#cleaning hack

(It’s best suited if you’re in your own apartment/house and have multiple rooms to manage.) But just start moving. Walk around your place. Put on some music or a YouTube video or whatever floats your boat in your headphones and go for a stroll. See some scissors on the coffee table? Snag em on your way by and drop them off where they go. A dish in your bedroom? Bring that bad boy to the sink as you round the corner. Going room by room or breaking tasks into smaller chunks honestly just stresses me out more lmao but wandering around aimlessly emptying trash bins and tossing socks into the hamper as I notice them?? Now I’m just playing one of those object spotter games babey. No pressure there. If I’m feeling extra ambitious I’ll carry a trash bag with me. Can’t get overwhelmed by a room if I leave it two seconds later. Something doesn’t have a place to go? Make one! Or leave it! Who cares!

A bonus tip is to go to Target or Goodwill or Homegoods or any place that has cheap bins/baskets (little ones that you’d keep pencils or rolls of tape or something in not large storage totes) and keep a few sets on hand. If you realize you’ve accumulated a comical number of sharpies you can go grab a little pencil tray for them and suddenly they have a place to go and now when you find a sharpie on the ground you can toss it in the sharpie bin. Doesn’t matter if the sharpie bin is still on the ground, I’m not going to slip and die in a marker-based Looney Tunes incident and I know if I need a sharpie I go to the spot on the floor next to my bookshelf.

And if you go for a walk and don’t pick up anything that’s also fine you at least moved around a bit. Familiarized yourself with the landscape.

It also tricks my brain into seeing “moving from one room to the other = picking up a few things to put away” which just generally helps keep piles from getting out of hand.

Once I’ve made a few laps things are generally tidy enough to do the same thing with vacuuming/wiping down surfaces/dusting etc.

Knit and crochet more, clean less.

I'm finally sharing the simple system and spreadhseet that I have used for years to clean my house. It's based on two-week intervals and it works!

The mop head spins freely, so when you put it into the spinner and push the pedal, that spins the basket and the head and centrifugal force slings the water in the mop head out into the bucket. It's very handy for making sure you're not flooding your floors which is important if you have a modern flooring type like luxury vinyl plank or are mopping hardwoods. It's best not to get those TOO wet. AND DON'T USE BOILING HOT WATER ON THEM EITHER.

PRETEND SPIN MOP because if I don't get it out of my system I'll be stewing about it forever.

What I'm seeing all over Facetokstagram is people doing this:

They say this separates your dirty and clean mop water.

This does nothing. You're still using one bucket of water both to wet and rinse your mop, and that bucket of water is going to get dirty. The only things being separated are the soon-to-be dirty water and whatever is spun out of the mop head.

This is stupid and it annoys me how much I see it online.

A 2-bucket system requires two, separate buckets.

The rinse water would go in the Spin Mop bucket, and the clean cleanser water would go in the other bucket.

dip mop head into the clean cleanser bucket

spin off in the other/rinse/dirty bucket

rub on floor

dip and swish in the rinse/dirty bucket to rinse the mop

spin off

dip into the clean cleanser bucket

spin off

rub on floor

repeat

That's how it works. That's a 2-bucket system.

When it's time to rinse you dump out all the water from both buckets, rinse out both buckets, and refill both with clean water. Then you dip into the clean water bucket, spin off in the other one, etc. same as before just with no cleanser.

A proper 2-bucket method isn't perfect. I just finished scrubbing my kitchen floor by hand with The Walmart Brush (which doesn't require much water and that is why my buckets have so little in them) and here's how my buckets looked when I was done.

(It really works!!)

1.) Remove shower curtain rod from the wall (you don’t have to but it’ll make it a lot easier. It makes a mess and your shower rod may fall down. Plus it’s easier on your arms). Put it in your shower or tub.

2.) Rip up pieces of tinfoil and wet them in water or white vinegar.

3.) Rub back and forth over the rust and it will run off into a black liquid.

4.) Rinse and dry with a cloth or paper towel. Voila!

They say you can rub a bit of car wax on it to protect the rod or use baby oil for added shine but I skipped this step.

Pictures to prove it:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Until tonight. Enter: homemade cleaning mix. Something so, so simple solved my dilemma. I read that mixing 1 part baking soda with 1 part dishsoap makes a great bathtub scrub. With nothing to lose, I made a very small batch and tested it on a small spot in the tub. When it seemed to do pretty well, I mixed more and got to work deep cleaning the entire tub. I had already begun before I thought to take a before picture, but I hadn't tackled the worst part yet. So, below is my before (ish) and after photos.

TL;DR: 1 part baking soda and 1 part dish soap (I recommend Dawn antibacterial) is a miracle worker for cleaning bathtubs/showers.

It has come to my attention that my friends didn’t know how to remove old stickers from delicate surfaces like laptops. Goo Gone can often damage plastic surfaces, and is also really toxic. This way is safe and easy and you probably already have the stuff.

This technique is only recomended for surfaces like plastic, metal or glass. NOT recommended for wood as the oil can damage it

You will need:

A sticker on a surface

Oil (I like coconut because it is solid, but any cheap, safe oil will do)

Soap

Toothbrush

Cleaning Cloth

Carefully peel off the sticker as best you can. Fortunately, this one is plastic, so it came all in one piece. paper stickers are often harder and will ball up into tiny bits. Just try to get as much off as you can.

Grab some coconut oil (1/8th tsp or less) and start rubbing it into the gunk. If your sticker is paper, make sure the oil saturates the area. Be careful if your oil is runny and use the cloth if you use too much. If the gunk is very stubborn, you can leave the oil on for a few minutes before you start scrubbing.

Fingers or toothbrush will work here

When you start to break down the gunk, add a drop of soap and scrub that in. The job here works two ways:

Oil dissolves the fixative -> Soap dissolves the oil

Wipe away your mess. Again, be careful of keys and oil leakage.

If there is still leftover gunk, repeat the process. You may need to rinse your toothbrush and cloth because they will get full of dissolved sticker gunk, especially paper bits.

I had to look up online yesterday how to get skunk smell off your pets.   Contrary to what everyoen says, it’s not tomato juice that is the best option.  The sites said to use a quart of hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of Dawn dish soap. I bathed my stinky cat in it and then showered with it myself because she had rolled all over me when I was in bed and she came in from fighting the skunk.