Thursday, January 27, 2011

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Your Own Spray Starch


Call me old-fashioned, but I love the feel and smell of freshly starched clothes (especially clothes that have been dried on a clothesline).  However, I do not like paying 3$ a can for spray starch, nor do I like the idea of filling our landfills with aerosal cans which, if a fire breaks out, can easily explode and injure landfill workers and firefighters. And finding a way to recycle them is just plain difficult.

My solution is to make my own spray starch using water, corn starch, and an old bottle which originally contained "linen water" that I have been reusing for years.


I simply fill the bottle with hot water, add a teaspoon of corn starch, and shake hard! In less than a minute and for pennies, I have enviromentaly safe spray starch.  I may try a recipe which calls for boiling the water on the stove first - it is supposed to prevent clumping. I may also experiment with adding drops of different types of essential oils for fragrance.

What are your green or frugal tips? 

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip. My husband is in the army so we get through a lot of starch.

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  2. I don't use starch anymore but if a person has to iron cottons or poly cottons starch is a wonderful help. I do like you idea of making from scratch products wherever you can and I think lavender is a wonderful solution to the starch. I wonder if it would work? Good work!

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  3. Provincial Homemaker - hope it works for you!

    Joyful - I was thinking of lavender :)

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  4. This leaves me wondering... let us know how it works! We actually don't use starch, but I wonder what this very simple thing does to the clothes...

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  5. Hana - I will try it with the essential oil on something that doesn't matter, like cloth napkins (but not now, doesn't fit into the budget!)

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  6. ohh this sounds like a fab idea. Love the sugestion of trying it out on small linnes like hankies and the like me thinks I shall be giving this a go.
    have a fab weekend
    Rachel

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