Multi-tasking with Microfiber May 31, 2008

Meet the microfiber towel – your new best friend.

If you haven’t got a microfiber towel or two around your house, then I’m surprised you’ve lived this long. Really. No home should be without at least two microfiber towels, because they make cleaning ridiculously easy and simple. They can do so many different tasks, and make them all so quick you’ll wonder how you ever lived without a microfiber towel.

So what can these wonders do?

Actually, we’re going to divide this into two sections: what a microfiber towel can do, and what it can do better than a Swiffer cloth. You read that right – when you have a microfiber cloth, you will no longer have any use for a dry Swiffer cloth. You can stop wasting your money and filling up the landfills.

I know you’re curious now, so we’ll start with all the things a microfiber cloth does better than a Swiffer:

• Dust furniture or anything else holding still without furniture polish. I was never particularly impressed with the Swiffer’s dusting capabilities. Not even the fringe-y ones that were supposed to replace the feather duster. A microfiber cloth, however, will blow your mind. It’s great for dusting electronics, and for furniture, it can’t be beat. When you don’t have to spray furniture polish, or go back over the surfaces Swiffer left dusty, you’ll find that dusting takes much less time. You’ll also find more money in your pocket, when you’re not spending it on furniture polish and Swiffers.
• Clean ceiling fans and blinds. A microfiber cloth will make short work of cleaning both blinds and ceiling fan blades. And, to make this task even easier and quicker, you can now find these nifty little microfiber mitts in the big box store or even dollar-type store of your choice. The best part about this is, you can actually clean a ceiling fan without a shower of dust bunnies raining down in your hair and eyes. And you know that’s good.
• Dust the tops of refrigerators, cabinets, or anything else that’s taller than you are. I’m sure you already have the stick for a dry Swiffer in your home. I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Just wrap a microfiber cloth around the Swiffer stick and get to dusting the things you can’t reach. All without, once again, raining a shower of dust bunnies on your head.
• Dust/sweep hardwood/tile floors. I first fell prey to the Swiffer when I moved into a house that had tile floors. The broom didn’t always pick up the dust bunnies or the hairies, as I like to call those little wads of people and cat hair that one often finds alongside dust bunnies. However, the Swiffer didn’t always pick these up, either. A microfiber towel used on the Swiffer stick will do it, people. In fact, I’d challenge you to first use a Swiffer on your floor, then go over it again with a microfiber towel, and prepare to be horrified. Best of all, if you have a large room, you don’t have to go through several Swiffers or microfiber towels – just flip the microfiber towel over when it gets dirty.

And now, for the other miracles the microfiber towel can perform:

• Cleaning windows without streaks. Self-explanatory.
• Dusting lampshades. You may wonder why this one wasn’t included with the Swiffer ideas. That’s because I could never use a Swiffer on a lamp shade without leaving a downy dusting of Swiffer-bunnies behind.
• Drying dishes quickly. Unlike a regular towel that quickly becomes soaked, the thirsty microfiber cloth will dry many, many dishes before becoming so wet it’s unusable. Unless I’m in a big hurry, I don’t use the heat-dry feature on my dishwasher – if the dishes aren’t dry by the time I’m ready to get them out, I give them a quick swipe with a microfiber cloth.
• Drying car windows. I rarely towel dry an entire car, but I will usually dry the windows to keep them from spotting. One microfiber towel will typically dry all the windows on my Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• Drying my hair. Yep, you read that right. I found this idea on Makeup Alley , a wonderful site for learning more than you ever wanted or needed to know about beauty products.  Now, they recommended a towel just for this purpose from Bed, Bath and Beyond or some such place, but since the nearest store like that is oh, 200 miles from here, I just bought a large microfiber towel in the automotive section at Wal-Mart, and was delighted to find that it worked very well.  I have long, thick, curly hair that has a lot in common with a sponge in that it soaks up water and refuses to let it go.  The microfiber towel makes blow-drying my hair much quicker.

So now, to recap: the microfiber towel is amazing.  A regular workhorse, it can perform many, many duties around the house.  It will save you beaucoup bucks in time while also decreasing the amount of trash you produce by eliminating the need for Swiffers and the paper towels you may use for some of these other tasks.  Furthermore, it makes you more energy efficient by allowing you to stop using the heat-dry option on your dishwasher, decreasing the amount of time you need to blow-dry your hair, and decreasing the amount of time you keep the lights turned on up into the wee hours of the night cleaning house.  Wonderful.  Of course, to me, the best thing about microfiber towels is that they make cleaning so much quicker that I have more time to read books and do my nails.  That’s productivity.

