wooden toys

and a tutorial on setting up a soap carving activity for your kiddos

A TARDIS on a T-Shirt

Along with my lovely TARDIS laptop sleeve, I also now have a freezer paper stenciled TARDIS T-shirt, once again putting something geeky onto one of the very few plain items of clothing that I own (even the pants are affected--I have a pair of jeans with a TIE Fighter on them, a pair of cargo pants with a volcano on them, and a pair of shorts with a starry constellation on them):

I asked Matt to take some photos of me wearing my new shirt, but then I immediately got busy forming no-rise baguettes out of very sticky bread dough--

--so I'm afraid that this is all the modeling you get!

I have two more fangeeky projects ready to be done this week:

1. freezer paper stenciling a TARDIS onto a baby gown in preparation for a baby shower next weekend, and 
2. writing the entire Gozer the Traveler monologue onto the back of my thrifted Ghostbusters T-shirt.

And, of course, there's homeschooling and making dinner and doing my writing gigs and prepping for a road trip, etc., but all that pales compared to geeky fan art!

Chess Bag

We do not have a complete set of chess pieces; instead, we have what seems like a dozen incomplete sets of chess pieces. When we play, we organize them like "I've got the darkish pieces, and you've got the light-ish ones," or "I've got the browny ones, and you've got the reds," or "I've got the big ones, and you've got the tiny ones."

Will used to keep all her pieces in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag, until I finally got embarrassed enough about watching her cart a dirty plastic bag of mis-matched chess pieces to chess club and tournaments, surrounded by those kids with the competition-style chess sets and the private chess tutors, to sew her up a bag for holding chess pieces that is worthy of my own little chess-playing kid.

The pattern for the bag is as simple as it could get--it's just my drawstring bag tutorial, sized up to match that big old Ziploc bag that I was pretty happy to throw in the trash. The real fun came in finding a stencil of chess pieces online, cutting it out of contact paper and ironing it to the bag, and then having Willow paint it:

We both ended up VERY pleased with our efforts:

And then off it went to chess club!

Propagating the Wandering Jew

It's the plant that keeps giving!

I can't even tell you how many years ago I bought my original Wandering Jew, at a garage sale no less. It's the perfect plant for our house with its dearth of windows, since it doesn't require a ton of natural light--with a diet of more natural light we'd have flowers on our Wandering Jews, but even without it we still have happy plants that need to be repotted every year.

My favorite thing about the Wandering Jew is that it takes exactly one plant to create an entire household of potted plants. They are SO easy to propagate!

When a Wandering Jew gets really long tendrils, and also starts looking a little puny, I pinch off each long tendril and plop it into a Mason jar of water:

The plants will happily grow in their water for months, with you just remembering to refill the jar regularly, but really, as soon as those tendrils have roots, you can do this: 

And that's four new potted plants! After these start to look happy and growing in their new pots, I'll do the other method of propagating the Wandering Jew--with wire cutters, snip a paper clip in half, then use the u-shaped curve of each half to pin a tendril of Wandering Jew to the soil. When that tendril begins to form roots into the soil (and it will!), clip the piece away from the main tendril and remove the paper clip; this will fill out the plant.

THE Summer Pastime

Never mind about the toys.

All my children need to be happy, at least in the summer, is a Wading Pool of Unusual Size:

They pop in and out of this behemoth all day, every day, in swimsuits, play clothes, various states of undress, and occasionally in no clothes at all. They add more water using the hose, scoop water out with buckets, splash each other, swim, play ball and ponies in it--for extra fun, add soap! 

It's reminded me again of how little my little girls still are, and how they thrive, still, in such open-ended, exploratory play. I've made it a point this week, as we've started school back up, to also set out each day a large, messy, process-oriented creative project for the girls to engage in at their leisure.

Yesterday they painted our front door. Today, I think I'm going to get out the woodworking supplies.

My Latest Over at CAGW: Sticky Jar Labels and Recycled T-Shirt Dresses

a tutorial on removing the paper labels and sticky glue from glass jars

and a review of the Lil Blue Boo Recycled T-Shirt Sienna Dress pattern

Of course, sewing new things for two little girls is simply an excuse to go to the park and have a photo shoot!

