Drawer Organization

Ok more organizational stuff today.  I've been on this big cleaning and organizing kick.  We live in a smaller house, at least smaller that we used to 8 years ago.  Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all our stuff and I have to evaluate the usefulness of our belongings.  This involves going through all our junk which usually makes the house a mess in the process.

Then I get reminded of things that make me grind my teeth.

I hate having to do something over that I already did nicely the first time.  Particularly, I hate folding T-shirts.

Why?  It's not like it's hard or anything.  I just feel like it was a huge waste of my time. I'd do the laundry and fold the clothes so the drawer would look something like this:

AW.  See how nice and neat that looks?  Yeah.  Until you try to find a particular shirt.  Then all the shirts get smooshed around, and never put back as nicely as they were the first time.  Then they get all wrinkly and I've got people in this house wondering why their clothes look like they were slept in.

Then I found this tutorial from Get Simplified.  The shirts are folded in the same way I was doing it before, except with the added step of folding them in half again.  (Visit that site if you're curious.  There's a video tutorial.)

Now the same drawer looks like this:

Notice how there is still room in the drawer!  The way things were placed in the drawer before, the drawer just barely shut. 

Now I don't have to worry about the clothes getting wrinkled or having to refold all the clothes in the drawer every week.  You can see what shirt you want at a glance.  No more rummaging around.

I thought it was so great I did my drawer:

Again, this drawer was so full it barely shut.

Then I did Blockette's:

I did hers in color groups.  This now solves the problem of not being able to find a shirt that goes with a certain pair of pants.  OR, sometimes she has to wear a certain color for special events at school.  This eliminates one more drama moment in the morning routine.  Less drama = win.

So maybe folding the clothes like this is anal retentive. Ok.  Yeah, but it is a huge time saver.  I'm only folding the clothes once, I haven't had to rewash anything to get the wrinkles out and less AM whine from the munchkin.  This leaves me more time to be lazy.  Hooray!

Blockette's Soap Savers

Yes, more crochet!

 I've been sort of a crochet nut as of late.  I feel like I'm being more productive crocheting than I am cross stitching.  I guess it's cause I'm making something I can actually use with the crochet, and the cross stitch just sits there, most of the time not even finished into something suitable for framing.  Now that I think about it, if you figure in the cost of framing, crocheting is a lot cheaper hobby than cross stitching.

Anyhow, onto the latest crochet project.  I actually made these while I was up at my mom's over Christmas.  I saw the pattern for  soap savers when I stumbled across the blog Moogly.  I thought they would be a good solution to a problem we were having.

soap saver with full bar of soap, nubby scrubby side

Maybe those of you with kids have this problem too.  You see when Blockette was bathing herself, she was either putting too much soap on her bath poof, or not enough.  We tried going the bar of soap and wash cloth route, but she wasn't getting enough soap on the wash cloth to get a lather on her body.  Also, whenever Mrblocko or I took a shower, her bar of soap was getting wet and washing down the drain.

This little crochet pouch solves that problem!  There is no pouring the soap on anything.  The soap is right there!  The in between step of putting the soap on the washcloth is eliminated as well.  Essentially, the soap is inside the washcloth.  The pouch also keeps the soap from washing down the drain, or half the bar getting stuck to the shelf in the shower.

soap saver with used bar of soap, non nubby scrubby side

 See, that "gummy" wet soap is contained inside the soap saver!  No more soap gunk sticking to the shower shelf! 

Also, you can use the bar of soap down to nothing.  No waste.  If Blockette breaks the bar once it's tiny, no big deal, the pieces will stay inside the soap saver.

I made two in case one needed to be washed.  That way Blockette couldn't use the excuse that she couldn't take a shower because her scrubby was in the hamper.

Because I'm still a crochet newbie, I had to work each of them up more than once.  It wasn't until my mom suggested using a stitch marker when I completed each row, that I finally got the hang of things.  My stitch marker was super fancy.  I just used the tail from the beginning of the stitching and moved it up each row.  Then when I finished, I just wove the rest of the tail in as normal.  That worked out better than having to keep track of some separate piece of yarn, or one of those plastic yarn markers you can purchase.

The multi colored scrubby was stitched in Lily Sugar'n Cream Psychedelic and the blueish one in Swimming Pool.  This yarn is 100% cotton, medium or 4.  I used the recommended I hook.

One word of warning.  If you use Sugar n Cream yarn, in a dark color (particularly the blues), it will bleed.  Unless you like blue dye in your shower, I highly suggest you wash the soap saver at least once with a color catcher. This will save you from any panic that you've permanently stained your tub blue. 