Multi-tasking Wonders – Borax May 28, 2008

This week’s theme is multi-tasking, or, rather, the items in our homes that can multi-task.

Blue Dawn, which I expounded on last week, is only one of the many things that I have found multiple uses for. This week, it’s Borax.

Mary Hunt’s awesome site – Debt-Proof Living also turned me on to the wonders of Borax, just as it did the wonders of Blue Dawn. Mary recommended it for freshening laundry, so I, as the slavering acolyte of Mary’s I am, naturally went out and bought a box, and found to my delight that it was good for more than just getting the musty smell out of towels.

Like Blue Dawn, Borax is non-toxic, and readily available in the laundry aisle of your favorite store. It’s cheap and has a thousand uses at least. What’s not to love?

Among my favorite uses for Borax are:

• Cleaning the toilet. I have two of the stupidest and most endearing cats in the world, cats that can sit on the edge of the toilet and play with the water for as long as they can get away with it. This necessitates using something that is non-toxic to clean the toilet with. I use Borax just as I would any other powdered toilet cleaner – just sprinkle some in the toilet and clean away. Usually, I will scrub the toilet, and let the Borax-ed water sit overnight. Clean toilet, healthy albeit foolish cats.
• Flea killer. Said foolish cats also attract fleas. Eeeewww. When I first got both foolish cats, they were stray foolish kittens, and were quite flea bitten. They’d managed to drag fleas in the house before I knew what had happened to me. Sprinkling Borax on the carpet, just as you would a powdered flea killer, letting it sit for awhile, then vacuuming. Voila! No more fleas! I have also used Borax outside the house to keep vermin from coming in. Just sprinkle Borax around your home’s outside walls to deter pests. However, take care not to sprinkle on flowers or other plants, as Borax will deter them, too.
• Cleaning hard water stains off glass and china. 90% of my dishes were bought at second hand stores or given to me by family members (and just let me brag that I have collected no less than 10 full sets of dishes this way. And yes, I am seeking help for my dish addiction.). Unfortunately, many people in my area have hard water, or, to be more succinct, water with such a high sulfur content that it comes out of the faucet rusty. This means that many of the dishes I acquire have some degree of staining. I have found that soaking them in a Borax and water solution will eliminate many of these stains; for the more difficult stains, I make a paste of Borax/water and scrub. Hard.
• Wall/woodwork cleaner. When the job is simply too big for a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, clean your walls with this – 1 tablespoon Borax, 3/8 cup white vinegar and 1 quart of very hot water. This is safe for washable painted walls, and does not leave the sticky film that many commercial cleaners recommended for this result in (Murphy’s Oil Soap comes to mind). This is also great for cleaning kitchen cabinets, and again, will not leave a sticky film that attracts more grease and Lord only knows what else.
• Glass shower door cleaner. I alternate between blue Dawn and Borax for this job, but when I first moved into the practice Barbie Dream House, I went straight for the Borax, simply because it appeared to me that the glass shower doors had not been cleaned since they were installed in oh, 19-freaking-72!!!! Borax made short work of this job.

There are many more uses for Borax that I have not listed, mostly because I haven’t had time to try them yet. You can find a great list at the 20-Mule Team Borax website .

And, the next time your children are bored out of their minds and driving you nuts, before telling them to go play in the road, try this super-neat Borax activity with them. If this doesn’t keep them occupied for about 24 hours, then tell them to go play in the road.

What the World Needs Now Is Dawn, Blue Dawn May 21, 2008

Do you remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster? I do, and I still don’t buy Exxon. But anyway. What I remember most is the Dawn dish liquid commercials that ran after the Exxon Valdez spill, showing all the sea birds having the oil washed out of their feathers with blue Dawn dish liquid. I’ve had a special place in my heart for blue Dawn ever since.

Little did I know until I discovered Mary Hunt’s Debt-Proof Living website just how special the original blue Dawn dish liquid was. Mary is a veritable treasure-trove of interesting information on how to live well without drowning in debt, but her columns about blue Dawn are always amongst my favorites.