I think I'll be making a lot more of those T-shirt dresses. 

The Ubiquitous Turtle Sandbox

So, about that de-stashing...

My kids are funny kids, in that they don't play with a lot of their toys. They play with all their toy horses, big and small. They don't play with any of their other toy animals. They play LEGOs sometimes, and blocks sometimes, if I bring them temptingly out. They don't play with any of their three Playmobil sets, all major purchases for special occasions. They play with their bikes and their scooters.  They don't play with their dollhouse or their toy barn. They play with their jump ropes and their pogo stick. They don't play with their Beyblades or Hexbugs. They play with their stuffed animals. They don't play with their wooden swords and shields, or their dress-up clothes. They play with some of their games and puzzles, but not others.

Frankly, it has me baffled. If I could discern a pattern, I'd be happy to buy them only what I knew they'd play with, but I'm so far clueless. And I can't even go by what they want, necessarily: Willow pined for that special Playmobil pyramid for over a year before I finally found it on sale (and still it was expensive!), and she loves it, but has she played with it? Nope!

If y'all have heard me say once that we're on a tight budget, y'all have heard me say it a million times, so I'm not ashamed to tell you that I find it upsetting when I stretch our money to buy my kids a special gift, or even just use our regular spending money to buy them something ordinary at a garage sale, and they don't play with it. At the same time, a good toy is a good toy, and I hate to get rid of, say, the Beyblades and Hexbugs and the wooden swords and shields even though they're not played with, because they're great toys that I could see the kids really getting into, if they ever do.

Nevertheless, of course things have got to go, and every summer I agonize over sorting out the children's things that they've aged out of, that I don't think they'll ever play with, that might as well be re-homed while they're still in good shape, since the kids don't love them. This year, while going through their belongings and deciding that all the toy animals can stay, but that the stuffed animals that they're not actively playing with regularly can go, that all the wooden blocks and the LEGOs and the Geomags can stay, but that all the big cardboard blocks and the plastic ball pit balls can go, that most of the board games and puzzles can stay but the baby-ish ones can go (goodbye, Uncle Wiggly!), that the Playmobil sets and the dollhouse and barn can stay, but that all the dress-up stuff except for their wooden sword and shield sets can go, that only the handmade dolls and doll clothes can stay, and that the kid-sized wooden table and chairs can go, I came upon the girls' old turtle sandbox--who knew I still had THAT?!?

Willow played in that sandbox as a baby. Sydney played in that sandbox as a baby. They played there together as toddlers, and then I must have forgotten about it, because it hasn't been out in years. And, mirabile dictu, sitting right next to it in the garage was a big bag of sandbox sand.

It was an act of faith in setting that sandbox up instead of setting it aside for our garage sale. It's a pain to set up and a pain to tear down, and you have to remember to put the lid back when you're done, and the grass will die underneath it as it's too heavy to move, blah blah blah, and who knows if my kids would even want to play with it, really, even though they said they would? However, as a free-form toy, out in the outdoors, it counts for me as a "good" toy, and that's what ultimately got it its new summer home in the side yard.

So Matt set it up, and immediately one kid wandered over--

--and it wasn't long before she'd lured her sister over and they were deeply immersed in their imaginary play:


I'm attempting to build some parameters--a Collection Development Policy, if you will, for you fellow Library Science degree holders--about what possessions I buy my children, especially since it's so hard for me to let the children's things go if I've already acquired them. Here are a few ideas I've gleaned so far, although nothing complete:

• NO to play sets, wooden or not, high-quality or not
• NO to dress-up clothing and costumes
• YES to more play silks
• NO to more LEGO sets or add-ons to any of their building sets, unless they begin to show more interest in them
• YES to active toys and outdoor toys
• NO to new and different art supplies, unless they begin to show more interest in the variety of art supplies that we already own
• YES to more games and puzzles
• NO to "toy" anything--toy kitchens, toy doctor's kits, toy tools
• YES to real tools
• NO to more toys that have specific methods of play, such as Beyblades and Hexbugs
• NO to more craft or science kits, unless they begin to show more interest in completing the kits that they already own
• YES to fine coloring books, maze books, and other high-quality activity books

It's hard for me to fight my desire to give my children the widest range of experiences possible, including a multitude of high-quality toys, with the facts of our budget and our lack of space. I comfort myself with the plan to use some of the money that we make selling many of the children's things to buy Willow a real pocket knife, and Sydney some more play silks to dye, and the both of them a few more puzzles. 

