Let’s get inventive with paper clips. The wiry little things are more than paper clips when you would rather use your existing belongings in more than one way than buy a new device every time you have to do something. Katie Femia has a list of frugal hacks using paperclips.
 
See Premeditated Leftovers
 

 
Cleaners are chemicals, whether they are safe, natural, or toxic. This means you can look pretty well anywhere to find a chemical that will clean something. Food contains a range of chemicals. That’s why some of them taste so good. For a starter list of foods that can clean different parts of your house, visit Katherine Martinko on TreeHugger.
 
Click and your house will taste good.
 

 
Click for a reader question at Home Ec 101 in which Heather reveals a hidden culprit for clothes fading early: hard water. Up to a point, using more detergent will help, but get your water tested for hardness to see if you need to invest in a water softener for your home. Heather has the details on what kind of water hardness is too much, plus other kinds of problems it may cause.
 
This post is important to the life span of your washer.
 

 
Frugal living means giving up expensive things to enrich your life in ways that money can’t buy. But which spending habits to give up is a decision for each individual or household to make. Nina Nelson is explaining three expenses that are too important to remove from her life.
 
Learn the Art of Simple
 

 
Lauren Singer has been blogging on Trash is for Tossers since 2013. Now she is taking the next step in her conservation journey and launching a natural household products brand, Simply Co. Her first product? So Fresh & So Clean, a laundry detergent containing only three ingredients. She has reached her Kickstarter goal, which will allow her to expand beyond handmaking the detergent in her kitchen, to producing it for a truly influential number of consumers. Because of Singer’s launch, consumers will have more options for changing the world with their pocketbooks.
 
If you want to try some So Fresh & So Clean by February 2015, the Kickstarter project is still accepting pledges until the last week of November. At Kickstarter you can watch Singer’s video and try to learn the names of chemicals that don’t need to be in laundry detergent.
 
Thanks to Margaret Badore and TreeHugger for the news.
 

Have you been to SampleSource.com yet? They send you free stuff, you rate it, and of course sometimes it is housekeeping and laundry related. It looks like every time they receive a shipment of samples, they run out pretty fast. Speaking of fast, Freebies4Mom specializes in this kind of news, so you might want to keep an eye on them directly.
 
Click fast
 

 
Sixty-three? Why do you put in so much work, Jillee? I guess you get really excited about making and reusing things. Jillees advice is common sense when you read it but I doubt many people have thought of all these ideas regardless of how simple they are.
 
Gonna go count?
 

 
You’ve heard that baking soda and vinegar are good non-toxic cleaning agents. You’ve also heard of them going together in a lot of household projects, from fluffy baking to children’s science experiments.
 
This seems to have misled some people to believe they clean well after mixing. In fact, baking soda and vinegar usually clean better individually.
 
Baking soda is mildly abrasive, absorbs smells, and is chemically too basic for some microorganisms to survive an onslaught, including ugly-colored ones.
 
Vinegar is acidic. It kills tiny things. It evaporates quickly and shines glassy surfaces.
 
When you combine baking soda and vinegar, the bubbling chemical reaction might loosen up some dirt. But don’t count on the resulting mixture working after the bubbles are gone in a few minutes.
 
Those two chemicals are like opposites. The bubbling showed them neutralizing each other. Now they’re sodium acetate, too safe to even clean with.
 
So now that you have a better idea as to how to use baking soda and vinegar to clean surfaces, head to Live Renewed for a more detailed explanation. Then pick up chemically sound recipes for homemade cleaners.
 
Science!