To remove melted wax (ala candle drippings) from carpet:
Cover wax with an old cloth and rub with a warm iron. The wax will melt and wick up into the cloth. Be sure to use a cloth you can throw away and don’t let the iron get too hot or you will scorch your carpet.
Use baking sida and warm water to clean wineglasses and leave no spots. Rinse well, air dry. Also great for beer glasses, keeps your brew from going flat as bubbles form on the waters spots.
Heh! The Scumbuster is made by Black & Decker and is more or less a motorized scrub brush with different brush attachments for different applications. You should be able to find them anyplace you’d find small appliances.
One of the attachments is a white mesh pad (like on the back of scotchbrite pads) which is ideal for cleaning the shower door. Other brushes are an all purpose brush (I’ve used it to clean the bugs and tar off the front of my car), a heavy duty brush, a grout brush (bristles radiate out like a sunburst) and I believe you can also purchase extras like a grill brush, for your bar-B-que. You don’t have to use any special cleansers with it, just what you’d normally use. (I use The Works on the shower door.)
Cranky, I agree it doesn’t turn as fast as you’d expect it to. I think the manual says something like 30RPM but that means nothing to me, lol.
I’m curious to hear anyone’s experiences with Oxy-Clean. I’ve tried it and I’m not impressed. Can’t imagine what I’m going to use the rest of the bucket for!
You know those products advertized to keep your shower clean if you just spray the shower down after you’re done getting clean?
The Arm and Hammer version (which I think is just called clean shower) works.
I used to wipe the walls down after I showered and keep the bathroom fan on to get rid of excess moisture quickly, but i still had to scrub.
Now, I shower, I grab the bottle, I spray the walls and shower curtain, put the bottle back, and I get out and dry myself.
No fuss, no muss and it looks like I just scrubed with bleach.
-Doug
I’ve tried all those products which tout themselves on television as getting rid of hard water mineral deposits: Lime-Away, Rustoleum, etc. They didn’t work.
A professional cleaning woman gave me a tip: Try some stuff from your pool supply store that’s meant to get rid of the mineral ring around a tiled jacuzzi. It’s called “De-Scale It.” By gum, the stuff gets rid of the hard water crud on the inside of glass shower doors. It also gets rid of the same stuff down on the drain plugs in the sinks and from around the tip of the water faucet and the shower head.
Then, just by chance, we accidentally got some on the white tile grout on the inside of the shower, and it got the grout white! And I mean white, not just kind of cleanish! For all I know, it’s eating up the grout, but I’ll take clean white grout that I have to replace in five years over grubby brown stuff that stays around for twenty.
Also: a pumice stone (get it at plumbers’ supplies stores) takes out that icky rusty colored ring in a toilet bowl as well as the mineral stains dripping down from under the ring.
If the cat pissed on the carpet: use Outright brand Pet Odor Eliminator. For cat piss, at least, it’s the best of all the enzyme cleaners.
A month or so before she died, my ancient cat let loose on the living room rug just before company came. A thorough dousing with Pet Odor Eliminator, and it was as if it had never happened. Couldn’t smell it then, or the next day, or ever again. If you have cats, you need a bottle of this, just in case.
It comes in a small green bottle (it’s sold in concentrate form), available only in pet stores.
For non-urine-based stains: Spot Shot. Available in most stores that sell household cleaners: Wal-Mart, Ace Hardware, Food Lion, etc. Comes in orange-and-navy-blue spray bottle.
It works quickest when the stain is fresh, but I’ve used it to get year-old iced-tea stains out of carpets.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Soda *
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Nej, nej! Ikke Fiskebolle, jeg vil ha fiske frikadeller!
Please, this is a much larger fish patty served with remoulade sauce and it is totally different from (no sniggering children!) fishballs.
Please try CLR pug. If you have not done so already, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. I rarely recommend modern products, because too often they simply do not work. This one does.
Here are some helpful hints from Dilbert comics
Black paint is an excellent stain remover.
An all cheese diet has many tangible benefits.
Cheese steaks are a nutritious and satisfying food for your baby
Anything with “frikadeller” in the name is generally Danish. If you see someone in Norway trying to peddle “frikadeller”, run away!!! This means that the stuff is so bad, they can only hope to sell it by tricking people into believing it’s Danish.
We have no such creature as fiskefrikadeller here. We have fiskeboller, which apparently ain’t the same, judging from the depth of Zenster’s reaction. Recipe for fish balls: Open can. Pour off brine. Recite obligatory joke: If these are the balls, think of the size of the rest of the fish! Dump fish balls into something that will give them some flavor. We also have fiskekaker, which are probably more fiskefrikadeller-like: large and flat, and fried so they are brown on the flat sides. Also horribly dry. Recipe? Cut open plastic package. Fry to warm up. Pour brunsaus over because they are so horridly dry. Remind self to buy real fish next time.
And now, without further ado, flodnak’s handy household hints:
[ul]
[li]Never underestimate the abilities of a toddler. When you do, you will usually spend at least fifteen minutes cleaning up your underestimation.[/li][li]Vinegar in the final rinse of a washing machine cycle gets rid of odors on, for instance, gym clothes that have been forgotten and left to moulder in the back of the car in July. It also helps rinse the detergent out more thoroughly, so it’s good for people with sensitive skin. No, your clothes don’t smell like vinegar afterwards. They smell clean.[/li][li]There is no point three.[/li][li]Pouring equal parts vinegar and baking soda down the drain once a month keeps the drain from clogging or smelling weird.[/li][/ul]
I agree, CLR works. So does Zap! They’re both great for soap scum and hard water stains. CLR also works to clean your coffee maker,as does vinegar. Be sure to rinse several cycles afterward. But nothing works well for mildew. The fan doesn’t work in my bathroom, and it’s always damp in there. I’ll try the pool cleaner (“De-Scale It”?) on it next.
