Are You Stretching Your Pennies As Far As They Can Go?

I wrote a post recently that mentions using castile soap in my DIY cleaning potion. It’s easy on the environment because it skips the synthetic fragrances and chemical toxins of regular soaps. It uses essential oils to make it smell fresh ‘n clean instead, and does a damned fine job of cleaning all kinds of things.

We’re a Dr. Bronner’s brand kind of family. For hand-washing, mostly, and of course I put it in my potion for light daily cleaning.

But my husband and I have bickered since 2007 over how to properly use the stuff. I remember as a kid my mother teaching me to water it down before I washed my hands or scrubbed down the cupboards with a bucket of it.

I thought she was just cheap. Turns out, it’s a thing.

When Andrew and I started shacking up and he saw me topping off our squirty soap bottle in the bathroom with water, he balked. “I don’t want to wash my hands with that watered-down stuff,” he said. “Why do you keep doing that?”

I told him it’s what I’ve always done. It’s the way I was raised.
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Besides, diluting it stretched our soap supply to make it last longer, which in turn saved us money. 

“Well, I guess that’s true,” he said, having no other choice but to agree.

That’s what I thought, I told myself, all smug.

Deep down, though, I started having my doubts. Was I just full of baloney? Or was there actual proof that could back up my diluting habit?  

​Dr. Bronner’s uses the tiniest font ever on its label, so I had to put on my cheaters to locate the fine print on the bottle. At last, I could see that The Doc does, in fact, order us to dilute. 

A quick visit to the Dr. Bronner’s website cemented my years long hypothesis. They even provide a cheat sheet that specifies different ratios for how much to dilute, depending on the type of job you are cleaning, whether it’s your teeth or your stove!

So, now that that argument can be put to rest, I’m looking around my house and wondering, what else can I dilute to stretch my money a little farther? What do you dilute? How do you make your hard-earned dollars stretch?
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Share your suggestions with me here! I’d love to showcase your brilliant ideas on The Reductionist Blog someday!