What 'green disasters' have you encountered on your green/frugal quest?
What I mean is what frugal or green/environmentally friendly products or 'tips' have you tried that totally bombed?
I'll start - I wanted to get away from storebought dishwasher detergent, so I looked up a 'homemade' recipe online that was a mix of borax and baking soda, with vinegar in the rinse agent cup. I was a little concerned because we had extremely hard water, but I was told the vinegar would get rid of any hard water residue. Um, no.
OMG, it left a thick white powdery coating all over everything - my dishes, my dishwasher, my utensils. Try as I might, I couldn't get the residue off, even with cascade and jet dry. Someone told me to run 2 cups of vinegar through the dishwasher several times. So I did that and the vinegar disintegrated one of the rubber seals for the filters, which I then had to scrape off because it turned to goo, and I had to buy a new one. And the coating was still there.
I eventually had to scrape it off the dishes with an SOS pad, and I had to run CLR through my dishwasher several times to get rid of the thick coating. I currently use Cascade packs or Finish Quantum. I'm too scared to try anything environmentally friendly lest I destroy my (brand new, different house) dishwasher again.
So that's my worst story. Others include using a shampoo bar on my hair (it was like trying to comb my hair after putting glue in it), making my own body wash and adding essential oils (I found out you can't add just any essential oil to body wash. Especially if you like to keep your privates clean...), I made 'natural' mosquito repellant that was more like mosquito attractant...
There are others...but I'll spare you 
So...what have you tried that completely failed??
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I need to try the rainwater thing. My duplex only has one downspout and it's right in the way of the path to the backyard so I'm not too sure where to put the barrel (our town offers barrels at deep discounts). My parents have 2 and it comes in handy during water restrictions. I'd probably use mine for the garden though. I don't know how you did it without running water - wow. Even my grandmother had an indoor hand pump to the well What did you do if it didn't rain?
I'm impressed with your lack of waste. Reminds me of my grandparents. Whatever wasn't eaten went to the dogs or pigs. whatever could be reused (bags, containers, boxes) was reused. The rest was thrown in the wood stove (which was a very small amount of stuff, burned once a week in the summer, more often in the winter). They had less garbage in 3 months than I have in a week. Speaking of which - one of my goals has been to reduce my garbage load. It's hard, with all the packaging everything comes in now, even buying school supplies for kids leaves me a grocery bag full of garbage. Our area doesn't recycle those 'clamshell' containers, so it's such a huge waste.
I'm impressed you are able to eat everything. Luckily we have a municipal composting program, because with 4 kids, there is a lot of food waste...even things like melon rinds, banana peels, etc sure fill up the garbage fast. Now I don't worry about it at all. My yard is too small for a composter (especially for the size I'd need), so I'm thankful for our municipal composting program.
Thanks for the reply! So interesting to read about other DUer's experiences.
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Since you sound interested - I'll share some experiences.
Rain Barrel - see if you are allowed to build a stand for it or make an archway if need be and place the barrel on top - place it high as you can, then with a tap near the bottom, you can attach a hose and gravity feed for watering whatever. Also you could run the hose to other barrels to get a really good reserve in a downpour.
Nice thing about gravity feed is you can just leave the hose laying about, just using the nozzle to turn the water on and off - not enough pressure for the hose to bust up in the heat of the sun - so no need to turn it on or off at the tank - actually no need for a shut-off valve on the tank at all.
If you go for multiple tanks, most on the ground, you can just get a cheap sump-pump and pump up to the high tank - used to have a tank on the top of my trailer for summer - then I'd have gravity fed water connected to the trailer plumbing inside - collected rainwater in discarded bathtubs off out-buildings, haul it over to the bathtub I had attached to the back of the trailer (yep - I bathed in it often in the summer) and then set the sump-pump in it and pump it up.
I had a small generator I used sometimes, but mostly used an inverter on a 12 volt battery charged by a small solar array.
Another thing on garbage - how to avoid stinky garbage.
I leave wet stuff like bones, veggie cuttings like the bits off tomatoes ya don't wanna eat and so on out on the counter in one of them Styrofoam trays until it dries up, THEN throw it in the garbage. Bones in the winter go right into the wood-stove.
Oh - I just got it - your user name - 4 kids - that'd do it . . .
CC
or mention it anyway. Yes, that was why I picked it. Except I only had 3 kids at the time The amount of laundry goes up exponentially with each kid, I swear. I'm done at 4, so I'm good I can't really complain - my grandmother had 8 with no running water and a ringer washer.
Thank you so much for all the tips - I'm going to bookmark this thread for when I decide to start rigging things up. It's going to be a bit complicated, because I'm going to have to keep everything behind the fence, as we have certain rules about changes to the exterior of the home we have to follow for 6 years (no condo fees or HOA so not too bad) but after 6 yrs you can do whatever you want. My neighbors will hate me then - I'd like to dig up the front yard and plant a garden. 
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Surviving with no connected services taught me much.
some, if not most, would have suffered greatly -
the challenge made me stronger,
and wiser.
Although I no longer really need to be that frugal - I'm keeping my habits from the "survival" stage.
I get lots of outside time which I love, and exercise to keep my old body tuned a bit
and extra $$ for 
, which I also love.
Reminds me, my rain barrels are full.
time to do some laundry
CC
I appreciate the help as well - I will take you up on your PM offer in the future. In the meantime, enjoy your
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Leave it out there for a few days, Momma Nature makes it smell better than any of those chemical things people throw in their dryers.
Oh! - did I mention momma nature dries and freshens your clothes for free?
And some communities, neighborhoods do not allow clotheslines!
So we are the "master race"??
I think not.
sheesh
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but hopefully my community allows it. My grandmother had a nice little set up...a platform with stairs to get to the clothes line. We used to use it as a fort and she'd laugh while giving us heck for knocking down the laundry. If my community doesn't allow it, I'll set up something inside. I use to have a retractable 4 line clothes line in my old laundry room that had a window facing west where the winds would blow in and dry my laundry. My current 'laundry room' is a closet, lol, but I'll figure something out. I just moved in at the end of March and had to finish school and exams, so just have a month or 2 to get things set up before school starts again.
I agree it's silly that clothes lines are forbidden in places. I can't see that being true in my community though - it's a very 'green' community with many green initiatives. The dumbest thing ever - my parents have a lake lot that forbids clotheslines. 
We have to dry our towels and swimsuits on the backs of chairs. Seriously. It's a lake.
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I'd approach whatever entity makes the rules, town, town council, whatever and ask permission for a clothesline -
if they refused - I'd hang undies and a bra or two in my window 24/7
and yep, I'm a guy, but I'd buy a bra or two just to make a point.
I guess skinny-dipping is out of the question there . . .
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