Okay, so I need to be quick, b/c I promised myself I'd get to bed early tonight...but I just HAVE to tell you about my cleaning discovery yesterday! I told you before about how I'm trying to use less chemicals, and I've heard over and over that white vinegar is great for cleaning...but I'm so skeptical about stuff like that. I mean, how good could it possibly be? Especially when the recipes I've seen call for you to add only 1/4 C. or so to about a quart to half a gallon of water.
Was I ever wrong!! So, I added 1/4 C. white vinegar to about 24 oz. water (b/c that's how much my spray bottle held), and I added some grapefruit-peppermint essential oil, to make it smell wonderful. I started by using it to mop the floors. I tried something else new, too. Instead of using the regular rag-mop, which I hate, b/c I hate working with a heavy bucket of dirty water, I picked up a pack of 18 white washclothes for a little over $3 at Wal-Mart this week. I put one on my regular Swiffer dry mop and just pushed the wash cloth corners into the little holes where you usually push the swiffer pads. It worked GREAT!! (This was a tip from my sister, Karen!) And they scrubbed the floor wonderfully - honestly, they are so rough, I don't know how anyone could possibly use them on their bodies!! So, anyway, I sprayed the floor with the cleaning solution, then mopped it with my washcloth-Swiffer dealie, and it worked wonders! Grease spots - gone. Spit-up spots - gone. And instead of having to ring out a dirty, nasty mop, all I had to do when the rag was dirty was flip it over and use the other side, then switch it out for a new rag (seeing as I have 18 of them and all!). Piece of cake!! And my house smelled great too!
But I didn't stop there. I decided to finally tackle the white railing along the top of the loft. It was still gross from when we moved in - dusty and covered in dirty handprints from the kids who lived here before. Spray and wipe - unbelievable - the black handprints came right off!! So then I decided to try it on the black handprints on the white walls near the staircase - spray, waited 20 seconds, wiped (didn't even scrub!) - gone! I became a believer!! I then used it to clean the bathroom sinks and faucets, and let me just tell you how easy it was to clean my bathtub - you know that nasty, stuck-on soap ring you get from the bubble bath - yep - spray spray, wipe - gone! Unbelievable! Seriously - why did I ever buy chemicals from the store??? Now when the babies are crawling around on the tile floors slurping up dust mites, I have no worries about what random chemicals they are sucking on!!
And, before I head to bed, here are some of the lovely aprons I am admiring...some are from sewing sites I visit, some from etsy, some from www.kaboodle.com. Seriously - don't they just make you wanna be like martha??? So so so cute!!!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!!
2 comments:
I'm going to have to try cleaning w/ vinegar!! The aprons are so cute. I bet I can guess what all that fabric you picked up may be for!
Oops! I thought everyone knew about the vinegar "secret" :) I actually have a book on all the different things vinegar is good for. I love it b/c a huge bottle at a wholesale club store is pennies compared to the chemicals they have advertised. However, there is one chemical cleaner for my bathroom that I can not part with. Our bathroom has a white counter, white toilet and whitish tub. The cleaner is called BAM! and it is the only spray chemical I have found that really truly CLEANS my bathroom to "sparkling". We have well water and the water has a high level of fluoride in it (no we do not drink directly from the well--we have a system to make it perfect water, some say better than spring water, but thats a different story:)!) the high fluoride leaves an awful yellow mark on anything white. so I found BAM! to completely remove it with out much if any elbow grease required.
anyway! sorry for the long tangent. hehe
Have a wonderful weekend.
Back to my family I go! :)
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