How to Clean a Broom

I'm getting ready to share with you, once again, another embarrassing household secret of mine: my dirty, dirty broom.

Eww!


Ewwww! Ewwww! Ewww!


There are no excuses, but I will say that we have a dark kitchen floor... which shows EVERYTHING! So this broom gets used probably daily. On top of that, we have a very hairy black cat that sheds hairball tumble weeds on a daily basis as well. With that said, this broom is almost 2 years old and has never been properly cleaned. Eww again.


I found this tutorial online courtesy ehow.com, Cleaning a Plastic Broom, which I followed, sort of.

Step #1: Beat the s@*#& out of it on the side of the front porch to knock off furballs.

Step #2: Vacuum

Step #3: Rinse under hot water

Step #4: Soak in a bath of soap, bleach and water. Ehow said to use dish soap but I dropped in a couple dishwasher detergent packets. I thought the bubbling effect might help break up the dirty particles. I also didn't follow the ratios they gave. I filled up the tube I had with hot water until the broom was covered, added 2 cups of bleach and 2 dish soap packets.

I soaked it for about 20 minutes. Now, I'm not exactly sure that I didn't create some sort of toxic fumage in my bathroom with this mixture so I opened all the windows in the house and turned on the exhaust fan. Let that be a warning/disclaimer to all. I don't want to be held accountable for lost brain cells. 

Step #5: Rinse out all the soap with hot water.

Step #6: Second soak in hot water and 2 cups bleach.

Step #7: Sit out to dry in the sun. Because my mother said so. 

I know, something looks a little off. As it turns out, the bristles on the broom have split at the ends. Just like my hair in middle school. I was going to cut them off so it looks nicer (because I feel like it is clean now but still looks dirty) but my husband said that it probably picks up better like that so I kept that as is. 

Real Simple Tips

I bought a book at the outlet mall a couple weeks ago called Real Simple 799 new uses for old things: an encyclopedia of innovative ideas for everyday items.


It's a pretty amazing book with... well... 799 useful household tips. Since I've been slacking on my craftin' & cookin' lately, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite ideas from the book. Hopefully you can find them useful too!

Aluminum Foil

"Protect a muffin tin from burned-on batter drips. Lay a foil sheet across it, snip an X over each cup, then pop in the liners."

Antacid Tablet

"Life bouquet residue from a vase. Add water and a tablet, let sit for a few minutes, swirl and rinse."

Baby Food Jar

"Simplify paint touch-ups. Pour a few ounces of new paint into a jar for when it's needed to cover the inevitable nail hole or scuffs." *I really wish we had done this for all the rooms in our house! It's such a pain to get the entire paint gallon from the garage. 

 

This version of Real Simple's book isn't easily available anymore, but don't worry- they have a new one out now, with even more household tips & ideas. Check it out!

 

Real Simple 869 New Uses for Old Things: An Encyclopedia of Innovative Ideas for Everyday Items

Household Tip: Cleaning the Oven Window

The self-cleaning oven may be the greatest invention of the 20th century. Well, top 100 at least. I have never cleaned an oven with elbow grease. We are a spoiled generation! Now if only I could remember to not start the self-cleaning in the middle of winter when it's too cold to open the windows!

For some reason, my oven window seems to have gotten awfully filthy since the last cleaning. Either the self-cleaning doesn't work on the window or perhaps I spilled an entire pot of grease on it without noticing. Who knows, but here is it:

I must really consider you all friends since I keep showing you my most embarrassing household messes!

I've become addicted to the blog Ask Anna Moseley. I really want to know how this one woman has managed to find solutions to each & every possible mess one can make! She is like the Jedi Knight of Cleaning. (Did I really just tell a Star Wars joke?) Anywho, she did a post one day on cleaning your oven window so I had to give it a shot.

It was really simple- just baking soda & water.

