​In spite of the fact that The Hubster and I are longtime members of the Circus of Life, it still doesn’t take a whole lot
to amuse us.
 
Such was the scenario a month or so ago, which began like this:
 
Hubster:  “Guess what I’m going to bring home!”
 
Me:  “Oh, a present?”
 
Hubster:  “Yes!  One of the teachers at school has been making her own laundry detergent.  She told me that she has been doing it for four years now, and that it works better than anything she has ever bought at a store.”
 
Me:  “Really?  She’s going to give us some to try out?  So, it’s all natural, and she’s giving some to us? Wow!”
 
Hubster:  “Yes, she has some waiting just for me!”
 
I’m now a little embarrassed to tell you that yup, this girl clown was pretty darn excited about the detergent. 
 
Once my better half brought this bounty home, I discovered that there was enough of the powdery mix for 10 loads.  Oh, it also boasted tiny bits of lemon peel that made it smell good.  And best of all, yes, this detergent worked better than any commercial product I’ve ever used.  Not only that, the teacher included the ingredient list, which she had also distributed to her entire chemistry class. 

Also, my husband make a point to assure me that this would be easy to make, since “her five-year-old does it all of
the time.”
 
I’m happy to report this is true.   
 
An added plus is that we were able to buy all of the needed concoctions at our local hardware store, although we
were briefly flummoxed by oxygen bleach (we discovered that it’s better known by its more popular commercial name,
Oxi-Clean). 
 
I’d also never heard of Fels-Naptha, but my Ohio-born spouse knew all about it: a dull mustard colored rectangle that resembles a bar of soap, it’s billed as a laundry bar and stain remover, and for this mix, is grated.  In the You Can Learn Something New Every Day Department, I also found out that Fels-Naptha has been around an awfully long time—it debuted in the mid-1890s and is an effective treatment for poison ivy as well.  
 
So right now, there’s a plastic container full of homemade laundry soap on the shelf above my washing machine.  It’s not only budget friendly, but easy to put together and perhaps most important, cleans our clothes (and sheets and blankets and socks), really, really well.
 
I guess that means that I’m now an official member of Do It Yourself—better known as DIY—club. 
 
Defined in Wikipedia as the method of building, modifying, or repairing things without the direct aid of experts or professionals, there appear to be, literally, millions of DIY web sites.  Besides the uber-popular Pinterest and Buzzfeed DIY, you can go to other virtual places for seemingly everything, including making children’s crafts projects; creating an entire wedding, or mixing up home remedies to cure whatever ails you.  Not surprisingly, there’s even a TV network called, of course, the DIY Network. 
 
But I’m also now realizing that I’ve been a DIYer for a whole lot of years and for a whole lot of things. 
 
I routinely make my own baking powder and have also whirled together dishwasher detergent recipes using baking soda and salt.  I’ve removed rust stains with lemon juice and salt, and last week, spent time getting rid of nasty mold in our shower with a spray bottle of undiluted white vinegar, hot water and towels (it didn’t work 100 percent, but the end result was still far better than store bought tile cleaners).  I’ve also just remembered: when The Teenage Daughter was small, I made play dough (easy but easier to go to the 99 Cents Only store), and how about the dozens of book covers I created from brown paper bags?  Does this count?   
 
I’ve also been known to whip up a terrific batch of jam and always make applesauce from scratch.  In fact, most of my DIY creations involve food.  I don’t know if soup from scratch fits the DIY bill, since most of the ones I chop, boil and simmer come from cookbooks.  But I’ve also blended my own mayonnaise and much more frequently, make deviled eggs, gravy and any number of salad dressings, often veering off the path of the original recipes.   
 
I haven’t gone this far yet, but a good friend creates her own dog food from cooked rice, eggs, veggies, fruits and scraps of meat. She mixes the entire concoction together, then spoons it in into loaf pans and bakes it.  Forty-five minutes later, she has about five pounds of canine yumminess, which she divides into plastic bags and freezes. 
 
My next door neighbor goes to even more work when it comes to Tiki, her 26-year-old parrot.  Every three months,
she boils up a batch of five-bean mix, frozen thawed vegetables and rice. It takes her an entire half day to cook this stuff and then put it all together, which includes storing the bird’s feast in small baggies for daily individual servings.  
This seems like a ton of work to me, but she says that there’s nothing store bought that comes close to its taste
and nutritional value.  
 
I’m not saying that everyone needs to find a DIY project.  (Just thinking about this is exhausting.) But, there are enough terrific ideas out there to give at least one or two of them a whirl.
 
After all, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll not only save some dough, but might find an entirely new way of making the ordinary interesting, creative and maybe, just maybe, fun.  
 