Oh, and spending money for Disney World...I'm sure NOBODY will be tempted to buy the kids any more crap they don't need at Disney World, of all places. 

...ahem.

New Blue Tablecloth

It wasn't until AFTER we completed the Great Room Switch that I realized that this, my children's former bedroom, my current study/studio, is REALLY small. I mean really small. It's basically an enlarged hallway with a closet.

I've been used to working in my former study/studio, now my children's bedroom, which was larger and also completely stuffed full with many upon many shelves and bins of stuff, stuff that simply won't fit tidily into this smaller room, stuff that now spills out messily onto the floor and sits in piles and makes me feel like a hoarder and an awful person.

All this is to explain, of course, why I have been stash busting so single-mindedly this year. I've been listing random bits of extra supplies in my pumpkin+bear etsy shop--

--sewing the girls entire wardrobes of summer clothing from a few years' accumulation of awesome thrifted T-shirts, and finishing up projects that have been long dead in the water.

For instance...do you like my new tablecloth?

I strip pieced it sometime in 2011 entirely out of blues from my stash fabric, most of which was given to me by other crafters getting out of the sewing game over the years, then decided that I hated it and folded it away and stuffed it in a closet.

Nothing gets stuffed away in this new tiny room, so last week as I was attempting to pull something else out of the same space, a bunch of crap fell out (and it's still on the floor), including this pieced top, and I thought, "Hmmn, why did I hate that? I love it now!"

Does that ever happen to you? It happens to me enough that it's now a thing--if I make something and hate it, I just have to put it away for a bit and the next time I see it, I'll love it.

I backed it with plain blue fabric, also stash, stitched and turned it, quilted it, and set the table:

I'm not perfectly happy with it; I think because of all the different types of fabrics that I used in the top (I attempted to get all cotton, but since I don't know the provenance of most of this I'm thinking that I mixed a lot of cotton and cotton blends together, and of course a lot of slightly different weights), it simply does not lay flat, but instead is lofted and rumply and, well, quilted:

It does make the table look comfy and homey, however, like having a picnic on a quilt outdoors. We're on a brief hiatus from schoolwork right now, so I haven't yet decided if, when we begin again next week, I'll want to roll the tablecloth back from our work surface or finally get around to making the Waldorf-style painting boards that I've been contemplating making for...well, my children's whole lives, likely.

I Let My Kid Get an MRI for Fun: The Child Scientist Program at Indiana University

One of the fun things about living in a university town is that graduate students love to conduct experiments on our small children. The first experiment that Willow did, she was a baby sitting on my lap in a dark room in the Cognitive Studies department, wearing a teeny little headset that tracked her eye movements as she watched stuff on a computer screen--I don't know exactly what stuff, because I had a hood on my head so that I couldn't react, myself, but she seemed to enjoy it.

Willow has conducted experiments to test her memory, her ability to name familiar objects (except for the photo of a crib--she studied it for a while, then said to the grad student, "little cagey box?"), her overall vocabulary, and her ability to estimate numbers. Syd has conducted several experiments to track her slight speech impediment, as well as the same vocabulary and math experiments that Will did at her age.

If you don't live in a university town, yourself, it might seem a little weird to shuttle your kids over to campus a few times a year to have experiments run on them, but nearly everybody here does it, and the Child Scientist program is actually pretty great. The grad students that we've worked with have always been excellent with little children, really upbeat and friendly and engaged; for Willow, especially, who went through a long phase of being extremely--I don't want to say shy, because she wasn't timid, but she just did NOT want to interact with adults--whatever she was, it was terrific positive reinforcement, because these young adults playing with her were just so nice that she couldn't HELP but engage with them, and even Syd, who did go through a shy and clingy phase, loved interacting with these friendly adults who really wanted to play with their interesting little toys with her.

