If you’re not paying attention, you can overwhelm yourself with “simple living.”  You can clutter up your life with so much DIY that you can’t see your way out.  DIY only simplifies your life if you keep your DIY simple.

Pick double/triple duty products.

DIY is empowering and fun.  It’s shouldn’t be overwhelming.  Don’t use DIY to recreate the 75 different cleaning products on the store shelf.  Find a few basic recipes that work across many chores.  It reduces your clutter, your shopping list, and the space it was taking up in your brain.  We’ll be doing a series of posts on these this week, so just hang on a day or so and you’ll have a great list!

Streamline your ingredients.

In our recipes, we use the same oils across all the body care products.  There’s no need to have five different kind of specialty oils for five different products.  Avocado oil, beeswax, shea butter (liquid oil, wax, solid fat).  Every time.

I do the same thing with all my cleaning products.  Either I use the same batch of homemade soap for everything, or I use Ivory.  It’s my laundry base, shampoo, body wash, dish soap, liquid hand soap, etc.  No need to go find the “perfect” soap for each chore.

I also do it for essential oils.  I have three oils that I use for everything (if I use them at all.)  Either it’s a tea tree oil recipe or a rosemary/lavender recipe. I don’t have a cabinet full of options.

Get your recipes all in one place.

Borrow books from the library, write down what you like and send them back.  Or buy the book, write down what you like and stick it in the attic until you need it again.  Or catalog all your favorite recipes on Pinterest.  Regardless, you need to consolidate your DIY recipes into one place. I like to type mine into a word document and print it off for my notebook.

Order once or twice a year.

Figure out everything you use for all your DIY and order it at once. Even if I’m not making soap or sunscreen for six months, when I put in the order for lotion bar ingredients, I go ahead and get the lye and zinc oxide I’ll be needing later.

Do it all at once and make BIG batches.

If I’m going to make laundry detergent, I make enough for MONTHS.  And if I’m smart, I’ll do all the other soap-based products .  While we’re grating Ivory, let’s just grate a TON.  Like the old pioneer homesteads, who made soap once a year, sugared off once a year, put up the hams once a year, I’m not making little batches every two months.

HOWEVER…

If it is your THING to play with herbs and oils, carry on with my blessing.  It’s my THING to research homeschool manipulatives to pieces and you should see how complicated Daisy’s garden is.   (Look inside here at amazon, its the shot from the introduction page.)

So if this is your hobby? Go right ahead.  But if it’s NOT, follow the instructions in the next few posts this week to streamline your DIY for cleaning products, stain removal, homemade detergents, and body care products.