Perfect circles and DIY feminine pads

A few days ago I was talking to a neighbor about the economy.  She and her husband are a young couple.    They've been struggling with finances because she's now unemployed and he's on disability.  I've taken her under my wing and teaching her some of the things I do to save money.  We've been talking about alternative cleaning supplies and cooking from scratch.  She wants to learn to sew and how to can foods.  I'm very happy to teach her what I am able to do and at the same time she's teaching me a few things that only young people seem to know these days.  Things that my senior mind doesn't understand.... like how to get digital cable channels on my tv.     

I was explaining my thoughts to her about saving money.  If it can be bought, it can be made from scratch.  She would ask about something and I would explain the alternative DIY item.  Well, the subject of feminine pads came up and how expensive buying them has become.  After explaining how when I was young we didn't buy pads, we made pads from scraps of fabric, she decided to give that a try.  How did it work? 

Well, things are much different today than when I was as young.  We used safety pins to hold our pads in our bloomers.  I came up with an alternative she's happy to learn about and try.  I thought someone else might be interested too.  This has become my neighbor's first sewing lesson. 

I went through my sewing stuff and came up with what we needed.  We needed something that liquid would not soak through.  I had this curtain liner fabric.  It has a plastic side and a flannel side.  Other types of  fabrics to use could be old shower curtains or maybe the fabric from an old umbrella.  I cut two 7 1/2" squares which is all that's needed. 

I also had these t-shirt fabric scraps we could use.   I cut two 7 1/2" squares of this.

Ok, time to teach her how to sew a perfect circle.  This technique will work great for someone who doesn't know how to sew.  I got the duct tape and a single flat thumb tack. 

Push the thumb tack through a piece of the tape from the sticky side.

Go to the sewing machine.  Remove the presser foot.  Put a ruler next to the needle, measure out from the needle 3 1/2", and put a pencil mark there.

Take the thumb tack and place it on the pencil mark.

Stick it down like this and put the presser foot back on.

Get the t-shirt fabric square, fold it into quarters, put a small dot at the center point. 

Now pair the t-shirt fabric with the curtain fabric, flannel side in. 

Push the fabric squares onto the thumb tack at where we made the center dot.  Put the fabric under the presser foot and sew.

This makes a perfect circle of sewing.... but stop sewing leaving about a two inch gap.

Trim off the extra fabric leaving about 1/4".

Turn inside out, fold in the unsewn part, and sew about 1/8" from the edge all the way around.  The thumb tack won't help with this because the size has changed.  We could have moved the thumb tack but we didn't. 

Now fold this circle in half and make a mark on the fold at both sides.  This is where you can either sew a piece of velcro or place a snap.  We chose velcro.

 

Put one piece of velcro on the top side at one mark and the other piece on the under side at the other mark and sewed these on.

Fold it matching the velcro or snaps if you use those.  It should look like this.  Those are the wings.

Now make 4 marks on this at the folded edges.  About 1/2" from the outside edge.

The four marks should look like this.

Now we needed some elastic.  Well, it need not necessarily be elastic.  It could be simply a piece of folded binding or even just a strip of fabric.   I just happen to have elastic handy so we used it.

We cut two pieces of elastic for each circle.  Just a smidgen larger than the distance of the marks.

She sewed these with a zig-zag stitch, going back and forth a couple of times.

Now it looks like this when the velcro is matched up.   This is the pad holder. 

The pad itself is whatever a person wants to use.  For her, we used some scrap cotton batting put through a wash and dry first to shrink it before cutting to size.  The pad can actually be any scrap fabrics.  Left over t-shirt fabric, ugly quilt fabrics, flannel, muslin, old sheets, old bath towels..... just give it some thought.  The fabric should be absorbant and soft. 

The pads we made from scrap batting were cut in different size pieces.  2" by 7" for light days.  Doubled to 4" by 7" for heavier days and 12" by 7" for the heaviest days.  This used up some of the smallest pieces of scrap batting that previously were hanging around doing nothing.  These can also be disposable if she doesn't want to wash them.  She plans to wash her pads even though I've assured her I always have an abudance of small strips of batting.  Everytime I trim a quilt to add binding I get more small strips.  Well, anyway, that's why I pre-washed the batting.  It needed to be pre-shrunk before cutting the pieces. 