Crochet Dish Scrubbie

 I saw this pattern for a dish scrubby by Mrs.Greene, and I thought, hmmm I wonder how well something like that would work.

This scrubby uses mesh bags, like those onions are packaged in.  You cut the bag into strips and loop them together.  The mesh "yarn" is crocheted along with a traditional yarn carrier thread onto a crocheted base, for structure.  You are going to be scrubbing dishes with this after all, you don't want it to be flimsy!

I chose Lily Sugar'n Cream Strawberry scents as the base yarn.  It wasn't to make the dishes smell nice, or prevent the sponge from stinking, but because I had a small amount of it left from making the mug cozy for Blockette.

Because I wanted some contrast, I used Sugar'n cream Playtime as the carrier thread to go along with the mesh bag plarn.  What a pain to crochet with.  The Plarn was so stiff, and the edges were prickly and pokey.  They did not want to play nice at all.  (I may have said a bad word or twelve at the uncooperative plarn.  Good thing I was home alone and the kitties were asleepin')

I stitched the base with a G hook, but I had to go up to H hook to crochet with the plarn.  I had to fight a lot less with the plarn with the larger hook.

The tip about laying the scrubby flat was very helpful.  Holding the worked crocheting vertical like I normally do was not working at all.  The plarn stitching was weird and distorted.  As soon as I ripped that nasty looking stuff out and started crocheting with my base laying on the counter, things started to look right and proper.

The cloth warped quite a bit so the scrubbie looked more like a rhomboid than a rectangle.  I'm not too worried about it as it is only going to be used to clean dishes and not the Queen of England.

What I like about this scrubby is that you wind up with a super scrubby side:

AND a light scrubby side:

Because sometimes the dishes don't need a heavy duty scrub.

So how does it work for actually cleaning the dishes?
 Not too bad.  I'd say it works as well as that blue sponge you see sitting on the sink in the above pictures, with the added benefit of being able to toss it in the washing machine when it gets stinky.  Yeah I know that you can nuke a sponge to get rid of the smell, but there are only so many times you can do that before the sponge is so gross microwaving it no longer works.

We'll see how long this dish scrubby lasts in comparison to a sponge before it falls apart.

Pinterest Fact or Fiction: Oven Door

Today we are going to discus the tip of Cleaning the oven door from DIY Home Sweet Home.

The trick is to make a baking soda paste, and apply it to your oven door.  Then you let the baking soda marinate for 20 min.  When you scrub the stuff off, Shazam!  The oven door is magically super sparkly clean.

Let's take a look at my oven door before I started: 

Ew.

Notice my little helper at the bottom left hand portion of the photo.

Apparently, open ovens, particularly those coated in baking soda are fascinating to little black cats.  Playing keep away from the oven for 20 min is not my idea of good times.

Now after I had all that fun, I got to scrub the gunk off the door.

Aaaaaand then the oven door looked like this:

Hmm.

I included the paper towels I used to clean the oven in the photo 1.) so you could see that some of the dirt DID actually come off, and 2.) so I could tell the before and after photos apart in my camera.

Let's do a side by side comparison:

People swear this works.  It didn't work on my industrial strength super Hulking dirt. 

I'm marking this one down as Pinterest Fiction.

From now on I'll just stick with the self cleaning mode on the oven. 

Pinterest Fact or Fiction: A Clean Washer

I was doing laundry the other day, and being a short person, I frequently have to stick my head in the washing machine to grab that lone pesky straggler sock.  This time I was met with a knock down drag out nasty funk of a smell.

Apparently, washing machines need to be cleaned.

How did I not know this?

They clean your clothes so why should they be dirty?  Then again, you clean your body in the shower and the tub and shower can get pretty disgusting as well.

So I set myself to finding a cure for the stinky situation. My trusty old pinterest search found me many a tips and tricks on how to clean the washing machine.  I chose the directions for Cleaning a top loading washer from DIY Naturally.

All you need is 4 cups of vinegar, 1/2 c baking soda, dishrag and a bit of elbow grease.  I had a hard time getting into some of the nooks and crannies so I used Mrblocko's toothbrush to get out all the gunk from the hard to reach places.

No.  Not really.   I just like to throw stuff like that in my posts just to make sure he is reading them.

I did have to use a toothbrush, just not Mrblocko's.