The experiments are also valuable for the medical information that they provide. Will's vision experiment came with a complete eye exam--I have miserable vision and insurance that doesn't cover eye exams, so I was glad to have it for her. All of Syd's speech experiments came with complete speech evaluations, which our insurance also doesn't cover, which were, again, absolutely free, and which were crucial to obtain, since she did have a speech impediment.

The best part for the kids, though? The stuff! When the girls were little, they got to pick out toys at the end of each experiment; now that they're older, they get cash. Poor Willow, who is left-handed, is ineligible for most experiments now, since they mainly call for right-handers, but Sydney has aged into some pretty awesome experiments that have a pretty awesome pay-out. A couple of months ago, I took her in for a math and vocabulary evaluation (the grad student asked Sydney to define "vacation", and Syd said, "That's where you drive a long time in the car and you get to eat fast food"), and at the end of it, Sydney was handed twenty bucks. We went straight to the toy store from there, and Sydney came home with several new toy horses.

This month, Syd went back for the second half of the experiment. First, she got to play in a "practice" MRI machine. Then, she was set up in the practice machine to rehearse the experiment several times. Finally, she was set up in a real MRI machine; the grad students alternated between telling her stories and asking her math problems, the answers to which she was to tap with her finger while staying quiet and still, while they scanned her brain. At the end of the experiment, she was handed THIRTY dollars and this:

Here's a picture of Sydney's brain:

Not only do we now have a great picture to frame for her room, and we have evidence that her brain is beautiful and perfect, but we're also starting a study on brains/geography when we get back to our regular schoolwork next week, so now we can do our labeling not on an image downloaded from Google Images, but on an image of my own kid's own brain!

Oh, and about that cash? It BURNS in Sydney's pocket, which is why we headed straight to the toy store after that first experiment. But Matt took Syd to the second experiment, and after it was over...

He took her to the gas station.

To buy candy.

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Business Cards and Business Cards

a tutorial for making business cards out of recycled papers, with stitching instead of glue

 and a tutorial for substituting fabric scraps for that recycled paper, and top stitching the business info on

Transit of the Sun

You knew I'm a bit of a space buff, right? It's common knowledge in our little family that I am thwarted in my every attempt to witness any event of astronomical significance. Solar eclipse? Cloudy. Lunar eclipse? Cloudy. Meteor shower? Cloudy. Once, when Matt and I were dating back in college, I dragged him out to the middle of a field a few miles outside of Ft. Worth to view a comet (among other nefarious plans), but since then, I've viewed most significant astronomical events via streaming webcam.

Finally, however, Matt rehabilitated his reputation for ruining space for me by coming with me and the girls to the top story of a parking garage next to the university (I love these odd little nooks that we find to enjoy the sky from!), where the university's astronomy department was hosting a viewing party.

There was, of course, a LONG line to look through the telescopes, but fortunately the top floor of a parking garage, cleared of cars, is actually a pretty terrific place for a couple of kids to play:

The astronomy department also gave us something that is my new most very favorite toy ever:

Funny little glasses, eh? And what can you do with those?

See? My most favorite toy ever!

After off-and-on periods of huge clouds, during which we all held the line very patiently, Venus was at the perfect point in her transit as we finally reached the telescope--away from the edge of the sun, fully evident as the amazing phenomenon that it was:

Even my nice camera, even with a sun filter, isn't capable of photographing the transit--Venus is simply too small, and though it's visible to the naked eye, it's completely overwhelmed by the sun's light--but my nice camera, with its sun filter, and with much playing around with digital filters in Lightroom (just like the REAL astronauts do it!...sort of), IS capable of taking some excellent and interesting photographs of the sun:

You can see the corona really well in this photo:

This one gives you a better idea about the color range:

Sort of a combination photo, also with a good corona:

This one pulls out a lot more information about the available light than is available to the naked eye, although I couldn't get rid of the green tone:

This one is my favorite, because the color is the most realistic, while still keeping the extra evidence of light that allows you to see the larger corona:

And now that Matt has given up his jinxing of all my attempts to view astronomical events, the summer's meteor showers are looking up, as well!