If using other types of fabric you would need to think about the thickness and absorbancy for different types of flow.  Cut the fabric to the right sizes for folding.   Why folded instead of sewn into the shape?  For washing and drying convenience.  A thick folded and sewn fabric takes much longer to dry than one not folded.

 We made her two pad holders in case one should need to be washed during her cycle.  It can be hand washed or put into the next load of laundry.  It dries quickly. 

If anyone does emergency preparedness you might want to make some of these for your emergency kits.  I'm sure the women in disaster areas, like earthquakes or floods or hurricanes or wind storms, would love to have some of these when stores are no longer open.  Hmm... I wonder if anyone thinks of making these to send to disaster areas instead of just sending comfort quilts?  Do disaster teams take pads to hand out along with water and food?  Does anyone know?  Please tell me by leaving a comment.

As usual, this tutorial post is printable if you want to print it and share it with your friends.  Just click on the print button.

Just thinking

My house is located along the flight path of airplanes leaving our airport.  I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of what sounded like a very low flying airplane going over the house.  How odd it sounded.  Either it was a very slow moving plane or there was more than one of them leaving back to back.  After getting up, I realized it was just the wind.  Really strong wind!  We had dodged the snow and ice but we were getting lots of wind.  I went back to bed hoping to  get some sleep despite the sounds.

I also had a thought on my mind and don't know where it came from.  Probably my frugal mind working over time looking for more ways to save money.  My thoughts might have something to do with what I heard on the news a few days ago..  The news story was about someone suing YUM brands over saying their Taco Bell beef was beef when it really contained lots of fillers and extenders.

Anyway, while laying there listening to the wind and doing my best to go back to sleep.....it occurred to me.... if a person buys one of those 1/3 pound fast food angus burgers and pays 5.99 for it; then that means they are paying $18 a pound for the ground beef.  Hmm... how's that for a great reason to make your own burgers at home? 

Would I even consider paying $18 a pound for ground beef at the grocery?  No way!  Would you?  I cringe just knowing I'm paying more than double the amount I paid for ground beef a couple of years ago.  I was used to getting ground beef for 99 cents a pound, or less when it was on sale, but now days the best I've been able to do is $2.49 a pound from the discount bin every now and then.

Give it some thought next time you go the fast food route..... how much beef is really in that burger?  Is the beef full of fillers and extenders?  Take a look at that $1 burger you can buy from the dollar menu.  It probably contains one ounce of ground beef plus extenders.  Well, suppose it doesn't have any fillers and extenders; you're still paying somewhere about $16 a pound for that dollar menu burger.  I don't want to pay that much money for something that will leave me feeling hungry again in about 30 minutes. 

Mice and peppermint

There's no better motivator for cleaning and organizing than having critters decide my fabric stash will be THE place to hide, breed, and live out the winter.  These are very smart mice.  They don't eat regular mouse bait of any kind.  I need more lye and peanut butter to make more bait.  No one I know owns a cat and all the feral cats of the neighborhood have disappeared.  I think maybe some of the neighborhood pit bull dogs may have killed the cats. 

I remembered an old time remedy my Grandma Mama used.  Peppermint.  Supposedly, mice don't like the smell of peppermint.  It drives them away.  Grandma Mama had a special patch of mint growing in her garden.  Every year she crushed the mint leaves and mixed them in a little lard in a tin can.  She left this can near the wood cook stove for a few days to make her own version of peppermint oil.    Later she would put bits of fabric or cotton batting in the oil to make peppermint balls.  She would put them around the house in places where mice were likely to roam.

Well, I don't have mint growing in my yard.  I can't get to the store right now to buy peppermint oil.  My daughter will pick some up for me.  Hmm....  I do have these.  These came from Taco Bell where my SIL and I eat once a month on our shopping trip.  The cashiers don't mind giving them to me when I ask for a few extra. 

I crush these up and put into a jar.

I add some really hot water to melt it all. 

I put some of the melted mint water in a spray bottle and added just a bit more water.

I spray around the kitchen counter and along the baseboards all over the house.  I don't know for certain this will work but my house smells better.  It really can't hurt to give it a try unless the meat eating ants decide they like peppermint candy too.  (knock on wood)  I really believe this should be the peppermint oil because the concentration of oil in candy is very small.  Candy is mostly sugar. 