The first time I tried it I think my paste as a little runny and I wasn't completely satisfied with the results so I gave it a second attempt with a much thicker paste. I waited 20 minutes each time before wiping it off because Anna said you could in extreme situations. I considered my oven glass an extreme situation.

To be honest, the glass didn't get as clean as I was hoping but to Anna's credit mine was much dirtier than hers. I guess I can't expect a miracle if I'm not willing to scrub a little.

 

It's still a lot better than it was, so I'm happy. Perhaps one day I'll break out the gloves and Brillo pad. I'm not sure I would hold your breath though!

Does anyone else out there have another suggestion for getting those last few pesky bits of stuck on grease? If so, please leave a comment below or email me at 2010housewife@gmail.com

A Clean Under Sink

Underneath the kitchen sink was probably the only space I had yet to clean & organize after moving into my husband's home. It had become sort of scary to me. I knew there was all sorts of stuff shoved into the back of the under sink and I assumed perhaps a few creepy crawlers too. I figured if I wasn't going to tackle it over Housewife Week I probably never would. So, I ventured into the unknown....

It wasn't as bad as I was expecting and didn't come across one spider. I did however find a few surprises that I'm guessing came with the house:

Was I even alive when Dove bottles looked like this?

Two bottles of carpet shampoo for carpet cleaning machines. We don't own a carpet cleaner. Hum....

Drum roll for the after photo....

I have a nice big container for all my dishwasher soap tablets on the right and a place to hang my rubber gloves. I also now have all my cleaning products in the bin to the left so they are easy to grab & easy to put away. I have no excuse now for leaving my Lysol bottle sitting on the kitchen counter!

Since I already had the wire shelf the only purchase I made for this project were the two door bins. I bought those at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $14.99 each. Minus 20% (coupon!) plus tax and the total for both was around $25. I'm sure there were cheaper options available but I was at BB&B anyway and I thought these looked like good, sturdy baskets that would last a long time and were large enough to hold just about anything.

Do you have a scary space in your house that you avoiding cleaning & organizing?

Cleaning Windows

My new favorite cleaning blog Ask Anna Moseley posted a Spring Break Cleaning Challenge back in April. If I wasn't working full-time I would have totally participated, but instead I took note of all of the cleaning challenges that I wanted to do during Housewife Week. The biggest challenge, for me, was washing all the windows in the house.

I Windex the inner windows frequently but am not so good about cleaning the outside or sills. Want proof? Here you go:

Ewww!! I feel like there are window sills on Hoarders that are cleaner than that! Something had to be done!

I don't own a squeegee so I didn't follow along Anna's tips completely. Instead, I armed myself with Windex, Q-Tips and just about every rag in the house. I can't offer any additional tips except if it isn't white, clean it. I did not clean inside the window tracks but I did try to vacuum anything that I could suck out.

Much better! Be sure to check out Anna's blog for more awesome household cleaning tips & ideas!

My Project Strategy

Awhile ago I read about a cleaning strategy on another blog. (Sorry, I can't remember which one.) It suggested that, when you have a lot of tasks on the to-do list, that you work on one item for 20 minutes, then switch to another for 20 minutes, going back & forth until both are done. I think this was meant for cleaning (i.e.: clean for 20 minutes, read blogs for 20 minutes, clean for 20 minutes, and so on & so forth).

I tried that this week and, well, it didn't work for me. I had so much trouble staying focused on anything. So, I came up with a new strategy- one room at a time.

I started first with my bedroom, then the guest room, kitchen and living room. In each room I asked the following questions: What needs done? What needs fixed? What isn't working for us? What needs a solution?

In the bedroom, I first attacked the mound of laundry that needed put away. Then changed the bedding and washed the windows. When I asked "What isn't working for us?" I immediately looked at the top of our closet.

Love my awesome closet organization system the Hubs installed for me for my birthday last year?? I do!

If you are wondering what you are looking at, it's a purse explosion- threatening to be a purse avalanche. This definitely needed a solution. In came some hooks leftover from another project.

