Is there any better month than September?

The heat of late summer always makes me feel listless.  Then September comes and I feel like I’m waking up after a long nap.

September is a busy month, full of new school routines, soccer games, yard work, and canning.  But all of it gives, rather than drains me of energy.

Yesterday I canned tomatoes from my garden.

Today my list stretches out before me…. catching up on my Bees Knees blocks, making bread, deep cleaning with the steam cleaner I borrowed from my mom, and picking up fall raspberries to make jam.

If things go like they’ve gone lately, I’ll probably end up moving something or more over to tomorrow’s list.

By all these lovely tokens September days are here, With summer’s best of weather And autumn’s best of cheer.
-Helen Hunt Jackson

It seems like I’ve had a string of bad luck lately when it comes to repairs lately…. the refrigerator, vacuum, car, toaster, window, and my dryer have all broken recently.

Since I knew the dryer repair would be expensive, and this summer has been HOT, I took my time to schedule the repair.  My laundry dries in a fraction of the time hanging outside on my rack than it does in the dryer.  I use my drying rack to dry a lot of my clothes already anyway.  I love the clean, fresh smell of clothes dried on the line.  I only really hate drying towels outside.  Scratchy!

Once I got around to scheduling the repair, I had to wait longer still, since the part seemed to be on a slow boat from China.  As long as the weather has been hot and fair, it’s been mostly great to dry all my laundry outside.

But the last few weeks have brought a mix of weather.  We’ve had some torrential rain here, and since we had a fire on the mountain above our town last year, we’ve even had flooding in nearby neighborhoods.

A few weeks ago, I was crazy busy and hurrying to put wet laundry out on the line when I noticed dark and threatening clouds in the distant sky.  The wind was picking up.  A storm was coming.  So I threw the wet laundry back into my basket and raced it back into the house.  Thanks to my crazy schedule, it sat in the basket in the laundry room, as the rain poured down outside and was forgotten until the next afternoon.  By that point the whole load of laundry smelled musky and and mildewy.

I tossed it all back into the wash, but several items came out still smelling bad.

For laundry odors, I’ve used baking soda, vinegar, and borax.  And of the three, my favorite in Borax.

Here’s how:  I fill my laundry sink (you can use a basin too) with several gallons of water, add approximately 1 tablespoon of Borax per gallon.  Stir to dissolve the Borax.  Then soak the smelly clothes for several hours. It’s a solution that works well for my husband’s stinky running clothes and my kids’ stinky soccer stuff.  After soaking, toss them in the washer and launder as usual.

It takes care of every odor I’ve had trouble with…

I’ve had several requests for a solution for smelly towels, but since I don’t have that problem, I can’t say first hand if Borax works… though I suspect it would be great.  If you’ve tried Borax for smelly towels, or another solution that works, I’d love to hear.