Slow + Steady Cleans the House :: Week 4

I'm going to take it easy the next two weeks because of the Thanksgiving holiday so there won't be any in-depth cleaning posts or polls, but I wanted to leave you with something that has been very helpful to me and is better for my family :: homemade cleaners. I hope you'll consider using them too.

The health risks of using commercial, chemical-based cleaners always bothered me, especially since having Ian and Maya. It took me awhile to switch over to greener cleaning products, but I've been very happy since doing so. With a little elbow grease these products clean just as well, if not better, than the store-bought stuff.

My essential "cleaning kit" includes the following :: Dr. Bronner's peppermint Castile soap, Costco-sized white vinegar + baking soda, borax, essential oils, scrubbing brushes, old toothbrushes, and microfiber cloths.

[My cleaning supply carrier full of stuff that rarely gets used.]

A book that really helped me is Green Up Your Cleanup by Jill Potvin Schoff. I use several of her cleaning "recipes" instead of store-bought cleaners ::

ALL-SURFACE SPRAY

2 teaspoons borax
hot water
1/4 teaspoon liquid Castile soap

Put the borax in a 16-oz spray bottle, fill it with hot water, and shake until the borax dissolves. Last, add the Castile soap. Spray on surfaces like counters and walls, let is sit for a little bit, and wipe off with a clean sponge or microfiber cloth.

GLASS CLEANER

1 cup distilled white vinegar
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap (optional)
3-8 drops essential oil like lavender, lemon, peppermint, and tea tree (optional)

Fill a spray bottle with vinegar and water, and shake gently. You can add essential oils to cut the vinegar smell. According to the book, you should use the liquid dish soap in the glass cleaner to dissolve the buildup left behind by commercial glass cleaners. Once that buildup is gone you can omit the soap.

BAKING SODA SCRUB <-- love this stuff!

2 tablespoons baking soda
liquid dish soap or Castile soap

Put the baking soda in a wide-mouthed container (I used an old reusable Ziploc sandwich container) and add the soap a little at a time until you have a foamy paste. Apply the paste to what you want to clean with a rag, sponge, or brush and let it sit for a little while before rinsing with vinegar. Spray the vinegar off with water. You can keep the scrub in the container for awhile with the lid on it. But I've gotten so lazy that I just squirt some Castile soap on whatever surface I want to clean and sprinkle on baking soda before scrubbing away.

DISINFECTANT

2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon (about 25 drops) tea tree oil
1/4 teaspoon (about 25 drops) lavender oil

Fill a 16-oz spray bottle with water and then add the essential oils. Shake gently before each use. Spray on surfaces and leave to dry.

Schoff has a few other "recipes" I haven't tried yet, like laundry soap and dishwasher soap, both items I still buy at the store (although I try to buy the "green" option, whatever that means). And I still buy toilet cleaner at the store. Every once in awhile I try to use baking soda to scrub the inside of the toilet and then I spray it down with the disinfectant. I'm not sure which is more effective, seeing as my toilet always seems to be dirty ... I'll just have to keep experimenting.

And I'm leaving you with one last "miracle" cleaning tip (which I read about in a Japanese baking soda + vinegar cleaning book) :: you know that oily buildup that accumulates on stuff near the stove? I've always had a heck of a time scrubbing that crud off my teapot, which I leave on my stovetop. I used abrasive cleaners and hot water and nothing ever worked. Until I read that baking soda alone could clean it up! Sure enough, all you have to do is sprinkle baking soda on the item and scrub with a dry brush (I usually use an old toothbrush) or even your fingers. The oily residue just balls up and crumbles off. Once you're all done rinse it with water.

Slow + Steady Cleans the House :: Week 3

This week I tackle the dreaded laundry monster. Laundry, to me, is a mystery chore :: it's not an extremely difficult task (after all, the washing machine + dryer do most of the work) but it still doesn't get done often enough; all of us seem to wear the same clothes over and over again but the mountains of laundry seem to get larger and larger; and where do the darn single socks disappear to?!

[image from Shirt.Woot]

Everyday I am faced with some kind of you-still-haven't-finished-the-laundry reminder :: we have stacks of clean clothes in the living room that need to be folded, put away, or washed again because they've been sitting there for god knows how long; and we have way too many laundry hampers around the house full of dirty clothes and linens. And we can't forget about the washer that's full of dirty clothes and the dryer that hasn't been unloaded yet.

It's clear that we haven't found a laundry system that works for us. I'm hoping that if we have an actual plan we can conquer laundry. So, what do you do?


