after a year and a half - help me CLEAN my house!!!!

chen

Fri, Aug 10 2007, 9:46 am

First of all, if things are old, they will never look as clean as new. They discolor from exposure to air, light, heat, and chemicals; and the finish gets worn, dull and scratched and becomes a home for microscopic particles that you cannot remove except by sandblasting. Some stains will never come out no matter what you do. Don't sweat it--call it "the patina of age" and think of it as proof of character--something like wrinkles on an old person's face.

Dishes: Plasticware will eventually stain. All dishes will eventually earn that patina of tiny scratches that collects dirt. Every so often when my dishes look too grungy, I soak them in a solution of bleach. But first I scrub them really well with the hottest possible water, full-stregth dish detergent, and a scrubby. Bleach will remove stains but not dirt, so the pre-scrub is important. They look great for a little while, but eventually the grunge returns. (Now playing at your neighborhood theater: THE GRUNGE RETURNS, a tale of horror and menace that will leave you quaking in your seat. No one under 17 admitted without parent or guardian.)

Items with dirt-catching little ridges come clean after a good soak in hot soapy water and attack with a small , stiff brush--nailbrush or toothbrush. A freind of mine does this every time she washes the things, but I do it only when dirt builds up to the point that I am offended--or before mil visits Wink

Use the hottest water you can get. If you keep the water temperature low because of energy conservation or safety concerns--as you should--you can always boil up a kettle for washing dishes.

If you have hard water, it's good for your heart but bad for your laundry. Hard water leaves spots on dishes and can turn laundry grey. You can towel-dry dishes if the spots bother you, or rinse in water to which you have added some plain white vinegar. Add a cup of vinegar to your laundry to prevent the minerals from depositing as well.

Always separate laundry by color, fabric type and level of soil. Wash whites only with other whites, darks with darks, pastels with pastels and brights with brights. Terrycloth only with terrycloth. Even colorfast fabrics will shed minute bits of color and lint which will deposit on whites and turn them a grey that is impossible to remove. Don't even think of throwing your son's muddy pants that he wore playing football in the same load as dh shirts that he wears to the office. Dirt from the pants WILL get on the shirt. Also check pockets for tissues before washing. One Kleenex can turn into a blizzard of lint in the machine. Any cash you find in the pockets is yours to keep. Wink

Also, don't overload the machine. The laundry needs to have room to circulate, and there has to be enough water relative to the volume of fabric to do the job. Otherwise the dirt will either not come out at all, or will deposit right back on the clothes, usually in the form of linty streaks.

whenever you wash anything, you need to wash with clean water. once the water gets dirty, it's no longer cleaning. this may mean changing the water in your bucket a few times when you mop the floor or do the dishes. Mkae sure your tools are clean--mop, sponge, rag, whatever. They also cannot clean if they are dirty. Thorougly rinse both the surface being cleaned and the tool doing the cleaning in plenty of cold water.

I am not an advocate of strong chemicals, but if something in particular is really making you crazy, go to the hardware store. They have some very strong stuff for specific applications, like naval jelly to remove rust or something called Whink to remove grunge and scale from tubs and toilets. If you have small children, I'd suffer the agonies of a repulsive tub rather than risk bringing corrosives into the house, or I'd do the deed while they were away and get rid of the container before they return. When my children were young, I used baking soda as scouring powder on just about evrything. Come to think of it, I still do. My tub is probably 80 years old and a horror, and in places the porcelain has worn away completely so that the black cast iron shows through. I have used oven cleaner to eat away the accumulated soap scum, mineral scale and mildew, but I do not recommend this for households with young children.

BTW, are you using too much soap or detergent? If it doesn't get rinsed off completely, it leaves a dull film on dishes , makes laundry grey, and attracts dirt like a magnet.

One final thought: Your measure of worth as a person has nothing to do with the shine on your dishes or the whiteness of your linens.