I had to bend the hooks open and then I hand screwed them into the ceiling.

We have some order and now I can easily see what bags I have to pick from. Much better! Now onto my husband's side:

I probably spent about half an hour walking in circles around Walmart looking for a solution to this problem. I needed something to help his clothing items stay in stacks and wanted at least 3 stacks. Most of the bins/containers I found were too wide to fit 3 within the 34" I had to work with or too small to be useful. I also wanted the Hubs to be able to see everything and not have to pull down a basket to get at things.

The ideal solution would have been something like this:

Home Essentials Wire Shelf Divider from Walmart

But no, my store didn't have those. I was about to abandon the cause when I came across this:

A 6-compartment hanging closet organizer for $9. I know what you are thinking, "but that provides vertical storage and you need horizontal storage!" Well, turn that 6-compartment hanging closet organizer 90 degrees to the side and looky:

Look how wonderfully organized my husbands work clothes (as in household work) and 3 sets of fatigues look up on that shelf! (Note to self: Ask husband if he has a past military life I know nothing about.)

Easy to see? Check.
Easy to get at? Check.
Cheap? Check.
Reusable in case he vetos my organizational efforts? Check.
Perfect!

I did have to fold up the last two compartments because it was too long but otherwise it's pretty much what Martha ordered. (Get it? Like "what the doctor ordered" but with Martha, the Doctor of Organization!)

I love it! Fingers cross he does too! I'm going to consider this Mission Accomplished!

Living Room Mini-Makeover

I don't know how it affects your household but clutter grows like kudzu around my home! Our living room was getting a little out of control lately. Heck, the entire house was getting out of control and in need of a major cleaning, especially after my Memorial Day weekend 'o projects.

I am my mother's daughter and if you know my mother you'll know that means I need to reorganize, move furniture or redecorate every couple months. The last time our living room got a major overhaul was about 9 months ago after the wedding, so it was getting to be about time again. I decided to do a little mini-makeover on it.

Here are the before & afters:

(click on photos to view larger)

I bought these furniture covers for our couch over the winter, not so much to protect the couch from my husband and cat (though that is needed as well) but more to protect my eyes from the couch. I love the size and layout of it, as well as the color, but this couch came with the husband and lived a life of bachelorhood B.T. (before Tracy) that resulted in a few battle wounds (beer stains, patches that became victim to my cat's former claws, a few tears... the usual).

I love the covers, but they are just two standard size couch covers I'm trying to pretend want to be a sectional sofa cover. They don't stay in place very well but I'm testing out a Velcro remedy that I'll report back on (if it works).

 

Here's a little sneak peak at my two newest additions to the hodge-podge family: my new blue sewing chest & my very own school desk! (Posts to follow) We HAVE to figure out a way to cover that awful air conditioner!

Just a little tidier, just a little more organized. Just a little more "the room is clean now so you better not junk it up!"

Can you spy with your little eyes the two projects I came up with to use up some of the burlap left over from our wedding reception? (Don't worry, posts will follow on those as well!)

This is the tiered organizers new home. This sofa table is right in front of our front door so it tends to be the landing place for anything in my hands when I get home. I figured I better put a few catch-all containers on it. 

We call this the cat cave. I think it's the coolest! I bought it at Bed, Bath & Beyond. It's meant to hide a litter box, say for an apartment or small living space, but we use it to hide the cat's furry bed.

You can see here the final home for my bottle bowl. I'm still not 100% set on the other items on the desk but this will work for now... at least until I get the urge to redecorate again.

I like to call our home decor theme "stuff we like." I remember once being asked what the theme of our Christmas tree was. Uhhh... "theme"? The theme is "ornaments we have," that's our theme! Just about everything we use to "decorate" our home has some special or sentimental history.

 

And lastly, I had to share our new bouncy ball jar. The cat is especially pleased with this addition!