I'd love to read about your laundry process, so please feel free to leave comments as well.

In an absolutely perfect world, someone else would take care of my laundry for me, but that ain't ever gonna happen. So I've been thinking instead of what would be a more ideal situation. Unfortunately, that entails some major renovations to our house so I had to scrap the idea. (Honestly, I would rather have an office/craft room or a nicer bathroom but more square footage for a laundry room would make things so much easier!) So now I'm down to being realistic about our laundry solutions. Boo being realistic!

First, I think we're not using hampers well. Before we had kids we kept two hampers, one for white clothes and one for colors. I did the laundry when they got full, and the clean clothes got put away because I needed the hamper to be empty for the new dirty clothes. But then, somewhere along the way, we started accumulating more and more laundry baskets and hampers. I think that was the major mistake.

Now that we have enough baskets to leave our clean clothes in, I don't bother to fold and put the clothes away. Instead, we just pull clean clothes out of the basket to wear. And because we have the dual system of throwing dirty clothes directly into the washing machine and putting some dirty clothes into hampers, the whites and colors don't get sorted and some clothes don't get washed for a long time (i.e., the washing machine fills up more quickly than the hampers fill up so the hamper clothes get neglected).


As a solution, I'm really liking the idea of these laundry baskets by Rubbermaid :: Stack'n Sort baskets, which were mentioned on the Real Simple Home & Organizing blog. Each member of the family would get two (whether for whites + colors or for clean + dirty). Once we have the hamper situation squared away we'll stop putting clothes directly into the washing machine.

Second, I think a laundry schedule would work for me. Otherwise I go much too long between washing towels and sheets. Writing laundry into my weekly schedule might help me to be more efficient about getting it all done. My plan is to start laundry in the morning on the days I go into work late (Monday and Thursday) and do a load (or two) of linens during the weekend. If there's a lot of laundry that needs to be done, I might do a load on Wednesday (when I come home early from work) or on Friday (my day off). With this schedule I might end up doing a load everyday (!) but at least I've scheduled specific times to get it done.

Third, "doing laundry" means sorting dirty clothes, washing + drying, folding, and putting away. It's the whole package and needs to be done as a whole package. Going back to my last point about scheduling laundry, I need to make sure I have enough time during that day to complete the entire process.

And last, Rupert and I are trying to get the kids involved. We obviously can use all the help we can get! Currently, the kids put their dirty clothes in the washer and they sort the clean clothes. For the most part they do a good job, but it dawned on me that they pay very little attention to what Rupert and I wear; it's not uncommon to find Rupert's shirts in my pile and vice versa. I'm sure with some more practice they'll get it one of these days. As they get older I'll have them take on a bit more of the laundering process.

Laundry is definitely a chore for me, so I was surprised that no one chose laundry as one of their three worst chores in last week's poll. Cleaning the kitchen came in first as the worst chore, followed by dishwashing and dusting + vacuuming (a tie). As I've been thinking more and more about cleaning in order to write these blog posts, it's becoming clearer and clearer that having fewer possessions would make cleaning much easier and go by much more quickly. (I think a decluttering post will be in the works for posting in the near future.)

As for the follow-up poll about how often people spot-clean, it turns out people are kinda split on this one. One person answered "weekly" but two others answered "once every two weeks," and another two, "when it gets disgusting." I wish the two people who answered "other" specified their frequency. I am definitely not a weekly spot-cleaner -- the days just seem to fly by before I can get the cleaning supplies out -- so I'd have to say I wait until things get disgusting. When I write it out like that for all the world to read, it makes me feel pathetic. Gotta work towards spot-cleaning a bit more frequently ... or at least train the kids how to do some of it!

what I made for dinner :: mini honey-mustard meatloaves

I don't know about you, but I grew up with fabulous meatloaf. My mother makes an amazing meatloaf with some surprises inside :: she would often stick an entire sausage (like a bratwurst) or a hard-boiled egg inside the loaf. It may sound weird, but it's delicious! And her meatloaves were always moist so I never had the aversion to meatloaf that many people seem to have.

Fast forward to college, sophomore year. I attempted to make a meatloaf and I didn't have a recipe. That was a disaster and a memory Rupert seems to have erased from his memory (thankfully).

I think I was traumatized by that cooking experience and I've been very reluctant to make meatloaf for the last 10+ years. But I think I've found a recipe that will help me add meatloaf to my cooking repertoire :: Mini Honey-Mustard Meatloaves from Martha Stewart.


