Homemade - adj.; made or prepared at home

We like making things at home. We make our own bread; we make our own cream-of-whatever soups; we make our own clothes; we make our own greeting cards. We enjoy taking a more traditional route and not always getting caught in the modern mind set that we can "just go to the store."

However, some things are better left to the "stores" to make. For example. . .dishwasher detergents.

Maybe I need to back up a bit and just let you know that Mom's been reading again. Which is not a bad thing, mind you. We learn a lot when Mom reads, like how not to do things. Well this time the book is The Naturally Clean Home, so when we ran out of dishwasher detergent, and since the closest grocery store is at least half an hour away, she grabbed her book and decided that we would make our own.

Before I go any further, let me say that I don't like lavender, or at least I'm not a huge fan of it. In small amounts, it's okay, but I really don't care for my dishes to smell like lavender. What's worse than dishes smelling like lavender though, is dirty dishes smelling like lavender! No, the detergent did not work. Even when the dishwasher was run twice, it did not work. Needless to say, we are back to using store-bought dishwasher detergent. The dishes get a little cleaner.

Now if we wanted to take a homeschooler's approach, we could have all the kids gather information, analyze the data, form a hypothesis as to what the problem is and why the soap doesn't work and what could be done to make it better, conduct experiments etc, etc. . .you get the picture.