I won't be doing any fabric or craft organizing until after I get the storage/guest room painted.  My best guess at when I'll get started organizing again is January.  I plan to buy the paint on my next shopping trip in a few days.  In the mean time, I'm working on 6 charity quilts to be given to residents of the nursing home where my mother lives..... and trying to stay out of the way of the mice.

Menu planning

 I've said before how difficult it is for me to menu plan before going to the grocery.  I thought I'd explain a little more about why I have such a hard time.  I do keep a list of items I really need from the grocery and I do go with a budget amount.  Mostly though I'm a discount bin cook.  I make meals around whatever I find in the discount bin or from items given to me by the food fairies.  Let me show you a few examples from last Friday's shopping trip. 

Barley.  Good for making my own beef barley soup or adding to any other type of soup if I want.  In a pinch I could cook some barley and use it in place of rice in a dish.

Jam.  This does not have to be used only on toast although it's good that way.  I can use it as a coating on a ham instead of pineapple.  I can mix it in a cake mix then use more as the frosting.  Jam can be used in many ways by substituting it for the sweet (sugar) part of any recipe.

Lime juice.  Use it for marinades and for a bit of extra flavor in a smoothie.

Olive oil.  Cook with it.  Flavor a salad with it.  Make soap with it.  Use for removing eye makeup. 

Beef stew.  Not what I really like but good for a quick lunch.  If it really tastes horrible..... let the furkid eat it. 

Salsa.  Use as is.  No chips?  Fry some potatoes and onions then pour this over top for a different type of potato dish.  Add it to chili or put it on a pizza instead of the tomato sauce.

Sour cream.  Ok, a question.  What happens to sour cream that's past it's use by date?  It's already sour so does it go good?  Make sour cream muffins or cookies.  Mix with a bit of miracle whip and some spices for a salad dressing over raw veggies. 

Eggnog and milk.  Use the eggnog for making custard or make a cake frosting from it.  Freeze the milk in small containers to use a little at a time.  Make a big batch of white sauce and put in the freezer.  Make mozzarella cheese. 

Meats.  Use any recipe. 

Vegetables.  Put into the freezer for use in small batches.

Food fairy boxes.  I never know what's going to be in them.  I find lots of creative meal ideas in boxes like this.

I save things like this too.  Good for adding just a little something extra to any recipe.

Ok, this is not food related but I wanted to show that I watch for bargains on other items in the discount bin too.  Computer paper discounted because of a torn wrapper is good. 

I've given you only a small sample of what I buy each shopping trip.  It's very difficult to plan menus before going to the store when I don't know what I will find.  I do my planning around what's in the pantry instead.  I'm also not afraid of making substitutions in recipes.  For example using jam instead of sugar or barley instead of rice.  I do come up with some really strange combinations.... but that's not always a bad thing.  Sometimes it results in a recipe I want to make more often.

Menu planning is hard

I'm seriously not very good at menu planning.  Mostly because I just look at my freezer list, decide what needs to be used, then create a meal around it.  Lately, with the boxes of food left by the food fairies, it's even more difficult to plan a week or month of meals when I don't know what I'm gonna get.  The food left for me must be eaten too.  I also like to do what is called "planned leftovers".  In case you don't already know; that's when enough extra of something is cooked so the leftovers can be used to create another dish the next day or later in the week. 

Well, after giving this a little thought I came up with something that may help me with menu planning next year.  I won't know until October of next year if this works or not because it will take that long to develop my plan.  You may think right about now that Anita's lost it... call the men with the straight jackets.

What I have done is print off calendar pages from the internet.  Everyday (or once a week) I will write down what I had to eat each day.  I'll keep the calendar pages to be used as next year's menu plan.  I have one for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 

If you enlarge the picture you can see that on Friday I made a pot roast with potatoes and baked loaves of bread.  The next day, Saturday, I made beef pinwheels with the leftover beef.  I also made beef flavored mashed potatoes with the left over potatoes and added carrots peas to the menu.  (need to change that on the calendar)  I had left over mashed potatoes made into potato cakes on Sunday and added sausage to the menu.  Monday the left over sausage was used to make S.O.S. to put on toast made from leftover bread I baked on Friday.  Get the idea?

