How about THAT! It actually works!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Per Beckdawrek’s request, she wants me to start more threads. Or something like that.

Anyway, we are drowning in consumer products. TV ads, Internet, phone calls, mail order catalogs, ads on buses, in-flight magazines in airline seat pockets, etc etc etc.

For a lot of those products, we make a face, and say, “Yeah, riiiiiight.” You know what I mean, like that crap the guy paints over the screen door at the bottom of the row boat, then paddles that boat around in a pond. That stuff doesn’t really work, does it?

But maybe SOMETHING lives up to the hype.

(Beck said the copperware pans sure didn’t!)

I decided to try Mister Clean Magic Erasers when they first came out. I thought, “There’s no WAY…”

Oh, they are “way” all right!

I use them for everything. They even make a Magic Eraser sponge mop now.

I’m waiting for a Mister Clean Magic Eraser toothbrush! Who needs whitening strips?

And wait until Magic Eraser joins forces with Proactiv! Acne won’t stand a chance!

Somebody told me there are imitation Magic Erasers that work just as well, and cost much less. Hmmm… I did some websurfing and found a janitorial supply place where I bought a CASE of Magic Eraser knockoffs for sixty bucks. We’ve been using them for over ten years, and I haven’t seen the bottom of the box!

So, what have you bought on a whim that you KNEW would never work, then discovered that it actually DID?
~VOW

2

I’ve never been a fan of feather dusters, but I’m allergic to dust mites and hate using rags. Announcing: Swiffer! I love it! Makes me want to dust. Three times a year! :smiley:

3

Cap snaffler. Snaffles caps of and size jug bottle or jar.

4

Lightweight cat litter. I envisioned my exuberant poo bury-er, Meeko sending litter flying 15 feet into the room. I thought I’d be breathing the stuff into my lungs.
Actually it’s pretty good. She’s still scratching with gusto.
I do have to say the bits that get tracked out are hard to sweep up. But, I use the swiffer.
And that leads me to the swiffer. I really like my swiffer wet jet. It’s fun and easy to use. The solution and replacement pads are pricey, tho.

(Burpo named my other swiffer fave)

5

Electronic hose timer, for watering the garden.

When I was growing up my dad always watered the lawn with impact sprinklers and a hose. It was a big lawn so he’d have to go move it ever hour or so. He did this a couple of times a week every summer.

Or, I should say his [del]overworked, underpaid indentured servant[/del] helpful son moved the [del]stupid fucking pain-in-the-ass[/del]totally insubstantial and easy to untangle hoses around the yard.

So one day I mapped out the yard on some graph paper, figured out how many sprinklers would be needed and where they had to go, how much hose would be needed, and so forth. The only thing we were missing to make it work was a distribution manifold and some hose timers.

Well, we picked up a couple of timers and I [del]gleefully[/del] put together the whole system, [del]thrilled that the worst goddam job of the summer was finally behind me forever[/del], mildy disappointed that my hose-moving services had been rendered obsolete.

The timers didnt work.

So we took them back and got replacement ones.

The new timers didn’t work. So my dad gave up and I was back to moving hoses around all summer.

(Now that I think about it, I could’ve just used the little valves on the manifold. Wonder wtf I was thinking when I scrapped the whole system)

Anyway, fast-forward to a few years ago. Firmly in adulthood, my wife and I put together a drip system for a container garden. I reluctantly bought an electronic timer for it… and it worked! And it worked well! So those two lemons back in 1994 had soured me to the whole water timer idea for decades, but really I’m sure that they were just that… lemons.

6

That “as seen on TV” inside windshield wiper thing works a charm. Well, until it gets dirty (which is pretty fast). But it can be cleaned and used again. Just don’t throw it in the laundry with fabric softener.

7

Yes on the Magic Erasers. I bought them the first time because I heard two women talking about them at WalMart. Eureka! I did switch to a cheaper version after a while. They worked ALMOST as well.

And a sorta yes on the Swiffer. Loved 'em and used 'em for years. But buying the mop refills got to me. I switched to a brand that used washable microfiber cloths. Not QUITE as good, but close and within my budget.

I’m a big fan of Downy Wrinkle Release spray. Both my kids were in Forensics in high school, and judges tended to be fussy about appearance. Their roommates at meets–in Wyoming, meets are often four or more hours away–would fight them for the iron. Then I saw Downy WR spray advertised and sent a bottle along. I think I basically supplied the entire speech team for eight years. I haven’t used my iron at all in the last four years and seldom used it before that.

8

Rain-X

I swear by it now.

9

We had a George Foreman grill ten years ago; I had no complaints.

10

Swiffer in all its incarnations, sending up an apology to Mother Gaia every time I throw one away.
Downy wrinkle release works, more apologies, less electricity being used ironing
And some of the Flex Seal products (as seen on TV with the boat) actually work beautifully. My fella is a contractor and he uses it a lot.

11

I also like Swiffer products. I love the WetJet, but was mildly perturbed when I found that the cleaning solution bottle can’t be refilled.