Cooking from Pinterest

I left my parents' home with zero cooking ability. In college, food that I cooked for myself consisted of 1) Ramen noodles, 2) Minute Rice with Velveeta melted onto it, and 3) Minute Rice with a can of vegetables mixed into it and Velveeta melted onto it. Later, I discovered how to make myself a salad, and for seasoning I'd sometimes empty a Ramen noodles flavor packet onto it and crumble up raw Ramen noodles on top of it for the crunch.

When Matt and I started living together and he'd take a turn cooking, he'd make 1) fettuccine noodles with olive oil and a hamburger on the side, 2) fettuccine noodles with olive oil and a smoothie on the side, and 3) a hamburger and a smoothie.

We'd also order a lot of pizza.

Although I cook much better now, it was such a frustrating process to learn, and every lesson that I taught myself I wish that I'd been taught as a child. For instance, it was a long time before I learned that dinner is made more easily, and will taste better, if you figure out what you're going to make before you're standing in the kitchen at 5:30 ready to make it. It was a long time before I learned that a trip to the grocery store will go better, and be less expensive, if you figure out what meals you want to make, and what ingredients you need to buy to make those meals, before you go. It's taken a long time to be able to know what foods go together well in a stir-fry, or a soup, or a casserole. It took SO long, and a series of messages with my aunt, to finally understand that there's a certain KIND of potato that you're supposed to use to make a baked potato that tastes good. It's taken a long time to simply stop cooking with Velveeta, if you must know.

Blogs, cookbooks from the library, and messages to my aunt when I'm stuck in the middle of something are what have taught me how to cook.

Setting aside a regular time in the middle of most days to prep for that evening's dinner, put something in the crock pot, or simply bake muffins or cookies or prep snacks, are what have made me feel successful as a cook, and helped me stop hating the chore.

It also helps that now Matt knows enough in the kitchen to start dinner when the girls and I are out, or finish dinner when we're in, if I give him very specific instructions and don't mind the times when he mistakes fresh mint for fresh basil, or fries the roasted red pepper dip instead of the falafel. Of course he can make dinners from start to finish, too, but he simply doesn't have the time to devote to it that I do.

Anyway...all this intro was simply to tell you that I LOVE Pinterest for recipes! I have the following highly organized (it's a fun outlet for my Library Science degree's obsession with organizing information) recipe pinboards:

• Recipes to Try: I try a few of these a week, then either move them to one of my permanent pinboards or delete them.
• Our Favorite Family Foods: Raging successes go here.
• Crock Pot Recipes
• Vitamix Blender Recipes
• Canning, Dehydrating, and Other Methods of Preserving
• Carrot Cake Recipes: Carrot cake is Matt's favorite!

The girls and I cook from my pinboards, especially the ones with new recipes, pretty much daily. Here are some of our latest forays from just the past couple of weeks:

No-Knead Bread: I love this recipe even more than the one that I used to make.

Carrot-Ginger Soup--It was a mistake to serve this as an entree, even with these rich cheesy breadsticks on the side, because nobody loved it. I'll serve it again, but only in small bowls with a different meal.

Peanut Butter Balls: Healthy and yum!

S'mores Treats: UNhealthy, but also yum!

Banana Ice Cream: Also healthy and yum! It's thrifty, too, since the food pantry where the girls and I volunteer sometimes gets so many dozens of pallets of bananas that they beg people to come by and grab them. I could fill my entire freezer with frozen chopped bananas and be perfectly happy about it.

In related news, it's been an off-kilter week here, with both girls attending different day camps with different drop-off and pick-up times (not to mention different lunch/snack requirements, different dress codes, and one camp that even has different drop-off and pick-up locations on different days, yikes!), so I'm trying not to feel guilty that I've just written an entire post about cooking and I have NO idea what's going to be made for dinner, nor do I know how I'd make it if I did have a plan, since the sink is full of dirty dishes and I'm leaving for my volunteer gig in a few minutes. But Matt's volunteered to handle both camp pick-ups this afternoon so that I won't have to miss my volunteer shift, so since he's the one who'll be home with the girls this evening, not me...well, dinner's HIS problem tonight, right?

DIY Laundry Soap: An Update

When the girls and I started making our own powdered laundry soap a year and a half ago, people had a LOT of questions, and even more opinions:

• Would it really be cheaper than purchasing detergent?
• Would it really get our clothes clean?
• Would it fight stains?
• Would our clothes become dingy over time?
• Would it ruin my washing machine?

