Submitted by adirondackfleece on Sun, 08/23/2009 - 5:14pm
Do not dry clean, Fleece is heat sensitive,ironing should be avoided to reduce pilling, also hot dryer temperatures. Always wash your fleece blankets in luke warm(warm-cold) water with like fabrics.
Submitted by glitteryhomemaker on Thu, 08/20/2009 - 11:20am
I was playing the Catch the Bug game on Kleenex Anti-Viral's website and was surprised by all of the information. Where do you think most cold and flu bugs live in your bathroom?
And I DO mean "mucking out." Stables ain't got nothin' on LouLou.
As you may have seen, Anhata and her husband Frank are adopting two little kids from foster care, tripling their children overnight! Since Josie moved into the downstairs guest room, Lou's had two beds in her room, the built-in bed that Jo slept in, and a wrought iron daybed. We gave Hata and Frank the daybed for their new daughter to sleep in until they found something else they wanted.
So we're taking the opportunity for a major mucking-out of Lou's room. So far, we've found long lost dishes, scissors she wasn't supposed to have, several reams of paper, rotten fruit, stolen packets of raisins and the lid off the caramel sauce, and we've collected a bathrooms' worth of laundry, some of it clean, some of it mine. What was she doing with my flannel sheet set and my Jayne Cobb, Mercenary t-shirt?!
John and I have been doing this thing in the past few months we call "Not That Guy." "Not That Guy" is the guy you wanted to be when you bought all that stuff for, say, scrapbooking. You wanted to be That Scrapbooking Guy, but you're not scrapbooking; it's all sitting there in the closet gathering dust and taking up space. You're Not That Scrapbooking Guy. So it's time to get rid of That Guy's stuff.
So far John has admitted he's Not That Woodworking Guy, and we sold the bandsaw and Shopsmith that have been taking up space in the garage, unused for five years. I have admitted I'm Not That Drumming Guy, and sold my beautiful quinto drum that has sat in a corner of Josie's room, unplayed, for more than 15 years.
(Quick side note: We discovered in this process that we are Those Biking Guys, however, and we took the money from the sales of Those Other Guys' things and bought some new bikes. I am now the extremely happy owner of an Electra Townie 21 speed, the Purple Poem one. Go get on a Townie, they will renew the joy of biking that you lost somewhere in middle school. And John converted his mountain bike to an Xtracycle sport utility bike, which is the coolest thing EVAR. He can haul a week's worth of groceries AND LouLou on that thing. And we have a tandem. I highly recommend tandem riding for couples, it is hella fun.)
The greatest thing we have had to acknowledge, though, is that we are Not Those Gardening Guys. I was That Gardening Guy, but that was before my illness. Now, I'm Not That Guy any more, and I never will be again.
After a lot of thought, we have decided to sell our extra lot, the yard next to our home. We had considered moving--we even looked at condo living--but in the end, selling the lot is our best choice. It severely reduces the amount of maintenance and/or guilt we face, it allows us to pay off our mortgage, and it puts us in a much better position to improve the house we have. It needs insulation, new, more efficient windows, a new kitchen (our kitchen is falling apart and we have no dishwasher--aagh!), and the laundry needs moved upstairs from the basement. If we did those things, we could stay in this house happily for at least another ten years if not longer. We love our neighborhood, and we want to stay.
So, Not That Guy. We wanted to be That Guy, but we're Not That Guy.
Submitted by YoungMidwestHom... on Sun, 05/04/2008 - 4:13pm
..So we don't have a washer and dryer here in apartment so we have to go out to do laundry. I was kinda hoping to boil some water over the stove and clean my cleaning cloths.
Submitted by HomeSkillet on Thu, 04/10/2008 - 7:45pm
What do u guys think is the best kitchen..I know people want to cook in a sanitary environment. Far too often kitchens get dirty and it becomes too late.
For 20 years now, I haven't had a closet with a door on it--the entire time I've lived in this house. When I lived in the downstairs bedroom (now Josie's), it came with a curtain over the door, which was the first thing I removed when I moved in. When we remodeled the upstairs, we ran out of money and space for a proper closet in our bedroom, so we made do with a couple of cheapo fabric-covered wardrobes that fell apart almost immediately. And yet we continued to use them, because we had no alternative.
Until now.
Last night we finished up installing two lovely new wardrobes from IKEA. (Heilsa IKEA!) And now we have not only enough room to hang all our clothes, but also a proper shoe rack, and room for John's large collection of boots. (One of his nicknames is "Imeldo.")