What you'll need to do is:
1. Fill your washer with HOT water.
2. Add the vinegar and let it agitate for a minute.
3. Add the baking soda and let that shimmy itself in the mix for another minute.
4.  Let this stuff sit for 30-60 min.  (Just leave the lid open to make sure the washer doesn't continue onto the spin cycle.)
5.  Scrub the parts you can get with the rag/toothbrush and liquid in the basin until you can't see anymore of the filth.
6.  Let the washer complete it's wash cycle.
7. Voila! You've got a mean clean washin' machine!

 Anyhow.  Above is the before picture. 

I don't know if you can see all the gunk on the plastic part on top of the basin.  Ten years of gunk and filth.

Now here is the after:

No more grodies.  AND no more smell. 

Success! 

Mark this one down as a pinterest FACT!

Hardwater Stains . . . Revisited

Since the vinegar and paper towel trick worked so well on my kitchen faucet, I thought I'd test it out on my dishwasher.

Here is the before:

And the after:

 

What a disappointment. I was hoping for the same results I had with the sink. The vinegar did take off some of the hard water, but not nearly enough to make me happy.

I left the vinegar on for the same time that I did with the sink too.

Oh well. Off to find a new solution for the dishwasher I guess.

Pinterest fact or fiction 6: Armpit stains

Normally, I'm not a sweater. My m.o. is to get hot, clammy and then pass out. You can imagine my surprise when I started my job as a crossing guard and I came home dripping with sweat. I was happy to be sweating because it meant that I wasn't passed out in the middle of the street from heat exhaustion.

What I wasn't too happy about was what the sweat did to my shirt.

Ew!  Nasty yellow armpit stains.

So unlady like!

A pin from One good thing by Jillee claims that if you take one part Dawn dish soap, and two parts hydrogen peroxide, with a sprinkle of baking soda, all your yellow armpit woes will be vanquished.

So I tried it.

The stain is lighter, but still there.  I'd say it's not exactly the miracle it claimed to be.

Pinterest fact or fiction 5: cleaning nasty pans

I know I'm not the only one out there who has a nasty looking pan. You know the one I'm talking about. The one that no matter how hard you scrub, it just won't come clean.

The one that looks something like this:

Eeeeew!

What is that stuff?!  Not even Mrblocko can get that crud off.

You know I was totally amazed when I saw a pin from One Good  Thing by Jillee that claimed you could get a dirty pan like that clean with no scrubbing.  No Scrubbing?  Count me in.

She claims all you need to do is sprinkle on baking soda, then hydrogen peroxide, then some more baking soda.  I did just that and let the mixture sit for three hours. 

This was my end result:

It's not exactly clean, but it is clean-er.

You can even see the start of some silver metallic color peeking out at the bottom.

So it did work...sort of.

In this tip's defense, when I used my fingers to rub off the baking soda/peroxide, it changed from white to brown.  Maybe if I repeat this process a few more times the pan will get even cleaner.

Pinterest Fact or Fiction 4: Hard Water Stains

I saw this trick for cleaning hard water stains on Pins from the blogs: The Thrifty Home and Joyful Homecoming.

The trick is to saturate paper towels and wrap them around your nasty looking faucet.

Here's a picture of my disgusting sink:

This sink IS clean.  

I swear.

We have really hard water, AND water leaks from under the faucet handle.  Ugh.

So not a match made in heaven.

No amount of scrubbing was getting that crud off.  It's like cement.  Not even CLR made that mineral deposit disappear.

But, after a few hours of soaking, and a tiny bit of scrubbing with an old toothbrush, this was my result:

Unbelievable!

Granted the sink doesn't look like new, but it DOES look clean.

I was so excited that I had to summon Mrblocko to the kitchen to witness my handy work.  Even he was impressed.  I also told him to enjoy how nice it looked, because in about a week it would probably be all lime-y again.

One word of warning with this method of cleaning.: apparently, it is quite stinky.  I wouldn't know as I have a massive head cold. Luckily I cant smell a thing!  So when you do this, either be prepared to ventilate your house, or do what I did and catch a cold.

This one is definitely a Pinterest Fact!

Pinterest Fact or Fiction: episode 3

I'm always very curious when I hear about these amazing super cleaning tips and tricks on Pinterest.  Sometimes they just seem too good to be true.

 I tried the DIY drain unclogger.  That was a mega fail.  Then again, it WAS a mega drain blockage that the plumber had to cut away part of the pipe to remove.  I have heard others try this vinegar and baking soda technique with very little success.  So I'm going to call that one a pinterest myth.