Who else gets the urge every once in awhile to mix things up a bit?

Closet Organization

I organized my hall closet on Sunday! I'm so pleased with myself (probably because I was so unproductive the rest of the weekend).

Here are the before photos:

I know, I know- it wasn't that bad to begin with but there were things that weren't working for me. The top shelf was a huge space that wasn't being fully utilized. Things were organized into bins but I couldn't see what was inside without taking the bin out. The closet looked nice when you opened it, but because I couldn't easily see what I had I was rebuying or not using up products I already had. The bottom two shelves were just messes with stuff piled on top of stuff.

Here's what I did:

Pulled out all unused containers, bins, totes, etc. from around the house - anything that I might be able to use for storage/organization.

Gathered everything that wasn't in the linen closet that I wanted to try to fit into the linen closet. You gotta know what you're working with. I used to store my paper towels in the basement with the rest of my stockpile but I thought they would be a good item to eat up some of that unused space at the top of the closet. (Plus, I wouldn't have to go downstairs to get paper towels anymore.)

I started with the level that bothered me the most: the bottom where I threw all our work towels (bath towels I've ruined with bleach, gotten paint on or that we just don't use anymore) and drop cloths. I rolled all the full size towels and put them in a laundry basket with the drop cloths. I put everything standing up so we can easily see what is available. (Some drop cloths are large than others so it's nice to be able to see and grab any particular one we want, rather than having them stacked.) I did the same with the hand-towel-sized work towels and put those in a small tote for easy access.

There were a few cleaning rags thrown in the mess too, but that's not where I keep most of my cleaning rags so I gather all of them up and hung a basket in my cleaning closet so it's easy to grab a rag and go.

Next I tackled my first aid & medicine basket, pulling out all the expired items. As you can see from the photo, pretty much everything was expired. I'm going to take this as an opportunity to create a proper first aid basket before the summer gets into full swing and we begin all our outdoor projects, which will include completely rebuilding our front porch (and probably some blood).

I had a container for all the hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, etc. that I've squirreled away over the years in the linen closet. I like to use up these small bottles when traveling but the problem is that I keep all product samples I receive in the mail in a different container in the basement- which is where I tend to go when packing a bath bag for travel. So, I moved everything down to one location (in the basement) and pulled out a bunch of items to donate to Hip2Save's Hip2Help Tour. (A totally awesome and worthwhile cause! Click the link and please consider donating yourself!)

And here's the after photo:

I know, not a huge difference (at least not in the photo) but I think the small changes I made will make a big difference in how useful and accessible the closet is for us.

 

The top shelf looks crowded but at least I can say that every inch of the closet is being used now! I moved our beach towels up to the top so those are easy to grab now that the weather is heating up outside (not that we have a beach anywhere near us). I think it will be easier to grab a rolled bath towel without the entire pile crashing down on me now. 

We now have a separate basket with first aid items and a separate basket with medicines. I think this will be useful when it's grab-the-first-aid-and-run-in-the-bathroom-before-you-bleed-on-the-floor time. All the way in the back of this self is mine and my husband's travel bags. We have travel bath bags that hold all the health & beauty items we need for about a week's worth of vacation. After getting back from each trip I restock my bag and put it away in the closet so that's one less that I have to worry about when packing the next time.

If you are like me, you have a collection of half used hair products, lotions, etc. I have a bad habit of opening a bottle of something, using half, getting a new product and being too excited to wait to use it so I end up with this gigantic basket of product that needs used. I threw out all the way old or not-enough-left-to-make-it-worth-the-space-it-takes-up items.

I love my little toilet paper rack. I'm not sure what its intended purpose is. I'm pretty sure you can buy them at Walmart with all the other storage/organizational stuff. I have a small basket with a few extra rolls of TP in the bathroom, but I like having a couple more on hand just outside the bathroom door in the linen closet.

So that's my new and improved linen closet. Did anyone else tackle a major organizational project this weekend?