Learned this tip from a school lunch lady. We had collected a vast quantity of plastic milk jugs to use in making Kool-Aid for vacation Bible school, but some donors hadn’t rinsed the jugs thoroughly enough, and the stench of sour milk wouldn’t wash out, so we were going to pitch the jugs. Lunch Lady told us to put a few drops of ammonia in each one, close them up and let stand for 15 minutes, then rinse out and wash again. Smell was gone completely and we could salvage the jugs.
Clean your plastic shower curtain liner by putting it in the washing machine along with a couple bath towels, the detergent and add a cup of baking soda. Then during the rinse cycle, add a cup of white vinegar. Cleans off mildew completely!
Baking soda will clean off the burnt on stuff on Corningware or glass baking dishes. Sprinkle it on liberally on the wet dish, and scrub.
Clean coffe stains from ceramic mugs by soaking in a sink of water with 1/2 c bleach. After about 15 minutes, rinse and then wash thoroughly.
Clean hairbrushes and combs by soaking them in a sinkful of warm water to which you have added a glug or two of ammonia. Rinse after 10 minutes. Just be sure you’ve cleaned all the hair out of the brush first!
Keep a bottle of Shout gel near your baby’s changing area. Whenever you change your baby and you notice a stain, you can put the stain remover on it right away. I then put the outfit in the hamper and wash a full load later. I have yet to have an outfit permanently stained.
Hot water and a tablespoon or so of used coffee grounds works for this, too (cleaning milk jugs, not making Kool-Aid for Vacation Bible School ). This also works for baby bottles that have soured.
I use plastic household gloves (with the bumps on the fingers) to get cat hair off upholstery. It works just as well as, if not better than, lint brushes.
A good laundry one: every couple of months, I gather up all the dish towels and soak them over night in a solution of a cup of Clorox 2 and a cup of Cascade dish detergent. Run the washing machine with hot water and add the Clorox 2 and Cascade as the machine fills so they dissolve. When it starts to agitate, add the dish towels and anything else with stains and let it run for a minute or two, then turn the machine off and let it sit overnight. Turn it back on in the morning. This will bleach out stains a little, so don’t use it on good linens.
Like LifeOnWry, I also microwave water to steam it clean. I use a big Pyrex measuring cup with water and spray the walls with some sort of “Glass & Surface Cleaner” and microwave it for about 5-6 minutes and it steam-cleans all the gunk so it’s easy it wipe off.
A spray bottle of 1:1 vinegar & water is just as effective as bleach in the bathroom, but cheaper and nontoxic. It is also the best glass cleaner ever, and will take most stains out of clothing.
Soap, vinegar and/or baking soda are good for about 90 percent of your cleaning needs. To clean a toilet, pour in equal amounts of borax and vinegar and let it sit for a few hours.
Ammonia and bleach are both toxic. Combined they are deadly. And don’t mix vinegar with either one.
For cleaner ceramic tile floors, don’t let your husband and his neanderthal friends track mud all the FUCK over the place on a rainy weekend when you have nothing better to do than mop up after those assholes instead of paying bills, creating funeral CDs, cleaning that ungrateful kid’s bedroom or scooping cat shit out of two litterboxes, re-creating the lost resume, cleaning useless crap off the deck, ohmygod I can’t believe your friends didn’t even offer to wipe up the mess they made. LOSERS! LOSERS! FUCKING LOSERS!
If you have white watermarks on wood furniture, make a paste of baking soda and plain white toothpaste. (Try a 1:1 mix, adjust as needed for spread-ability.) Rub over the watermark, then let sit for a couple minutes. Get a clean cloth or washcloth and rub at the area. You should see the mark disappear as you do this. Reapply if needed.
Q: Anyone have any ideas on how to get hairdye off walls?
(I thought I had cleaned it all off, but it was one of those dyes that darken over time, so I got a bit of a shock the next time I walked into the bathroom. :eek: )
I use vinegar/water mixture to clean the bathroom mirror and windows. The vinegar/water is just as good as Windex and instead of using a paper towel or a cloth rag I use wadded up sections of the newspaper. Using newspaper keeps the glass from streaking.
To clean the microwave I put a microwaveable bowl filled with water and a few tablespoons of vinegar and microwave for a couple of minutes. The gunk on the microwave wipes off easily with a damp rag or sponge and the microwave smells clean too.
Baking soda can be used as a carpet deoderizer. Just sprinkle a little over your carpet and vacuum up.
I’m a huge advocate of the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers too! You can buy 2 of them at Wal-Mart for $1.88 and those things are super. I used it to get fingerprints off of the kitchen cabinets, the doorways, the refrigerater and freezer… and it’s great for cleaning the linoleum in my kitchen and bathroom and I used it to clean the hood above the oven. I also used one to clean my shower and it cleaned it better then Kaboom! I use it to clean most everything. No chemicals either… just a little water.
PookahMacPhellimey, try the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser!
Because we are hippy, crunchy, earthy-types (it comes with the science degree, they didn’t tell me that when I signed up) I use white vinegar, borax, baking soda and water to clean almost everything.
Because I am lazy, I have a few shortcuts:
We don’t flush the toilet when there is only pee (to save water) but it does make the toilet a little … ahem… foul. So I throw a denture cleaning tablet or 2 in there and let it bubble out all the odors. It also makes the bowl easier to clean (when I get around to it).
When I am brushing my teeth, I use a little toothpaste and an old toothbrush to work on the hard water stains around the faucet.
Then the toothbrushes go into a cup with 2 inches of mouthwash in it (replace weekly). It keeps the brushes fresh and germ-free.
Once in a while I run the dishwasher, humidifier and coffee pot with white vinegar in them. It gets all the mineral build-up cleared out.
I also pour some baking soda, then vinegar into the drains to freshen them up and keep them clear.
That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure I’ll come back with more later.
Maybe it’s just me, but if you have a lot of trouble with clothing stained with both semen and blood, I wonder if laundry should be your top priority.
:eek:
We used to have like 1 bottle of say, “Tub and Tile cleaner”, 1 scrub brush, etc., and 2 bathrooms. So, sometimes a bathroom might not get cleaned because of the extra effort of getting the stuff from the other bathroom. I know that sounds lazy, but if you need to psyches yourself up psychologically to clean (like me) thats the kind of thing that can halt the cleaning.
So, I always just bought one bottle of cleaner and used it on both bathrooms till it ran out.
The hint is: get the necessary cleaning things for EACH bathroom. You’re not wasting money – you’ll use them each half as fast as you used to.
That might be insanely obvious to EVERYONE else, but it took me years to realize it after I finally got a place with 2 bathrooms.
I used to do something like that when I lived at home. I would scrub the bathroom down then take the detachable showerhead and spray the whole room. Then I’d mop everything up with the towels in the laundry (they were going to be cleaned anyway, right?). It helps if you take the toilet paper out of the room before it gets soaked with everything else. To this day I don’t think moms knows how i got the bathroom so clean so fast.
The best thing I’ve ever used to clean really grungy bathtubs was Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. On the back of the box, it shows it ready to throw away when it’s a little dented up and stained, but I used mine until there wasn’t anything left to it at all.
After the tub was scrubbed out really well, I used the Clorox with Teflon spray.
That makes the grunge not build up - as an added benefit, it made the bottom of the tub not slippery.
). This also works for baby bottles that have soured.