Cleaning

Extreme thrift and a nice blanket

quilt with tan and white stripes

Sorry about the silence over the last week, but it’s Hippie Christmas here in Madison and I’ve been a tad busy with the festivities. For the uninitiated, Hippie Christmas happens every mid-August around the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. That’s when most of the student rental contracts turn over, and kids who didn’t have the time or foresight to empty their apartments ahead of time dump their unwanted belongings on the curb for the garbage collectors—or whoever gets there first. Read more …

Homemade bleach gel pens are easy to make—and a waste of time

Sometimes when I make a quilt with both brightly colored and white fabrics, I or the quilt recipient washes it without putting a Shout Color Catcher Sheet in the machine with it, and it ends up looking like this: My solution for this problem has usually been Clorox Bleach Pens, but my local supermarket no longer carries them and I … Read more

How to remove lime scale from a clogged faucet

You know the feeling: you turn on the faucet and the water sprays in weird directions because the holes that the water is supposed to come out of are all clogged with mineral deposits. And maybe the faucet itself isn’t too pretty, either, coated with a white film that won’t come off no matter how hard you scrub. Fortunately, there’s … Read more

Make Your Own Free Swiffer WetJet Refills in Less Time Than It Takes to Find Them at the Grocery Store

The first time I saw a Swiffer, I fell over laughing. Certainly this strange marriage of a broom and a mop wouldn’t catch on, right? Brooms and mops are inexpensive and reusable; for a Swiffer, you’re stuck having to buy refills for the rest of the tool’s life. Clearly, I’m not a natural-born product developer. I’ve since come to accept that Swiffers have … Read more

Fix ventilation problems in your bathroom for free

I recaulked by bathtub a few weeks ago and decided to clean the bathroom fan while I was at it, figuring a clean bathroom fan would exhaust the fumes more quickly than a dirty one. I’ve cleaned the vent cover but never the fan itself. The fan blades were each covered with about a quarter-inch of dust – enough to almost … Read more

A simple and cheap way to organize kitchen drawers

My current favorite homekeeping blog is Unfuck Your Habitat. It’s motto is “You’re Better Than Your Mess.” I follow it on Tumblr and Twitter, and even have the app on my phone. (The app cost less than a bottle of white vinegar – talk about a good cleaning deal!) I like UfYH because it breaks seemingly insurmountable chores into easy, short … Read more

How to clean a Keurig K-cup coffee maker

In the past year or so, I’ve found at least half a dozen K-cup coffee makers sitting on the curb or next to Dumpsters on trash day. All of them turned out to be perfectly functional once I cleaned the hard water buildup from the works. My guess is that they were thrown out because the previous owners didn’t know how to remove … Read more

Grommets are a girl’s best friend

It’s that time of year when the mere thought of opening the front door fills me with dread: the snot-freezing depths of winter. So out come the winter accessories! In previous years, I’ve kept my hats, gloves, and mittens in a plastic drawer unit in my coat closet. The problem is that my coat closet is nowhere near the front door. As a … Read more