This section is devoted to concoction items to make your life easier without costing a lot of money. Commericial products are on the market for a lot of these things, but I don't like to use weird sounding chemicals in my house. I think the homemade items are better for my pocket, the environment, and me.

I make this for my own use and would never go back to the store bought stuff.

To make your own lemon extract, peel the yellow part off of 2 lemons...do not include any of the white bitter stuff (its called pith). Chop the peel up fine so that you have at least 4 Tablespoons of the yellow part. Put it in 1/2 cup of vodka mixed with 1/4 cup of water. (If you think it's alot of alcohol, check out the commercial stuff) Let sit for at least 2 weeks (I used an old jelly jar). This will yield about 3/4 cup of Lemon Extract, which will keep for about a year. Strain before using.

If you would like to give some as a gift, make some curly lemon peel pieces, place them in a small jar (quilted jelly jars are nice) and add the strained extract you've made.

1 can tomato soup
1 cup sugar
1 cup oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. celery seed
1/2 tsp. pepper

Put all ingredients in a deep bowl and whip with an electric beater. You can use a wire whisk if you have a stron arm. Put into a bottle and keep in the refrigerator. This will keep for months.

When we did the price check on this, the commercial product was $3.59 and the same amount of the homemade cost $1.39!

If you have pets in the house, namely dogs and cats, it's a given that at some time or another you will be blessed with fleas. They get into the carpets and the fibers of your furniture and they hurt when they bite.

You can buy expensive sprays and flea bombs that do work fairly well, but I don't like to use that kind of chemicals in my home. The following solution is much cheaper...and it works quite well.

Mix together:
1 cupful of plain BORAX (usually sold as 20 Mule Team borax in the stores here)
1 cupful of plain TABLE SALT
1 cupful of plain BAKING SODA

Stire these three ingredients together really well and then sprinkle this over the carpets and furniture before you go to bed at night. Next morning, you can just vacuum it up.

Repeat every couple of weeks until you are sure all of the flea eggs have hatched (they lay them in the fibers and it takes several weeks for all of them to hatch out) and you have sprinkled them.

This mix works by drying up the body fluidds of the fleas. I used this when my kids were quite small. I didn't feel I had to worry about the babies getting something in their mouth or on their hands that was harmful.

Fido needs a mattress for the winter? A couple of old area rugs from the house can be recycled into a comfortable doggy bed. Fold them over and place them in the dog's house. If you have concerns about fleas, put some of the homemade flea powder between the folds of the rug. The dog will get the benefit of the flea powder, but doesn't have to get its drying effects directly on his skin.

If the dog needs an insulated bed you could do the following. Take a couple of old fuzzy coat linings and stitch them together to make a bag. Fill with Styrofoam peanuts (a good way to recycle them) and stitch the bag shut. Dust the bag with a little of the flea powder and wish Fido "sweet dreams".

1/2 cup CREAM OF TARTAR
1/2 cup BAKING SODA
1/2 cup WHITE VINEGAR
1/2 cup SOAP FLAKES (example: Ivory Snow)

Combine the cream of tartar and soda, add the vinegar and mix very well. Add the soap flakes and stir to make a soft paste. Apply to a stained aluminum pan and scour with very fine (400-grade) steel wool, rinse well. Keep the remainder of the paste in a small jar with a tight fitting lid. This will remain useable for 1 to 2 years.

(I mixed this up using just Tablespoons of the cream of tartar, soda, and vinegar and used a scant 1 1/2 teaspoons of the soap. It worked really well and I was quite pleased with the results. I didn't want to mix up a whole big batch...cream of tartar is sort of expensive and I hesitated to make that much for starters.)

The grade school crowd is into stickers of all kinds. They collect them and want to stick them everywhere. Mom can go into sticker shock when she sees the price of just a few of the things. You can make your own quite easily. Enlist the help of the kids with the picture cutting part. That way, they get what they want and you save the $$ for the things they need.

Mix together 2 parts white glue and 1 part vinegar. Paint the mixture on the backs of pretty pictures cut from magazines, seed catalogs, etc. Let them dry completely. Package them in recycled envelopes for the kids. They can lick and stick to their hearts content and it costs just pennies.

Most everyone has a favorite scent for perfume or aftershave. I also am aware that in the case of many of the designer scents, there is a whole lineup of expensive, matching fragrance products. An easy one to Make-It-Yourself is the simple dusting/bath/body powder.

All you need is a box of cornstarch ($1.25) from the grocery store and your favorite scent. Put about 1/2-1 cup of the cornstarch in a glass bowl. Use anywhere from 1/4 teaspoon of your favorite scent for a light scent to 1-2 teaspoons for a fairly strong scent. The cornstarch will get lumpy, but just keep stirring it around until all of the lumps are pretty well gone. Spread the scented powder out on a foil lined pan and let the alcohol in the perfume/body wash evaporate. Then, put the powder in a sieve or some kind of sifter and shake or stir through to break up any remaining lumps.

Pour into a pretty container and enjoy. This is a really nice gift for some of the grandmas that have the old-fashioned colored glass body powder boxes. You might check at the discount store perfume counter for a nice new bath powder puff to go along with the powder.

2 cups plain tap water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon citric acid powder
1 teaspoon lemon extract
Few drops grapefruit oil

(The citric acid powder is foundin the canning section of the supermarket and is used in canning tomatoes. I got my grapefruit oil at the health food store but have since found that it can also be obtained through bulk spice dealers as well.) The alcohol in the lemon extract kills bacteria, the citrus oil is a cleaner as is the soda and citric acid.

My recipe costs about 20 cents for 16 ounces or 40 cents a quart. The commerical fruit and vegetable wash comes in at $5.94 per quart. Cost to make a gallon of the homemade version is under $2.00. To purchase a gallon of the commercial product will lighten your wallet by $23.76.

1 cup white vinegar
1 cup Whisk liquid laundry soap
1 cup household ammonia
1 cup tap water

Combine in a spray bottle (recycle one if you can) and spray on the stained garment. You may need to scrub the mixture into the cloth with your hands a bit. Wash at once. This is not one of those spray and forget combinations...and my 12 year old's favorite t-shirt is proof. It had a stain so I sprayed it, got called outside to help with some work and forgot the thin for several hours. I tossed it in the washer when I got back and...the stain came out...and so did the color! Oops!

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"PennyWise" does not assume responsibility for the advice given. It is up to the reader to determine if such advice is safe for his or her own given situation.