Blue Dawn can clean just about anything, which makes it extremely useful to have around. Not only that, but it’s dirt cheap – around a dollar a bottle – and it’s biodegradable, safe to use around pets and children, and doesn’t stink to high heaven like most chemical cleaners do. An added bonus is, if you have sensitive skin like I do, you don’t have to worry about getting a little Dawn on your skin.

Among the uses Mary has found for blue Dawn:

• An ice pack. Can you believe it? According to Mary, you just fill a strong zip sandwich bag partially with blue Dawn, bag it again to be safe, and freeze. She says this can be used and reused. I have not tried this, but it sounds likely.
• Hand degreaser. Now this one I have used, after working on my darling truck, Little Doe, and finding my hands a mess. It will even get the black junk from around your fingernails if you use a manicure brush.
• Laundry stain remover. It’s no wonder why a certain laundry detergent “now has the power of Dawn,” as the commercial says. Blue Dawn is one of my two go-to laundry stain removers (I’ll tell you about the other in a future post). Any greasy stain that ends up on your clothes can be eliminated by blue Dawn, so long as you use it before you wash AND dry the article of clothing. Drying will set the stain, and after that, not even blue Dawn can help you. And trust me when I tell you that it works better than any of the laundry stain removers I have tried. Blue Dawn has the further benefit of being safe to use on nearly any fabric, and will not fade the color, either.
• Ant repellent. Yes, you read that right. When I saw this use for blue Dawn on Mary’s website, I was skeptical. But when the annual spring pilgrimage of ants came marching into the bathroom of my old house last year, I tried this, doing just as Mary suggested – spraying the counter that the ants seemed attracted to with a solution of blue Dawn and water, then wiping dry. According to Mary, the little bit of residue left behind will repel ants. And it WORKS. Without pesticides.
• Bathroom cleaner. Ummhmm. Blue Dawn, straight out of the bottle, will remove soap scum from bathtubs, shower doors, and even sinks as well or better than harsh, smelly, chemical bathroom cleaners. I have found that this works best when used with a plastic kitchen scouring pad.
• All-purpose cleaner. Blue Dawn, water, and vinegar combined in plastic spray bottle will clean counters, sinks, stove tops (especially the ceramic surface kind) and even glass and mirrors. I first mix two parts blue Dawn to one part water in a spray bottle (usually one cup blue Dawn to half a cup water) and then finish filling the bottle with vinegar. You will be surprised how well this mixture cleans.

Get thee to the store for some blue Dawn. For what you save in more expensive cleaners, buy yourself a book, a CD, or maybe some jewelry, darling. Or save it for your down payment on your Barbie Dream House.

UPDATE: I had a fall recently. A fall that resulted in a knee that was swollen to twice its normal size. So I tried the Blue Dawn ice pack. One word – AWESOME. Not only did it not freeze super-hard, making it easy to conform to my knee, but it also stayed cold FOR-freaking-EVER. Yes. All I did was pour some (okay, a whole .99 cent bottle) into a large freezer zip bag, then bagged it again. I packed it around like Linus with his blanket for a week, and it never once leaked or busted. Again – AWESOME.

Dreaming of Dream Homes May 15, 2008

I guess my parents really loved me, because I had the Barbie Dream House, in all it’s 1979-vintage orange, yellow, and white glory, with the impossible to use furniture and accessories included.

The A-frame, two-story, three-piece Barbie Dream house I had was a pain in the ass to play with. Reaching in and out of the house to rearrange Barbie meant knocking over her cool furniture, or pulling one of her lovely doors off its hinges. Not to mention that it was out of the question for Barbie to have any kind of rocking party – there was no room.

So the Barbie Dream House ended up in a corner of the playroom, and instead I built Barbie a house myself, strangely similar to the one Mattel built for Barbie several years later (too bad 4 or 5 is too young for a patent). I had in my bedroom a cabinet with two doors that opened up to four sections inside, plenty big enough to make a house with four easily accessible rooms for Barbie. I made her a bed out of a shoe box lid and a washcloth, a sofa from two paperback books also covered in a washcloth, tables out of spools of thread, and some really nifty chairs out of cassette tape cases.

Mom and Daddy, bless their hearts. I’m sure they never understood why I didn’t play with the Barbie Dream House.