Then I tried the DIY silver jewelry cleaner.  Oh and yay verily, it rocked mine little world.  There's nothing like being able to wear your favorite jewelry you thought was ruined.  A huge mega success if there ever was one.

As I currently have a 50/50 success rate, I figured giving the stainless steal de-gunker tip from Tales and Tips from A Real-Life Housewife was worth a shot.  The tip is to take a few tablespoons of Cream of Tartar and mix it with a few drops of water to make a paste.  Then you just scrub away.

Here is what I had to work with:

One nasty gross looking tea kettle.  That oily gunk wouldn't come off even with extra elbow grease from Mrblocko.   EW!

Here is the after:

Well...the cream of tartar paste DID get the oily gunk off.  But it did nothing for what I guess is rust?

I'd have to say this was a pinterest fact.  The tip didn't say anything about rusty stains, just greasy ones. 

Now all I have to do is figure out how to get rid of the rust on the tea kettle!  Please let me know your suggestions.  I love this kettle and am sick of how gross it looks!

Sparkly Silver

I thought this was just so cool that I had to share. I found these directions on how to remove tarnish from silver jewelery over at Stuff Grandma Made.

I'm pretty skeptical about these supposed miracle home remedies, but I figured, if it didn't work, or ruined my jewelery, it was stuff I wasn't wearing anyhow because the tarnish made them so ugly. 

Before cleaning

Now I was only 100% certain that two of the items, the calla lily earrings and the leaf ring, were actually silver, and not silver plate.  I was pretty sure that the star ring and the twisty earrings were plated, but might not even be silver plated.

The original directions do state not to use this method on items that are silver plated, as it could damage the metal underneath.  But, as I explained earlier, I wasn't wearing any of these things anyhow because they were so tarnished.  I felt I had nothing to lose.

After cleaning

Woah! Look how shiny they are! I can't believe it worked so well.

Want to know how I did it? 

Take a piece of foil and line a heat resistant bowl or dish.  Combine 2-3 teaspoons each of table salt and baking soda with enough boiling water to cover your jewelery.  The jewelery should be touching the foil and each other.  Then you let it soak for 5 minutes.  Polish with a towel to get them to shine.

I did have to let the twisty earrings soak for an additional 5 minutes because they were so horribly tarnished.  And for some reason there was a mild stink of sulfur for the 5 minutes the jewelery was soaking.  That was really odd, but the odor did subsided so I'm just going to chalk it up to one of those weird things.  The jewelery seems fine so who really cares.

I'm just so happy to be able to wear these pieces again!

Bunny Free Ceiling Fan Cleaning

Ok, here is another one of those, "Duh, why didn't I think of that" tips I saw over on Lifehacker.  You can clean the blades of your ceiling fan with a pillow case!!!  You just stick a fan blade inside the pillowcase and wipe.  All the fuzz bunnies land inside the pillow case. 

This is particularly useful to me as the ceiling fan in our bedroom is directly over the bed.  There's nothing like cleaning the fan and then having to vacuum your bed because all the crud from your fan has deposited itself all over where you sleep.  I hate making more work for myself.

I've used those swiffer things and various microfiber cloths that are supposed to catch the dust with static.  Those things never quite catch all the gunk and I still wind up with grey fuzz all over my bed. 

In addition to the extra cleaning, I get a major case of the sneezes.  I cleaned both our ceiling fans without even a tickle in my nose.  Can I get a woot woot?  Yeah, I'm probably more excited about this than I should be.  I don't get out much.

DIY Drain Unclog Fail

Apparently there is this baking soda and vinegar trick (that I saw over on Tidy Mom) that is supposed to magically unclog your drains.

I thought that I would give it a try as our kitchen sink has been draining slow and occasionally backing up into the other sink. So I dumped the baking soda and then the vinegar down the drain. I waited the requisite 30 minutes then ran the water for several minutes. Then I put the stopper in one sink and let the sink fill up with a few inches of water. I pulled the drain plug and...nuthin. Absolutely nothing. It drained exactly the same as before I dumped down the baking soda and vinegar.

There are people who swear by this kitchen staple drain un-clogger, but they must have less tricky sink problems. Until there is a real problem, like the sink won't drain at all, I'm not going to call a plumber. Mrblocko thought perhaps that there might be something wrong with our garbage disposal. I sure hope he is wrong. Aren't there magic drain unclogging fairies? Maybe if I wait long enough the problem will fix itself.