What makes the wardrobes the most lovely is that they have doors. Real doors, with, like, hinges and handles, and they're made of wood, or a wood-like substance anyway. We still have room for shelving in the wardrobes, which is a project/IKEA run for the week.
Well, we've been mucking out the front bedroom, it's fairly empty in there right now, but most of the stuff that was in there is now in the dining room or in the living room.
Submitted by glitteryhomemaker on Fri, 12/21/2007 - 1:43pm
Is anyone trying to do a deep-clean before the holidays? I am in the process of it now, and I realized it would probably be easier if I had a good vacuum cleaner. Does anyone own an Oreck?
I got a box full of this stuff just now. It's still freakin' me out that people are starting to just send me stuff to review. (Please, someone send me a check for $5000 to review. ) Now I'm trying to find out what the heck's in it; I don't want to use it if it's going to fill my house with fumes. The dry stuff has washing soda as one of its components and "organic acids" as well, whatever they are.
Ellen the Organizer came over today and we had a good long gabble and figured out what to do next to get me back on track. We figured out where my bottlenecks are: Work, dishes and laundry.
Work: I work too much. I've been worried about money. And I'm overwhelmed and it's easier for me to just dive in and do something I'm good at (writing) than look around the house and give up. Which leads to...
Dishes: Not having the dishes done throughout the day means I have a hard time getting dinner prepped at night and breakfast prepped in the morning. So before I do anything in the morning, if the kitchen isn't clean enough to function I have to take care of that first, and then get breakfast assembled ready to cook, before I open up the house and sit down to read email. You have no idea how hard this is going to be for me.
Laundry: My main concern with laundry is to make sure John has clean clothes without him having to wash them when he comes home from work. His commute means he is away from home nearly 12 hours a day, poor thing, and I don't want him to have to stay up half the night doing laundry. The bottleneck is getting stuff folded and put away. He often has clean laundry, he just doesn't know it.
This dovetails with his long-established habits, which are to get dressed and undressed in our spare bedroom, which also becomes piled with his stuff and makes me crazy. So we're moving his clothes into the spare bedroom, which has plenty of empty drawers, and I'm going to start doing his clothes separately so he always knows which basket is his in case I don't get things put away promptly enough.
We decided this is plenty for now. I'll keep this thread updated as I work on these three things.
John has stripped away enough of the laurel hedge that all four of the lines of my clothesline are once again usable! No rebuilding, no moving, just lovely loads of laundry flapping in the sun. (This is somebody else's laundry, I had my hands full.)
Louisa helped me hang the first load. Since she couldn't reach the line, I set up a little wire rack for her to hang undies and socks on. Josie got into the act a little later, using a scrub board and tub to wash doll clothes and hang them up to dry.
Today was a good day. I did two loads of laundry, got one out on the line to dry, folded and put away two others. Did three loads of dishes, cleaned the kitchen. Fed the chickens, spun a little yarn. Started a pot of broth. Wrote. I'm exhausted. John was worried it was my heart, but no, I just worked really hard today.
Since last week's first experiment with washing soda, I've done a lot more research. I discovered our instincts were right about the stove pans, that's one of its primary natural cleaning uses.
Washing soda is not only ideally suited for baked-on grime like stove pans, it can STRIP OLD FLOOR WAX AND PAINT! Yikes! Don't use it on anything you want to retain a shine, like waxed floors, painted walls, fiberglass and the like--anything with a finish, essentially.
Washing soda is caustic, and if you're going to have your hands in it for any length of time, wear gloves. I should have said that last week--I knew this from dyeing.
It's also quite alkaline, which makes it a very effective water softener for laundering. Using it in hard water areas will cut down on the amount of laundry detergent you have to use.
And it's also a great descaler. We've successfully used it to remove gunk from the coffee maker. Use one tablespoonful for every 8 oz cup of water your maker holds. Be sure to rinse well! We usually run one "potsworth" of washing soda solution through the coffee maker and then one "potsworth" of vinegar water (half and half), and then a couple of pots of just plain water.
) Now I'm trying to find out what the heck's in it; I don't want to use it if it's going to fill my house with fumes. The dry stuff has 
John has stripped away enough of the laurel hedge that all four of the lines of my clothesline are once again usable! No rebuilding, no moving, just lovely loads of laundry flapping in the sun. (This is somebody else's laundry, I had my hands full.)