Today, 18 months later, I've got all the answers.

1. Is making our own powdered laundry soap cheaper than purchasing detergent?

Yes and yes and yes! Although I haven't kept track of how often we wash how many loads, I will tell you that in early January 2011, I purchased one box of borax, one box of washing soda, one tub of Oxyclean, and two bars of Fels Naptha; that, plus baking soda, is what I use to make our laundry soap, sometimes using my homemade bar soap instead of Fels Naptha. I've been using only homemade laundry soap since I started, and I gave a Mason jar full of homemade laundry soap away at Christmas, and I haven't run out of any of those original supplies yet; price the cost of those supplies in your area, estimate how much laundry I might do for my family of four each week, and you can get a pretty good estimate of what you'd save.

As for me, I'm thrilled. When I first started making this soap, I estimated that it would cost 3 cents a load--for me, it actually costs SO much less when compared to purchasing conventional detergent.

the kiddos making a big batch of laundry soap last week

 2. Does homemade laundry soap really get our clothes clean?

Yes! No matter whether or not I use Fels Naptha or my homemade bar soap, our clothes come out of the wash clean and fresh. They smell good, and regular dirt and food (oh, those girls!) disappears.

3. Does homemade laundry soap fight stains?

Nope, not at all! Unlike conventional store-bought detergents, this homemade soap seems to have no stain-fighting power. Regular dirt and spills and whatever wash out, but mud, and spaghetti sauce, and other stains that deeply penetrate the fiber of the cloth don't. Fels Naptha does better at getting out grease stains than my homemade bar soap does--I know this because I saw more of that type, in particular, coming out of the washing machine when I used my homemade soap--so it's possible that there's a soap out there that would work really well at stain-fighting, but neither of the bar soaps that I've tried have much to offer in that regard. I'm okay with this, both because I'm saving a crazy amount of money with this homemade soap, and because I can still get rid of the stains completely, but just with a little more work. I treat all stains as soon as the item of clothing is removed for the day by wetting the stain, rubbing a bar of Fels Naptha onto it, and rubbing the Fels Naptha in. I also pre-soak stained clothing for several hours by putting a bucket in the bathtub, scooping in a couple of tablespoons of laundry soap, filling the bucket with water from the tap, and submerging the stained clothing in it. Finally, in the summer I try to hang laundry to dry on the line--not every load, but every few loads, so that everything gets hung dry at least a few times during the summer--to sun-bleach everything.

Mind you, this is only necessary if something is truly stained; most of our clothing, including normal spills and stains, wash out without extra attention.

the jar of laundry soap that lives in the bathroom, used for pre-soaking stained clothing

4. Have our clothes become dingy over time?

Nope, not at all! We have an he washing machine, and I'm pretty militant about clean rinsing, anyway, so I put vinegar in the rinse agent compartment every time I wash, and I set my machine for a second rinse every time, as well. I don't know if that's the secret, or it's our water quality, or what, but nothing is dingy, not even our whites.

5. Has homemade laundry soap ruined our washing machine?

Most of the criticisms that I've received on my posts about my homemade laundry soap have had to do either with dingy clothes or broken washing machines. A lot of people seem really afraid that homemade laundry soap will ruin a fancy he washing machine. If homemade laundry soap had ruined my washing machine, I'd totally tell you, but our machine works fine. Mind you, Matt occasionally cleans out that pipe thing that runs from the washing machine to the wastewater pipes, because we have such pathetically crappy plumbing that we have to really be on top of its maintenance if we don't want to pay to have our main line unclogged every month, so if that's the part of the machine that people are worried about then it does get cleaned regularly (which Matt would do even if we used conventional laundry detergent), but since I've never really heard what people specifically think could happen to a washing machine that uses homemade soap, and I've never heard from anyone who actually had their washing machine ruined with homemade soap, all I can say is that ours is fine!

Conclusion: I'm really happy with our homemade laundry soap. If I learned of a recipe that claimed to fight stains better than ours does, I'd try it out, but I wouldn't consider going back to conventional detergent.