Friday, June 14, 2013

Spring cleaning...cleaning in general is a time consuming task.

Vinegar, and a lot cleaner kitchen.
When I was younger, back in my teen years I used to laugh and say I will never spend that much time cleaning my house. There has got to be easier ways to do things than the way my grandmother is doing it. Really four times a year totally stripping a room down and wiping everything down with vinegar and water. I hadn't thought about how much time she invested in having her immaculate home until now.

Here I am stripping my kitchen down, wiping every cabinet, counter tops, appliances, windows just like she did. Except I am not as crazy about my house, as she was. I like a clean house but I value my time way too much and I am really active in all I do. I think two times a year is sufficient so long as you keep it picked up in between with vacuuming and dusting, and wiping whatever visual mess is there. This morning, I have one less class since I did all the work necessary yesterday and that five week commitment is done. Instead of kicking back doing nothing, I tackled the kitchen. It took me longer than I anticipated but the results are amazing.

I followed thru with my usual diligence by only using all natural products. My cupboards, countertops, refrigerator gaskets and vents, the oven and its vents, even the microwave all got cleaned with vinegar and water. The windows I used one cup of water, one cup of vinegar in put into a spray bottle then washed them with a newspaper. They were ridiculously dirty but not anymore. I did the marble tile floors first with straight vinegar and then repeated moping with one cup of vinegar and to a gallon of water.

I can't say my cats are overly amused but I did their beds as well in the washing machine. One the beds get an incredible build up of hair, two cats leave an oil residue on their bedding over time and they just look so grungy. All it takes is a 1/2 cup of vinegar to your rinse cycle and the results are amazing. When I first washed their beds before I decided to hunt down my gram's book of household hints with vinegar the hair matted but didn't take much off. Yuck! Then I would spend lots of time pulling all the matted wet hair off before I put it in the dryer. The dryer only took off a minimum of the hair, I then had mats of hair.
It drove me crazy, until I finally did sit down with her book. There it was how to reduce the amount of cat hair clinging to clothes. Well, the cat beds are made of cloth so I gave it a whirl. Sure as heck over time, less and less clung to their beds. And when I washed them they looked almost new but the best part was they did not smell anymore. I told my daughter-in-law about it and she was pleased with how much nicer the dog beds looked and smelled. Dog smells are certainly worst than cats but both are offensive.

Anyway, food for thought, if you are into the green scene. If you aren't consider this I cleaned with a quart of vinegar my kitchen which is 22x 18 and did three cat beds, and three windows and a sliding glass door for under two dollars and I did no harm to environment. Nor will I have ants visiting since they hate the smell of vinegar.

My next class awaits me so at least one room is completed, unfortunately I have seven more to go. My grandmother is probably laughing up in heaven seeing me clean like she used to with vinegar.

No comments:

Post a Comment