To clean a plastic pitcher that has tea stains: pour some bleach and water in it. Let it sit for a minute. All clean!
Zenster, is this what you’re looking for? It’s the closest I could find and I imagine you could exchange the salmon for any fish of your choice.
Keen ideas here! The only household tip I can offer is putting Saran Wrap over the top of the refrigerator. You know how it gets all dusty and greasy up there, and is a pain to clean? I just put down a couple of sheets of Saran Wrap (neatly measured so there are no telltale pieces hanging over) and once in a while zip it off - voila! clean refrigerator top!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Zenster ***
[li]To remove pet hair from a carpet scuff your feet in a backwards direction to ball up the fur. Shoes with a significant tread will do the best job. This method can work better than some vacuum cleaners.**[/li][/quote]
You’re dead right. I have a pair of slippers that I use for the purpose. Washing up cloves work well, too I don’t actually have a pet, but I shed terribly myself. Hair everywhere.
[QUOTE]
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[li]To stop candles from smoking after they are blown out, continue to blow upon the wick after it is extinguished. The moving air will burn out the wick faster and eliminate the smoke.**[/li][/quote]
Or you can lick your finger and touch it to the smoking part of the extinguished wick.
[quote]
[li]Roll citrus fruit under your palm on a cutting board prior to juicing to increase the yield.[/li][/quote]
I give lemons a 10-20 second zap in the microwave prior to juicing. It really makes a difference.
[quote]
**
[li]A pinch of sugar will round out the flavor of an oil and vinegar or vinaigrette salad dressing.**[/li][/quote]
Yes! My Dad has always made French salad dressing with a little pinch of demarara sugar. He’s always been complimented on the flavour of his salad dressing. As well as helping the flavour, the big demerara sugar crystals help to crush the garlic when you’re mixing the dressing.
My tips (short list)
I like to give my kitchen sink a shot of bleach and a hot water chaser once in a while.
I keep a small rubber squeegee scraper thingy by the bedroom window so that I can scrape condensation straight out of the window.
I don’t dust a great deal; I just can’t be bothered. No one really notices, anyway.
Toothpaste and lemon juice are both quite good for getting turmeric stains off hands and clothes.
If you dye your hair at home, grease your forehead, ears and forearms with vaseline before you start. It is not possible to avoid getting hair dye on those bits.
Okay, Zenster, here’s a recipe for Norwegian fiskekaker. It’s probably not quite what you’re looking for but maybe you can figure out how to adapt this for fiskefrikadeller?
Simmer 500-600 g pollack or other white fish in 2 dl of water, together with a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme, for 10 minutes. Reserve broth.
Finely chop a small onion (about 50g) and fry in about a tablespoon of butter. Mash the cooked fish and stir it well. Add the fried onion, 3 Tbsp coarse dry breadcrumbs, and 1 egg. Alternately stir in 1 dl milk and about 1/2 dl of the reserved broth, until the mixture hangs together. Salt and (white) pepper to taste.
Form small cakes of the fish mixture. Dip them in more dry breadcrumbs. Fry in browned butter, browning both sides.
The cookbook recommends serving them with cooked potatoes and shredded carrots. No mention of remulade.
Thank you ladies. Sadly, I think that you are both correct about these recipes being slightly different from what I had in mind. I will have to try them when my friend catches some more cod this summer.
And, yes flodnak, I do have a tin of fishballs in my cupboard even as we speak. Remember when they were made with pure cod meat?
You know how all the household hints lists say to keep a bag of peas in the freezer for use as an icepack?
Wrong. Keep a bag of blueberries in the freezer for use as an icepack. When you use them, and they aren’t frozen anymore, eat them. You’ll feel better both ways.
If you keep a silver dollar in the freezer for applying to the back of the neck to staunch nosebleeds, keep one of those foil-wrapped round mints in there instead.
Gumout carburetor cleaner removes permanent marker. It also removes many other things, so test first. I’ve used it to remove marker on cars with excellent results.
I didn’t mean you had to resurrect this one. I just wanted to share all the wisdom we gathered a while back.
After I use my crockpot, I soak it for 10-15 minutes with a fabric softener sheet. The baked-on crud comes off very easily after that.
Also, for the wax-removal-with-an-iron thing, you can also use newspaper to absorb the wax instead of a cloth if you haven’t got any disposable cloths laying around. Just make sure that you don’t leave the iron on too hot or sitting on any one place too long.
I have a ScumBuster! It’s great.
For really dirty clothes and almost all food stains: Fill the washer with hot water. Add one cup Clorox 2, one cup Cascade dishwashing detergent (powdered stuff) and the dirty clothes. Turn the washer on to let it agitate for a couple minutes, then turn it off and let the whole mess sit overnight. In the morning, turn it on again to finish the cycle, and voila! Clean clothes! Gets out wine stains, tomato stains, greasy stains, everything.
Hairspray gets ballpoint pen ink out of clothes.
For dirty dishes with baked-on crud, again with the soaking. Put a squirt of dish soap in, a couple squirts of Windex (or any glass and surface cleaner), fill the dish with hot water, let it sit overnight. In the morning, it will wash right up.
Peas…YUCK!!! I’d keep the peas in there, and just throw 'em away afterward… 
My tip: That used dryer sheet makes a great anti-fog application for your bathroom mirror, as well…