Keeping on Top of Laundry

Laundry has such a way of getting out of control and practically reproducing itself, doesn't it? A few days go by and suddenly you have a mountain of clothes that need washing. I even know someone who only wears a pair of pants once before washing them! How do they do it? I don't even own enough pairs to be able to do that! I wear my jeans a LOT before washing them, its probably gross.

Anyway so I started doing my laundry on Sundays and it went well for a while. But sometimes something comes up and I would rather be out doing that than sitting at home doing laundry all day. Do you have a solution that would work? If I can't even handle my own laundry what will I do when I have a house of kids? Who finds the time for this? My friend who never wears the same pants twice does at least one load of laundry every day. I don't even know when she does this, I think in the morning?

Here is an article I found on managing laundry, if anyone has any tips please post them here!

Cleaning Glass without Streaks

I just have a short tip today. When you are cleaning glass windows or mirrors, use newspaper instead of paper towels. This will help you to avoid streaks and it is better for the environment because those newspapers are useless after a day, might as well use them for something useful. I used to work in a florist and it was very crucial for the cooler windows to be streak-free so that the customers could see the beautiful flowers, and my boss made me clean the doors to the cooler each and every day with newspaper. Cost-effective, also!

Better yet, even, use a squeegee. This is a bit more work though.

Here is some more great tips on cleaning glass.

Cleaning Trim

With my most recent cleaning tip in mind (don't put off cleaning!), I decided next weekend I am going to paint the trim in my living room. When we had painters come in and paint the downstairs last summer, they painted all the trim around the floor and windows and doorways the same color as the walls. Blech! What a visual nightmare! It all looks so off-white and drab! So anyway I am gonna paint them white.

Now, I know I will have to dust and vacuum all the trim but I was wondering if I could also sponge-clean the trim. The dog's poopie pads are in one corner and sometimes it has splattered. My room mate doesn't clean up after this even though it is her own dogs! So I definetly want to sanitize the trim with something. I wasn't sure what was safe to use on wall paint so I googled it. There really wasn't much information out there as to how to clean wall trim specifically, so I just looked up how to clean walls. I found a pretty good article. I was a little confused cause it said to clean woodwork (with a picture of trim) with some oil based cleaners. But since my trim is painted now, I think it would be okay.

So my plan is to dust, vaccuum, and lightly clean the trim with a sponge and the mixture described in the article above all next Saturday (a week from today). On Sunday I will go get the paint and paint the trim. Then it will look a lot neater and nicer in my living room!

You may ask why I am 'waiting' until next weekend to do it but this weekend there is too much stuff in the living room as my sister packs and also, Super Bowl is tommorrow and we have been invited to a party.

Don't wait

Well I have been planning on boycotting the whole house-cleaning thing until my messy room mate finally moves out, but I can see that may actually take longer than I planned. My room mate's house closing is coming up but now she is planning on cleaning and refurbishing it a bit before she moves in.

I wanted to wait until she moved out completely before I started addressing the mess that this house is in. This is probably due to my perfectionist tendencies- it is all or nothing with anything I do. I either plan to do it perfectly or I don't do it at all. And I mean, if I don't have time to clean the over down to getting tooth picks into all the possible crevices, I don't bother cleaning it at all. This does not lead to good housekeeping and so that is the reason I am making this my newest tip: do not put off cleaning until you can do it 'right'. You will be much better off with cleaning and organizing, and life in general, if you do things now instead of planning on doing things at a later day. Don't wait until Monday morning to start that new diet. Do it now. Don't say you will take a walk later in the day, do it now. Otherwise it is all just excuses.

My Experiences Cleaning Radiators

I have radiators all over my house that looks exactly like the picture above. It is so hard to clean. Before I moved in, it probably hadn't been cleaned thoroughly (beyond dusting and cursory vacuuming) in many years. I wound up having to spray paint some of them because there was no way to clean them without ruining the beautiful hardwood floors underneath.

In my bathroom, however, I went to town! I used an old electric toothbrush to do most of the work for me. I used rags to get in between the rungs. Finally I turned my handheld shower on it and flooded the bathroom! It was worth the trouble though, cause it looked so much more clean and sanitary in the end.

When my room mate leaves, I will be attempting to clean it again.
I am really tempted to try and strip the layers of paint off of it
somehow. I would love it to be a metallic color instead of dingy
white. I love metallics, but that is for another time. I'd like to go for
this look to the right but I am not sure if it is safe to use paint thinner on a radiator that heats up! Maybe this Spring when I don't plan on using the heat for a while I can finally do it. I will have to do more research into the process.

A Little Cleaning Game

One game I like to play when a lot of things are out of place is to take the nearest item, then put it where it belongs. Where it belongs, find something nearby that is out of place and put that in its proper place, and so on. Not only do you feel like you are on a treasure hunt, this is great exercise also. Get out your pedometers and I-Pod and off you go! You will be up and down the stairs and all over your house while cleaning using this method. Your house will be clean and you may trim your physique at the same time!

Now if thats not an idea for a 'fun' game I don't know what is!?

Cleaning Old and Dirty Grout

A few months ago I was so sick of the dingy grout around the shower and all the tiles in the bathroom (my bathroom is from the 50s and is 2/3rds avocado-colored tile). So what I did was got some rolls of paper towels, soaked them in a solution of a lot of bleach and a lot of water (probably way too much bleach) and slapped the wet towels on the walls. They stuck cause they were wet. Then periodically all day I would take a spray bottle and dampen the towels some more so they would continue to stick on the walls.

You know, this may seem dangerous to some but when I took the paper towels off the grout was soooo much whiter it was amazing.

Good luck to you if you try this at home! May I suggest a gas-mask?