Elizabeth Smith

Hi, my family just moved to our off grid homestead with a 2 and 1 year old. It's wonderful, chaotic and beautiful. We are all living in a one room cabin and I (mom) am doing laundry the old fashioned way. I've got a couple funny things to say about it, and I'd love it if people added their little bits of humor as well.

Things you DON'T say when you live in a one room cabin with kids:
Go to your room
Can you talk louder?

Things you DON'T say when you do laundry for kids off grid:
This dinner would be great with turmeric
Now is a great time to potty train

Looking forward to hearing from other moms and dads with young ones

Thanks so much everyone for the suggestions so far! I went and got some Bronners and tried using that for personal care/laundry/dish soap. With my current 'city' water it worked great on dishes, ok with personal care and meh on laundry. I think I just need to remember that there will be a different standard for clean laundry off grid! Someone posted about borax for a laundry booster and as long as it's ok in grey water and not toxic I'll give it a go and see what happens.

David, I have tried black soap for shampoo and I liked it, but I'd rather find a product that does more than just shampoo....unless you know something I don't!

Ghislaine de Lessines, I love the suggestion about tallow! I went to a butcher and bought some suet so I could try making it, and it was super easy and I've really enjoyed cooking with it because the smoke point seems to be really high. I tried it as lotion and it technically worked really well, but it still has a slight meaty smell which I'm sure I could cover up with essential oils, but I prefer things to be unscented. Any suggestions?

I also started researching the pidbea, and I'm very interested.

Wow, so great to see that this article has a lot of replies because this is also something that I have been struggling with. I recently found something that has been fairly successful for me, using 100% whole wheat sourdough starter. I have looked at recipes online, but I have the best luck with just following my intuition and experience as all starters are different. I will say a long ferment and a wet dough seem to be important.

I just use sourdough starter, whole wheat flour, water and salt. It can't get much easier than that! Tastes fantastic with honey and olive oil on top! Yields light, airy dough (never thought you'd hear that about 100% whole wheat!)

Nice! Have you used Bronner's in your laundry? Does it work well with cold water? We will have a grey water system, so is this soap ok to spill directly onto our soil?

Hello! As my family prepares to move off grid and much more remote in a couple months (something we can all celebrate!) I am starting to build my DIY staples for house cleaning and beauty supplies. I only want to stock things that can be used in lots of different ways and have as little redundancy as possibly. For example, I see lots of recipes that use shea butter and mango butter. Do I really need both? I know there are lots of threads with recipes, but I'm looking to consolidate.

Things my family will need:
Home
-Dish soap
-Laundry soap
-Spot stain remover
-multipurpose cleaner

Personal care
-Lotion
-Shampoo
-Tooth paste

Here is my pantry staples list so far:
Baking soda
Vinegar
Cocconut oil

Bonus*****anyone have suggestions for replacing these with things that I can actually produce on our north western homestead?

Has anyone used a seed pillow? I'm wanting to make one for someone, but I have a few questions:

Does it make lots of noise?

What seed did you use? Buckwheat? Hemp? Other?

I love the idea of adding dried lavender, but would it just break down into dust overtime?

How long do the seeds last? Can I just put them in the sun to sort of recharge them?

What pillow case did you use?

Thanks!!

Rebecca Norman wrote:Washing the pot was a disincentive to using local grains, but I found a solution. I have some single-serving size covered steel containers called tiffins in India.

Measure and mix the porridge, water and other ingredients in each tiffin. Bring a half inch of water to the boil in the pressure cooker, then stack the tiffins and close it. Simmer at pressure for however long, then pull out the tiffins (wearing a thick rubber glove helps). If you eat right from the tiffins you only have to wash them, not the pot.

I saw something like this in the thread about pressure cookers! This seems like an awesome way to make a pressure cooker even more efficient! Might be time to update my ever growing 'wish list' haha.

I like your ideas for reusing the cutting boards! I would need to find a way to store them in between uses so I did not have 4 cutting boards on my counter all the time.

Has anyone used nettle as an allergy remedy? Did you purchase a product or forge it wild? What preparations work the best....or was it even effective at all?

Has anyone tried making their own Miso? My husband has been begging me for a long time to figure it out but I've always brushed it off saying that I thought it look lots of specialized things and that I probably would be no good at it. What are your experiences? Is this something the novice fermenter can accomplish?