I’m glad that having the Barbie Dream House didn’t deter me from building a bigger, better house. However, I could never get the idea of the Dream House out of my head. I would think, all the time I was building Barbie a house in the cabinet, about how if I were the one making Barbie’s Dream House, I would make it easier to play with. I would make it blue – no, purple – no, green. I would put in a working stereo and speakers. I would make the Dream House big enough to fit Barbie’s real working bubble-bath (yes, I had this toy, too).

I have never outgrown the Barbie Dream House syndrome. I’m always convinced that I can find a better way to do just about anything, and that includes just plain living in a house. Now that I am an adult with a job that pays a living wage, I am thinking of my own Dream House. I recently moved into a house that is roughly the size (just under 2000 sq. ft.) of the house I hope to build, just for practice, I guess.

My Barbie Dream House, just like the one that I had when I was little, already has problems and it’s not even built. For one thing, I know I have to get my financial house in order first, something I am already in the process of doing. The economy is also a factor. And, I still haven’t found the perfect house plan yet.

So until then, I’m making do in my practice Dream House. I’ve lived here just long enough to know what I would do differently in my own Dream House. Here’s a list:
- Tankless Water Heater. I am obsessed with tankless water heaters, and I don’t even know why.
- Low-E Windows. These babies will make my Dream House easier to heat and cool, and will keep the sun from fading the treasured framed album covers on my walls.
- Geothermal Heating. A friend of mine has a geothermal heat pump, and she says it rocks. It must, because her Barbie Dream House is twice the size of my practice Dream House, and yet her electric bill is always lower. Eh.

What will I do the same? I will definitely have a basement. For some reason, I love the den in the basement of this house. I think it reminds me of That 70s Show only not as tacky. I will have hardwood floors, although I will probably go with pre-finished. And I will have a bedroom that not only has a linen closet, but also a dressing room and walk-in closet. Don’t laugh – this is, after all, a Barbie Dream House.

Got to Keep Moving May 13, 2008

I decided this past December to move. Crazy idea. Who – who I ask you! – thinks it’s a good idea to move in winter, just before Christmas, arguably the busiest time of year? No one. Did I mention I was moving just two houses up the street?

Needless to say this was not the typical anal-retentive Miss Ruby move. Miss Ruby threw her belongings into any box, tote, clothes basket and/or garbage bag she could get her grimy little hands on. She hauled innumerable loads from Old House to New House in her Jeep, because, since it was winter, she refused to get her darling 85 Chevy Custom Deluxe Pickup out on salty, slimy roads.

Fast-forward to the first week of January, better known as Doomsweek, the week that Miss Ruby, after a month of piddling and pushing, simply MUST be out of Old House. What’s left, aside from four rooms of huge, heavy furniture?

Over 3000 cds, over 600 record albums, and over 1000 books.

Miss Ruby is not a wealthy girl. Nor is she especially materialistic. She cares nothing to dispose of clothing, shoes, purses, household items, or any other flotsam and jetsam (preferably for a tax write-off, but that’s another post for another day). But she cannot bring herself to get rid of books, records, or cds that she loves. Even if they only have two pages or one song that she knows she will read or listen to again.

Why, asked everyone who saw the crates (and when I say crates, I mean TWO FULL-SIZED TRUCK LOADS), why in the world are you keeping all those cds, records, and books? Why don’t you get rid of some of them? I could do nothing but shake my head.

But I know why. For years, after I left home and the relatively generous bosom of my family, I would scour the used book and cd stores, the yard sales and the Goodwills, for books and records and cds, because as a college student I: a. could not afford much more, and b. had so few other possessions that toting these things from place to place was not the headache or backache that it is now. When I moved – and I moved a LOT, for a LONG time – it seemed like anywhere I put my boxes of cds, albums, and books was home. I may have had furniture that was picked up off the side of the road (literally), no curtains on the windows, and the most motley crew of drinking glasses known to man, but I had the best music and book collection around.

I have a little more disposable income now than I did then, and real furniture rather than cleverly disguised crates, but I still choose to spend more of my money on books, cds, and records than anything else. Of course, downloading music and www.paperbackswap.com have helped free up some of my income for other things, but I still recoil in horror at spending more than $50 for a pair of jeans when I know how many songs or words I could buy for that same amount of money.

What do you save every extra dime for? What would you rather go without food to buy?