I wanted something more diluted, because the perfume-y foofoo that is added to the cleaner was aggravating my asthma.

I invested in the Libman mop that is sort of a Swiffer clone. The reusable pads kept falling off, and instead of the battery-operated sprayer mechanism like Swiffer, Libman has a manual pump for the cleaner in the mop handle. That gets old real fast. I could do maybe a bathroom or hallway and then my arthritic thumbs would be screaming.

Yes, getting old sucks.

I then tried a spin mop. That actually worked pretty good.

However, when I had surgery to fix some falling-apart stuff, I couldn’t haul a bucket of water anywhere. So I bought the standard Swiffer mop, and boxes of Swiffer Wet pads. That’s what I’m using now. And I have a small square of ScotchBrite pad that I use for those stubborn blobs of sticky whatever that won’t come up with a swish of the Swiffer mop. When I’m done mopping, I rinse out the little ScotchBrite pad and tuck it into the box of Swiffer Wet pads.
~VOW

12

If I were budget conscious and actually gave a crap I would do that too, ~VOW,(the Big Wrek pays little attention to such matters).
But, you see cleaning is kinda my hobby. I have nice bamboo floors that nearly caused a divorce and I aim to keep them perfect. Which ain’t easy with the hooligans that traipse in this house. Mr.Wrekker tells people they have wash their feet to tread on my floors.
I’m not that bad, I don’t want NEKKID feets on my floors!! :eek: Is that man on crack!!

So…anywhoo. I try all the newbie cleaning stuff.
That fancy schamcy laundry detergent ‘Persil’ don’t buy it. I’m not big on ‘Tide Pods’ either.
You’ll get more cleaning power from a jug bleach than any other name brand cleaner.
Regular ‘Dawn’ is better than the oomphed up formula.
Good old ‘Comet’ is best for toilets.

This is just my opinion. YMMV.
Clean on folks!

13

Thick bleach - the easiest way to clean a toilet.

Pour all round the toilet bowl, leave for a hour or two, and the toilet is clean. No hassle!

14

What’s Forensics for high school students?

(I’m thinking CSI:Cheyenne.)

15

I recently discovered another use for Swiffers. I’ve gotten back into ripping my old vinyl albums to mp3, but I couldn’t find my Discwasher (a utensil that is basically a block of wood with fabric on one side, which is used to clean the dust and dirt off of an LP before playing it). So I went in the laundry room and grabbed a Swiffer sheet, and it works great as a makeshift Discwasher!

Oh, and Heracles, Forensics is like Speech and Debate.

16

Ah, never mind, I looked it up: debate and speech competitions. Weird name, I must say.

17

Dawn dish detergent is great stuff! I splurge and get the real,deal. In fact, Sam’s Club has an industrial size jumbo bottle with a pump on it. SO easy to refill all your small bottles with that pump!

I have always used Shout to pre-treat laundry stains, but some of those little boogers are so persistent! I now use a tiny squirt of Dawn with an old toothbrush!

We make our own eyeglasses cleaner. Mix rubbing alcohol (at least 90% alcohol, none of the dollar store diluted crap) with filtered water, 50/50. Pour into a spray bottle, and add a little blub of Dawn dish detergent. Put on the sprayer head, and invert the bottle (over the sink, please) several times. Couple of squirts on your glasses, use a microfiber cloth to dry. Safe for all lenses!

And my deepest darkest secret? I wash my hair with Dawn!
~VOW

18

I was in Dollar Tree a year or so and spied one of those [$1] laser pointer things. Great! I have many cats. I didn’t expect it to last more than a few hours before the battery died. Wrong! It still works. That was a good buy.

19

Many years ago I bought an Armor All drying cloth for my car. It came in its own plastic tube, wasn’t all that expensive, and I thought ‘why not’. I really didn’t expect it to work, as most microfiber cloths are marginally effective. When I took it out of its tube, I noted the rubbery feel of it and thought “Well, this is crap”.

I still have it and it still works great. It absorbs a LOT of water, wrings out and soaks up a ton more, then rolls back up and into its storage tube. It’s a good thing it works so well, as I don’t think Armor All makes it any longer.

20

FYI, Persil’s a long-time European brand made by Henkel, and in my experience (and that of Consumer Reports) is on par with the higher-end Tide products and slightly better than regular old Tide.

I like it just fine, but I’ll buy whichever is cheaper between it and Tide at the time I need it, because it’s not that much better to warrant paying more.

As far as laundry stains go, Zout is IMO, by far the best pretreater out there. For greasy stains, an example of something that actually works really well is using Goop waterless hand cleaner (or other similar products). It says so on the label, but when you actually put it in, it seems like you’ve just greased up your shirt. But it washes right out and takes the grease spot right out.

Also… there’s a product called “Lestoil” that’s essentially an industrial version of Pine-Sol, but it has some sort of solvent in it I think. Anyway, while it does a bang-up job on floors, it does a remarkable job on soap scum in showers and tubs- apparently that solvent dissolves something in soap scum, and it cleans up surprisingly easily. Like can clean up a grungy college boy shower without a lot of tedious scrubbing easily.