The recipe is not perfect as is, but it's a good start. Rupert was surprised at its moistness, a big plus. Adding cheese to the meatloaf mixture and the top of the meatloaves helps, no doubt! But I found that it's too fluffy, a result from perhaps too much panko breadcrumbs. I don't want the meat to be too dense, but I also want it to still taste like meat; next time I'll reduce the amount of breadcrumbs to a quarter of a cup. The recipe calls for honey-mustard but I didn't have any so I mixed some honey into regular yellow mustard. Next time I may use a Dijon or seedy mustard instead to give it deeper flavor.

One warning, because of the cheese, the meatloaves expel a lot of grease (I also used 80/20 ground beef so there was a lot of fat in the meat too). Be sure to use the cooking pan that is appropriate for you. I used a rimmed baking sheet lined with Silpat and it required a lot of cleaning. Placing the meatloaves on a rack in a deeper baking pan might be better ...

I served the meatloaves with curry roasted cauliflower, which was a hit with everyone. I just cut up a cauliflower, doused it with some olive oil and sprinkled salt, pepper, and a little bit of curry powder on it. I think I roasted it for about 12 minutes in the oven while the meatloaves were cooking. Be sure to toss them midway through the cooking time so they don't get too dry.

Slow + Steady Cleans the House :: Week 2

I'm now starting week 2 of Slow + Steady Cleans the House and I haven't done a lick of cleaning in the last seven days. Why am I not surprised?

[Cleared off the top of the dresser + reorganized my books.]

Actually, I partially decluttered our bedroom last weekend but what I didn't get cleaned up is still on the floor. That's my problem :: I lose steam part way through an organizing or cleaning project and I'm left with a bigger mess than when I started.

[What was on the dresser is now on the floor.]

So, why did I not finish? Let's analyze this for a moment ... I've read enough organizing books to know the basic guidelines, and I clearly did not follow them ::

1. Make a commitment to organizing + cleaning as a family --> So far I'm the only one on board. I also started cleaning the bedroom by myself to surprise Rupert but I should probably enlist his help next time.
   
2. A place for everything, and everything in its place --> There was a lot of useless junk on my dresser that I got rid of (including some old poetry medals I won in middle school), but I still have too much stuff to store in an orderly way. I have to work on minimizing and finding a proper place for everything instead of just leaving stuff on any available flat surface.
   
3. Touch items as few times as possible --> I need to remember that the extra 10 seconds to a minute it takes to properly put things away is worth not having junk all over the place all the time.
   
4. Changing behavior takes a long time; I will have to repeat an activity for more than three weeks before it becomes a habit --> I should spend some time each week doing the same cleaning/organizing activity so that it becomes a regular part of my routine.
   
5. Cleaning + organizing are more mental exercises than physical acts --> Most importantly, I will have to think about my possessions, the reasons why I keep certain items, and my motivation behind mindless shopping.
   

So, my goals for the following week are to finish picking up the junk on the floor in the bedroom, and to go through guidelines 1 ~ 5 everyday.

All right, down to some business :: Last week's poll results surprised me. I asked what your cleaning methodology is and I thought for sure that most people cleaned a bit everyday or weekly. Most respondents are like me :: they clean before company comes over. Or, as my mother-in-law mentioned, she hides stuff before company comes over. Valid point -- cleaning and hiding are two different things.

Of the 13 respondents, six said they clean before company comes over; four have a housecleaning service; and there was one respondent each for seasonal cleaning, monthly cleaning, and feigning housecleaning ignorance. But, surely, people must do spot-cleaning every once in awhile. Otherwise, everyone's house would look like mine and I know for a fact that they don't! So let's get a bit more specific here ... and be honest!

OK, but this week's official poll is actually about your three most dreaded chores.

I had a hard time just picking three!

48 months.

Maya @ 48 months :: November 4, 2009

[the last of my what-started-as-weekly-and-is-now-monthly posts about Maya]

• Visited a real pumpkin patch for the first time in Ventura. This was a tradition we started when Ian was little, but we stopped going after a few years so we'd like to resurrect it.
• Her counting to 20 is definitely getting better ... finally.
• She was a mermaid princess for Halloween and went trick-or-treating with her friend M (for two blocks before she got tired). She definitely loves her candy ... but she separated out the chocolates for me and Rupert to eat.
  
• From Rupert's Facebook :: "I'm shooting zombies out of my butt." -- not the words of a normal 3 year old.
• And calling bad guys (Biff from Back to the Future Part II) "poop heads."
  