What DIY projects have you tried?  I look forward to your comments and stories!
 
P.S.  Here’s the laundry detergent recipe:
 
1 bar grated Fels-Naptha soap
3 cups Borax
2 cups washing soda
¾ cup baking soda
4 ½ cups oxygen bleach (Oxi-Clean)
Optional: about 1 heaping tablespoon of dried lemon peel
 
Gently mix all of the ingredients together, and store in a covered container.  Use 1/3 cup for every full load of laundry, less for smaller loads.   

So, I happened to get behind this van the other day.
 
Even in the smallish beach town where I live, it isn’t unusual to be out and about without at least a few cars ahead on the road.   I don’t usually pay a whole lot of attention to traffic since I’m zipping along nicely and listening to the radio, or more frequently these days, reining in random thoughts about resisting and uniting. 
 
But the little mini-van caught my attention for One Big Happy Reason.
 
Its back end was completely painted with flowers. 
 
Crazy colorful blossoms, too—peonies and roses and crocuses, and one of my very favorites, fat yellow Gerber daisies.  Although I didn’t see the driver’s face this time, I’ve noticed the vehicle around our streets, and the person who’s always at its helm.  She’s a local farmer named Debbie, and her roadside stand occasionally has the eggs and sunflowers I like.  But mostly, her income comes from a floral design company.
 
I haven’t yet had the occasion to do business with her in this way.  But her truck reminded me of how much I have come to need—not merely want—flowers in my daily life.  
 
Probably because my parents worked with an insanely tight budget, there weren’t any store bought blooms hanging around in vases during my childhood.  We did have a struggling lilac bush and pussy willow plant in our big back yard, and white azaleas and pink poppies that bloomed in spring and summer.  However, those branches and blossoms rarely made it into the house. 
 
Making do on an even smaller stipend in college, there weren’t flowers here either.
 
But then, after I moved to New York City, my relationship with flora took a dramatic turn.
 
For one thing, flowers here were, literally, in your face.  There were (and are) vibrant stands
on nearly every corner. 
 
Also, these buds were cheap: for a few dollars, or often less, one or two could be all yours.
 
This meant that even when my roommate and I only had change for a carnation or two (like so many who move to New York, we were poor: Cool Whip containers were our dishes and sleeping bags were our beds), we always had at least one stem in water.  And while we didn’t know exactly why, they always made our empty space feel better.  However, we did come up with a theory: flowers sold well because they made millions of dismal apartments like ours a little more livable.    
​
By the time I returned to California four years later, I had enough dough to buy bunches and bunches of carnations every week at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market.  But I don’t remember having many flowers around when my daughter was tiny; there was just so much to do, not to mention that roaming toddlers, glass vases and cold water aren’t a good mix. 
 
Where I live now is awash in farmland of all kinds; in fact, when I first moved here, one nearby field was a blanket of marmalade colored marigolds for months at a time.  I’d sigh with pleasure when I drove by, knowing how blessed I was to call this home. There are lots of farmers’ markets around, too, and they all have flowers.  And of course, there’s our nearby supermarket, where I recently scored a handful of lemony daffodils. 
 
As it turns out, flowers make most people feel good. 
 
To clarify, I’m not thinking of the extraordinary medicinal power of flowers—that subject could easily be another essay.    
Instead, I’m thinking of the positive way a simple bouquet sways our emotions.     
 
Indeed, a blogger affiliated with a florist in Corvallis, Oregon, reports that flowers make us feel right because they connect us to nature.  Consequently, being in this happy place makes us less reactive to the stresses of the fast-paced environments most of us operate in.  The article also states that flowers’ beautiful colors help reduce anxiety and apprehension—making us feel more grounded, more cheerful, and more inclined to connect with those around us.    
 
A 2005 study at the Human Emotions Lab (now, there’s a place to visit) at Rutgers University went a few steps further. 
 
In a double-blind study, facial expressions of research participants were measured when presented with three different gifts: a decorative candle, a fruit basket and a flower bouquet.  In every case, recipients responded to the flowers with what’s called a Duchenne smile—a heartfelt, “true” smile involving the mouths, cheeks and eyes.  None of the other offerings produced this across-the-board response.  This was also not the expected conclusion; in fact, the expert who created and administered the study had never before seen a 100 percent response rate with any other test.
 
But of course, we don’t really need science to tell us how flowers make most of us feel inside.
 
So, next time you see a bunch of pretty blossoms calling your name, buy them. 
 
They’ll do way more than make you smile.  They’ll also do your heart, and your mind, a whole lot of good.
 
What’s your favorite flower, and what’s the story behind that?  As always, I welcome your comments!