kitchen

THE Hardest Spot to Clean in All the House

April 26, 2013 By Nony 12 Comments

(This is a sponsored post. Basically, I’m getting paid to clean a spot I avoid cleaning. Yes, I get the irony.)

It’s spring.

Which means . . . it’s time to spring clean.

There were many years when I just didn’t spring clean. I was barely surviving under all my clutter, so the big, easy-to-neglect cleaning projects were put off indefinitely.

But this year, to scratch my spring cleaning itch, I decided to tackle the prettiest spot in my house.

Which . . . is also the most annoying to clean. Yes. I have a gorgeous kitchen window. (Please ignore the bushy bushes outside it!) But this gorgeous kitchen window is a booger to clean.

Right.

I needed to pull out my charming Texas slang and call this one a booger because to clean it . . . I have to climb it.

Like, haul myself up on the counter, hunch over, and sit. IN the window.

A grown, 39-year-old woman providing conversation topics for the neighbors as she sits in her kitchen window.

And takes pictures of paper towels.

Anyway, because this spot gets avoided more than most, it’s ultra-dusty by the time I clean it.

And kitchen dust is like no other dust.

It’s glued-on dust.

Glued on by kitchen grease, I guess.

I cleared my path, removed all of the dusty pretties (which went into the dishwasher), and gathered my supplies. I was determined to not have to climb down until I was done, so I tried to think of everything I might need.

Including my phone. (In case I got stuck and had to call Hubby to come home and help me down.)

I know what fun glued-on dust is, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to really test out the Bounty DuraTowels (for whom I’m a spokesperson). They’re supposed to be durable enough to be used instead of a dishcloth so you can avoid the germiness of a re-used dishcloth?

Well, glued-on dust is a perfect durability test.

I felt all scientific-ey and even labeled the first paper towel with a permanent marker.

See? Best spokesperson ever.

And then I climbed up, and started on this spot.

See it? Over there on the right? It’s the spot that makes me ask three questions:

What made this spot?

Why did someone put whatever-made-this-spot here, in this ever-so-inconvenient-to-randomly-set-anything-down place?

Why, oh why, does that someone obviously hate me so much??

I started scrubbing. I used soapy dishwater, as that’s what I’ve found cuts through grease-dust well.

Nothing. Like, nothing was happening at all. So I thought I’d leave Towel #1 on the spot to let it soak.

I labeled Towel #2.

And then I got to dusting/scrubbing the rest of the seat/ledge/most-annoying-place-ever-to-clean. That dust was on there good. It had become one with the tile. I had to give up on the soapy dishwater and pour it on straight.

Finally, I made progress and scrubbed away.

I was pleased with how the Bounty DuraTowel held up to some excessively friction-ey scrubbing on the entire right side of the window.

DuraTowel after scrubbing a three foot space

What the Bounty DuraTowel looked like after scrubbing the entire right side.

I thought I should use something for comparison to show the size of the space I’d cleaned with that single paper towel, but the only thing I had with me to use for reference was my own, well . . . self. And that might not be the best for several reasons.

(One reason being that it’s a commonly known fact that blog photos make all behinds look five inches wider.)

Then I thought of the perfect thing to give perspective.

There you go. That amount of greasy-dusty, one-swipe-doesn’t-do-diddly-squat space scrubbed clean with ONE paper towel. I’d say that’s pretty durable.

I tried the spot soaked by Towel #1, and still it was IMPOSSIBLE to get up. Impossible. So I kept working on the left side, using towel #2 for as long as I could. The two layers separated, but I kept on using it. I was determined to make it last a LONG time.

By the end, there were multiple holes, but it hadn’t fallen apart.

And then, it was time to tackle the STAIN. You’ll be happy to know, after my last Bounty DuraTowel test, that I decided to try your advice and give baking soda a shot on this tough stain.

Honestly, I didn’t think it would work. I planned for it to not work.

But oh my word, it worked. Seriously. Baking soda and wet DuraTowel #1 took that impossible-to-get-off stain away immediately. And easily.

And now look:

The prettiest spot in the house is pretty again! I had been great at averting my eyes every time I saw the dirt, the spider-webs and the stain, but now I just gaze and soak in how pretty it looks since it’s clean!