• She's not very good at pluralfying nouns. Appropriately for October :: "ghostes" + "leafes"
  
• First parent-teacher conference :: academically moving along quite well, but socially it turns out she's a lot more similar to Ian than I originally thought.
• Rupert *still* spoonfeeds her cereal in the morning but she promised me that once she turns 4 she'll eat by herself (which she is totally capable of doing). Now, we have to make sure Rupert goes along with the plan.
  
• She has this thing about not wanting to be on the freeway because "it's boring!" If we're going somewhere she doesn't recognize the first thing she asks is, "Are we going on the freeway?" Then she asks, "Are we on the freeway now?" And finally she asks repeatedly, "Are we off the freeway?"
  

Week 1 in my new weekly series Slow + Steady Cleans the House

It's no secret that I am not a fan of housekeeping. "Not a fan" is an understatement :: I loathe and detest it and often take naps instead of picking up a sponge or a mop or a broom. Who wants to spend their time scrubbing toilets and wiping down baseboards when they could be doing anything else?

[How true it is.]

Of course, I'm not alone. My friend L recently asked on her Facebook page if money were no object would you hire a housekeeper or a nanny, and all the responses were a resounding yes for the housekeeper. I think most parents -- whether at home or at work -- would rather spend time with their kid(s) than have to say, "Hold on, sweetie, Mommy has to wash the windows instead of take you to the park."

Heck, even if money were an object (and, believe me, it is), I'd hire a housekeeper to come every once in awhile. The only thing stopping me is my husband. In fact, my mother-in-law has offered on numerous occasions to send her housekeeper to clean my bathroom and kitchen (because they are, in fact, that dirty!) but Rupert has pooh-poohed the idea repeatedly. (It's not that he thinks housework is a woman's job; I guess it's the principle of not having to pay someone to do something we can do ourselves. Along the same lines, he didn't like when our parents sent a gardener over to spiff up our yard. Again, I would rather hire someone to do that occasionally instead of listening to Rupert mumble about the amount of yard work there is when he could be spending time with the kids or studying.)

It's not that I'm bad at housekeeping. On the rare occasions I get around to cleaning, I do a fairly thorough and good job. It's the upkeep that I cannot, well, keep up with. And since I started working almost a year ago, the house has gotten worse. As a result, our house is in perpetual disarray. We're getting pretty close to the point where we would be a good candidate for one of those organizing shows on HGTV.

[My view on housekeeping isn't this extreme ... but it's pretty close.]

I do not jest, nor do I exaggerate, when I say the house is not just dirty, it's a health hazard (I can picture my mother and mother-in-law nodding in agreement). Every surface is covered in dust and/or cobwebs. There are stacks of crap throughout the house. And let's not even talk about the bathroom; it's like a science experiment gone awry. Suffice it to say, it would be easier to completely remodel the bathroom than try to clean it completely (at least, that's what I keep telling Rupert in the hopes of moving along our my remodeling plans). Looking around the house it is just overwhelming; I don't know where to start or what to tackle first.

Enough is enough! I've been a homeowner for over seven years ... let's show some pride of ownership here, people! So I'm starting a new project :: Slow + Steady Cleans the House. I want to take a more organized and routinized approach to cleaning the house and keeping it that way. And I'd like for you to come along for the ride. That means I need your advice and feedback. Part of my housecleaning improvement process will be to learn and to understand how other people tackle their housekeeping. I think your answers will be really enlightening and helpful to other readers as well. So, how can you contribute? For one, you can comment on each week's blog post; but the easier way will be to participate in the weekly poll.

Polls will be posted each Sunday. Results will be announced and discussed in the following Sunday's post. This week's poll is a general view on how often you clean. Not surprisingly, I'm of the "Housecleaning? What is that?" camp. Occasionally I dabble in the "Clean before company comes over" category but usually I just don't invite people into my house. I'd like to change that. Sure, I claim that I don't care what other people think but it's hard not to compare the state of your house with those of your friends' (who also work but somehow manage to keep their homes habitable).

What is your housecleaning methodology?
Clean a bit everyday. Clean once a week. Clean before company comes over. Have a housecleaning service. Clean monthly. Massive cleaning seasonally. Housecleaning? What is that?
	Results

Last piece of business :: in order to embark on this weekly cleaning journey (which will, by association, include organizing) I set some ground rules for myself ::

1. As the name of the project implies, this will be a gradual process. I will not expect miracle results overnight.
2. No matter the temptation, I will not compare myself to others. I may steal their cleaning/organizing ideas but I will not compare the progress or result of that idea-stealing.
3. I'm doing this for the kids as much as I'm doing it for myself. I want to set a good example and teach them organizing skills so when I say, "Clean your room" they know how to do it properly and they don't ask me, "Well, why don't you clean your room?"
4. I will not give up. Even if I encounter some set-backs (i.e., letting dishes or laundry pile up) I'll ease myself back into the cleaning routine.
5. I am not looking to be perfect, just adequately organized and clean so that housework no longer causes me stress.
   