When I absolutely don't want to use the leftovers for another meal; I make my own hot pockets to put into the freezer.  (read about it here)  I can pull these out and heat them up for a quick lunch or snack. 

One advantage of keeping up with this afterward menu planning is that next year I'll have a clearer list of what I would need to keep stored in my food pantry.  A year's worth of meals listed that I could use to plan my food storage stockpile.  For example; I'll be able to see how many times I made loaves of bread which will give me an indication of how many pounds of flour to have on hand.  I'll be able to see how many times I make spaghetti so I know how much ground turkey to keep in the freezer. 

Even if I don't exactly follow the menu plan sheets next year, I will at least know how many times I fix the same meals. 

One penny at a time

These days it's become quite popular to save money.  I've seen it before.  At least a couple of times in my life.  This wave of wanting to save money.  The time I remember most is during the 1960s and 1970s because that was when I was young and full of enthusiasm  for the life ahead of me.

How long will the zest for saving money last this time?  How long before people stop feeling the need to save and go back to the life of spend, spend, spend?  I'm not sure.  What's important is that it's popular again.  I'm enjoying sharing the simple little things I do to save money.  Some ideas I've abandoned over the years and now want to do again.  Some ideas are new to me because our daily lives have changed as the grey tsunami gets older. 

Whether it's saving money by thrift store purchases instead of paying new prices.

Or baking our own bread instead of stopping at the store every couple of days.

Or freezing canned biscuits so we use only what we will eat instead of the whole can.  Or even better, making our own scratch biscuits to freeze.  (I do that too.)

Or making a cooking grease strainer so that grease isn't simply used once then thrown away.  It will be used, then used again, and then used again.  When it starts to pick up odors it can be cleaned with ginger root and used again or used in other ways like maybe in a lamp as lamp oil.

Or knitting and crocheting our own dish cloths then taking apart a damaged dish cloth so a new one can be made from the saved yarn.  The yarn can be used over and over and over again until the yarn itself falls apart.

Or making our own pot holders and placements.

Or using powdered milk and making our own kool-aid to go mix.

Or using lower energy cooking appliances which also has a meal hot and waiting on us at dinner time.

Or making our own sheets and pillow cases from our fabric stash and later to be repurposed into other things like kids clothes.  The outgrown clothes can be saved and remade into other useful items like more clothes or quilts.  The old quilts, when no longer useful, can be repurposed into soft toys and other things.

Or making window quilts to keep the heat in during cold weather.  These can also be repurposed when you want to change the window quilts to go with new decor.  Hmm.... how about making house slippers or appliance covers from old window quilts?

Or saving plastic grocery bags to be used as small garbage bags or repurposed into rugs and dog leashes and house shoes.  If you cut these bags into strips for using as crochet, knitting, and braiding material it's called plarn.  Plastic yarn.

Or keeping a price book so we know when a sale price really is a sale price and not just an advertising gimmick to fool us into believing it's on sale.

Or keeping a household manager binder, with all the information we need to have handy, that saves us money and time because we aren't searching for where we stashed the information.

Or crafting cardboard furniture, or quilting, or knitting sweaters and socks, or other crafts to make our lives happier and more meaningful.

Or saving the butter wrappers to be used when the recipe calls for greasing a pan. 

It all adds up.... one penny at a time.   

I'm so glad I'm once again a part of the growing crowd of people that believe in saving by changing the way we think.  I'm no longer simply the crazy lady down the street that does weird stuff.  The internet has helped me stay in touch with like minded people.  All the thrifty things I do are not new.  These thrifty ideas have been around for generations.  From cave women, to all the generations that followed, there have been thrifty people coming up with new ways to save as well as pass on knowledge of what is already proven itself as useful.  I'm happy to be a part of passing the knowledge on to the next generation. 

Thank you, to all the followers of my 3 blogs, for being a part of my life.  I hope everyone continues to follow as I remember fogotten skills and learn newer ones.  Some things I post about will be familiar to you and hopefully some will be new ideas for you to learn.  In either case, please know that I appreciate each and everyone of you..... my internet friends.