As I said, I’m a Bounty DuraTowel spokesperson, and am being compensated for this post. However, the annoying-to-clean spot, the greasy dust, the mysterious stain, the experiences and the opinions are all mine.

Filed Under: Cleaning, kitchen, sponsored posts | 12 Comments

Dishwashing Rhythm – And My Lack of Cleaning Intuition

April 22, 2013 By Nony 15 Comments

I’m not exactly sure how that happened.

I know how to keep it from happening, but I still find myself amazed that getting off my dishwashing rhythm, even for just a day (or so), creates such a pile up.

Pre-blog, I would often say I had to run the dishwasher three and four times a day.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t lying. I really did have days like that.

But now, as long as I can keep the run-it-at-night, empty-it-in-the-morning, fill-it-throughout-the-day rhythm, our family of five generally produces one full load of dishes to wash every night. And many times, I can even put my pots and pans in there, which makes me ever-so happy.

But alas, when I think to myself, “We haven’t eaten at home at ALL today, there can’t be enough dishes to run a load!” . . . I’m wrong.

Almost always wrong.

I don’t know how it happens, but it does. And when I get off that rhythm, I end up at the one-full-load-just-isn’t-enough place again. That sink-full of dishes? It was AFTER we started the dishwasher.

Yep.

It was the stuff that didn’t fit.

A busy weekend and I’d been living with the delusion that we hadn’t created enough dirty dishes to fill the dishwasher.

Me and my blankety-blank delusions.

The irony is that even after the first load finished, I looked at that sink and thought, “Hmmm. That probably isn’t enough for a full load . . . ”

Seriously.

Thankfully, I didn’t listen to myself and tried to get back on rhythm by at least emptying the clean dishes and putting the surely-not-enough-for-a-full-load dishes in.

Lo and behold, an almost a full load. Which made me glance around to see if I’d missed anything.

Right there, in plain sight:

More dishes.

And once it was all in the dishwasher, it looked like this:

If you’ve ever heard me speak, you know I go through this exact scenario. Obviously, I don’t make these things up.

Filed Under: kitchen | 15 Comments

When Convenience Becomes Inconvenient

March 5, 2013 By Nony 11 Comments

I have the world’s greatest garbage disposal.

And he’s cute too.

My husband is the most awesome leftover eater ever. That man will eat food days past the point when I would never touch it.

You may be grossed out and you may worry about his health.

It’s OK. I understand.

I used to worry about him too, but finally just decided to trust him. So far, he’s lived to tell stories of eating fried shrimp left in the garage overnight.

In the summer.

Yep. He hates to see food go to waste.

But then, a few weeks ago . . . I made Cabbage Soup. There was cabbage in our Bountiful Basket that week, and I happened to see a tweet about a beef and cabbage soup that I had the ingredients for.

I was proud of me. He was proud of me. And we ate the soup. We even forced the children to eat it.

And it wasn’t horrible.

Really.

But then I put it in the fridge. I assume I was in a hurry and felt justified putting the entire crock pot into the fridge.

Into the really big, open part of my fridge.

But strangely, even though there was PLENTY of Cabbage Soup left over, Hubby never ate another bite. And neither did I.

The soup sat there. And the crock pot sat there. (Thankfully, I have another crock pot that I was able to use when I needed one . . . )

The convenient placement of that big ol’ crock pot in a convenient spot became a total inconvenience.

See, it’s also the best place to put our two/three/sometimes-four gallons of milk for the week.

Or apple-juice, or grape juice, or whatever. But even though I was irritated every time I had to angle the milk onto other shelves where it barely fit, I left the cabbage soup. Long past the point where even Hubby would risk it.

So tonight, I held my breath and dumped that soup down the disposal.

The real one, not Hubby.

And that took a whole 45-or-so seconds. Much less time than I’ve spent re-arranging butter and parmesan and angling milk jugs to KEEP from doing that for the last ~~week~~ ~~few weeks~~ almost-a-month.

Oh. And do you know what amazed me? That month-old cabbage soup didn’t stink. Seriously.

The day you make it? Stinks like garbage. Three weeksish later? Not a scent.