All righty, are you ready? Let's get started!

pride of craftsmanship

On my list of "33 Things to Do While I'm 33" are things like travel (check!), get an iPhone (check!), and learn a new language (not so check). And I'm now on my way to checking "take a creative class" off the list.

My sister D and I are taking a 10-week letterpress class at Otis. Like many paper fiends we both love letterpressed items and we were curious about how it works. So we nudged each other into taking this (expensive) class.

Who knew letterpress would be so much work? OK, who am I kidding, of course it's a lot of work! No wonder letterpress stationery costs so much. (And it's very greasy (which actually was a surprise).) Most modern mass-produced letterpress stationery is made using photopolymer plates, which easily allows use of images, patterns, and text. But we're starting off old-school with metal type.


I set the phrase "i (heart) the liberry" because one of my first graders would literally run around the library yelling this. I liked it ... but no body seemed to "get" it so I reset it as regular ol' "i (heart) the library". My idea was to print it in black except use red for "love," which means you pull out the "love" letters and print a batch in black, swap out the letters, and print just "love" in red.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy when it takes two-and-a-half hours just to set and adjust the type and machine. So all I got done was this:

[This sample is on smooth, slightly shimmery paper. The ink "sticks" pretty well to this paper.]

Sure, the phrase isn't complete, but I wish you could feel the lovely impression of the letterpress. I'm pretty happy and proud of the results. It drove me and the teacher crazy trying to get everything just right (he basically told me he hated this project!). But it was well worth the hassle. Truly, it gave me the joy of creating something with my own hands.

[I printed more on watercolor paper, which my teacher didn't think took the ink very well, but it has a nice texture to it. Besides, I bought a whole pad of the stuff so I need to use it up. My idea is to cut them up into business card size and fill in the blank depending on my mood.]

the start of my day

How my work desk is beginning to look every morning ...




I'm also a bit embarrassed to admit (but just a bit) that I had a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast with my coffee.

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The Simple Woman's Daybook :: 10.19.2009

[Topics copied from Ali Edwards's blog, which was inspired by the original Simple Woman's Daybook]

Outside my window … confused weather: cloudy + sunny, warm + breezy, somewhere between a Los Angeles summer + fall.

I am thinking ... there’s so much I’d like to do to “pretty up” the library. But my priority really should be about curriculum!

I am thankful for ... my husband's flexible grad student schedule. We may not have a lot of money but we have the Man of the family around when we need/want him.

From the kitchen ... tuna noodle casserole.

I am wearing ... light gray corduroys + a hot pink tank top (which I get lots of compliments on), both from Old Navy, and black ballet flats.

I am creating ... shelf marker paint sticks + shelf marker frames (whoo-hoo decoupaging!).

I am going ... to Borders to use the 30% off coupon that expires today.

I am reading ... _The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie_ by Alan Bradley, _Leviathan_ by Scott Westerfeld, _No Impact Man_ by Colin Beavan.

I am hoping ... to cancel my gym membership (since I haven't gone in forever) and use the money instead for KPCC membership + a charitable cause.

I am hearing ... the sound of an empty campus, the peacefulness of no kids at school.

Around the house ... Ian is home early from school with a headache + Jordan spent the day working on the couch.

One of my favorite things ... alone time with some coffee (even though what’s supposed to be regular drip coffee tastes suspiciously like hazelnut today) and ideas for what to buy at the bookstore.

A few plans for the rest of the week ... come up with 3rd grade curriculum about the Dewey Decimal system, finishing the shelf decorations for work, sewing up four tagE*blankEs, printing up some stationery at the letterpress lab, and reading three books.

Picture for today ...

what i made for dinner :: broccoli calzones

Meatless dinner, for a change. I needed to use up the ricotta cheese from the other day so I did a search on Everyday Food and found this recipe for calzones.

It's simple but a tad time-consuming to make + cool the broccoli filling and to roll out + fill eight pizza doughs.

The results are, however, pretty good. And even without any meat I found it to be quite filling. You could, of course, add some kind of meat like sausage if you can't bear the thought of eating vegetarian.


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