Oven Cleaner

After yesterdays spectacular debut into homemade cleaners that promise miracles, I decided to try another.  I mean, at the very least I have to be cleaning stuff at least somewhat even if it doesn't get it sparkling spotless like the instructions said it would.  Today's goal - clean the oven.

I am using another pin from my Cleaning Tips board:
http://craptastical.com/oven-needed-cleaning/

I have abused my oven quite a bit.  Sometimes things will bubble over and I'll think, man I should clean that up.  What really happens is I forget about it because you have to wait until an oven is cool before you can go playing in it.  And by then, I have moved on to some other sparkly thing in the house or a screaming toddler or have gone to bed.  Possibly all three.  I get a nice reminder the next time I turn on my oven and there's a pretty obnoxious smell/smoke coming from the oven.  "Oh yeah.... I was supposed to do something about that."  The process repeats until I have effectively burned off whatever I boiled over.  So sad for the oven.

BUT!  Today is the day the oven gets a face lift!  I am sure it's as excited as I am.  I mean, how excited can one get for a clean oven?  I am not even really sure.  Anywho, here's the very fancy recipe:
3-4 drops of Dawn
4 Tbsp. Baking Soda
5 Tbsp. Distilled Vinegar **do not use this much, start with 1 tablespoon and add until you get a good paste.
Juice of 1 lemon = 1 Tbsp. lemon juice

As the website I am using said: Go slow when added the vinegar.  Otherwise you are going to get a mini volcano on your kitchen counter.  Smear the goop all over your oven however you see fit.  Let it set for a few hours and then come back and wipe it down/clean it out with a dish towel.

Before picture:

I told you it was gross.

After pictures:

Notes:
1. I think the mixture is wrong.  Mine was much more liquid than paste, so I would dial back the vinegar a bit.  I ended up sprinkling some more baking soda directly into the oven to get the scour power.  They may have meant 5 teaspoons and not 5 tablespoons.  The picture also showed way more dawn than 3-4 drops.  I think if you can find the mixture balance to get it to a paste, then you are much better off.
2. There is NO way this is just a "wipe" down and bingo-bango, it's miraculously clean.  This still took a fair amount of arm muscle and a sponge with the scrub side to clean the sides of the oven and get the junk off.  And even then, some places did not come clean.

Overall, my oven is cleaner, although not the pristine clean I was looking for.  The oven door is still gross (in my opinion, although less gross than it was).  I think the lesson here is: Cleaning ovens suck no matter how you do it.  This just happens to be the non-toxic version which can be cheaper and better for the environment.  So, take that for what you will.  I have a clean oven and that's really an accomplishment in and of itself.

Does This Really Work?

I am sure you have seen pins that claim they have the newest, most simplest, fancy way of cleaning ever!  I am always skeptical about these claims.  Most are using ingredients that sound plausible, but just not main stream enough for it to be, "oh, of course that would work".  I have a handful of pins on my Cleaning Tips board which boast a lot of these kinds of things.  Today I am going to try this one:
http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2011/11/goodbye-to-yellow-armpit-stains.html

This blog entry actually did what I am doing.  She explains that she was told about this miracle cure fix it for stains and she was skeptical but she posted before and after results and it seems to work for her.  Since I am able to follow a recipe (the ingredients ratio) and scrub clothes with the best of them, I am pretty confident this will work.

I sweat like there's no tomorrow.  I think I might sweat more than my husband, so needless to say, the shirts I am going to try this on are from my drawers.  I have a lot of free shirts I wear around the house (especially on maternity leave) and I used to wear them out in public.  I wear them a lot less now because they have the funky arm pits.  So, let's see how this stacks up on the cleaning scale.

Mixture 1 part Dawn to 2 parts hydrogen peroxide.  Mix together, apply to stain.  Scrub.

Before:

After:

Overall opinion:
This worked, but there is still some stain on the shirt.  I imagine this is partly because I picked one of my worst shirts to try it on and I have really high expectations.  Also, the pin text called for adding baking soda whereas the actual article did not specify that until later as a "bonus" ingredient.  They also let it sit for an hour then laundered as normal.  I rinsed it after scrubbing and let it dry.  SO!  There are a few things I can try in the future which may help remove the stains further.  I think this could be a valuable thing to keep on hand especially with small kids who manage to wear most of their daily activities from arts and crafts to food to poop.  I have seen it all.  Ha!  It'd be nice to know it can really actually come out though.  :)  

Getting Organized

The act of getting organized doesn't seem all that hard. Basically it takes a little grunt work up front, but then you have a system that only needs upkeep, not an overhaul. Right?

Lately, I have been trying to get my act together and get to this organizing business. I am here to say it's not as easy as they make it look on TV. No wonder people get paid to come in and dictate what to keep on how to keep it. We are all tied to frivolous things. Well, I know that I am. Good, bad, or indifferent, that's how it is.

The first part of any organization is the sorting of what to keep, what to toss, and what to donate. This should be simple, and yet sometimes I get hung up on the toss decision. Sometimes it's not good enough to donate, but I know where it came from and why it was important so I don't feel it deserves the trash can, so I end up keeping it.

As I go through my stuff now, every drawer I open, every shelf I scan, I ask myself, why do I have this? For example the collection of matchless socks. Was I hoping that one day, 5 apartments later, their mate would just appear? Of course not! But why then are they still in my drawer?

I think I grew up with the "waste not, want not" mantra being drilled into my head. Now in adult life, it makes it harder to get rid of things that bog you down. You tell yourself, "Someday that could be useful!" or "If I just bought this piece it would work!" But you know deep down that's never going to happen. The opportunity cost of keeping something is what you really need to weigh out.

My next challenge comes with boxes of random things that I at one point cleverly thought, this is organized, put the lid on the box and called it a day. Except, I can't tell you what's in that box, much less why I have it. I did pretty well with the filing cabinet, so onward to the depths of mysterious boxes!

Busy Sunday

I have been awake now for 12 hours today and I feel like it's been a very busy 12 hours. Maybe productive is a better word here, I am not sure.

I woke up to rain and hopped out of bed. It's possible that "hopped" is an exaggeration, but I did get up and moving in a relatively non-slow motion. I came downstairs and enjoyed a fresh donut and cup of coffee that Rob had gotten for me.

I got to the shower to find that I had hit the jackpot on having hot water. Some back story needed here: Apparently one of the two hot water boilers for the building is broken, aka, not making hot water. So for the past week and then some, it's been a crap shoot as to whether we have hot water or not. During the week I imagine I am the first one in our building up so I never worry about it then, but the weekends is another story. Yesterday I was not so lucky. I hope they fix that crap soon.

I hopped online and found that my team had made some sort of progress with our project for school and I went about doing other things. After spending the full day yesterday working on a section I wasn't assigned, I wasn't really in the mood to do more.

It started snowing down here just like it would have at home. That was pretty amazing. My cats were highly entertaining with their inability to catch snowflakes from the wrong side of the door. We may have had an inch or so stick, but it quickly melted. It's supposed to be really cold and wet tomorrow morning. I am glad I drive in when very few other people are out.

I finally managed to get all of my cookbooks into the binders I cleaned out last weekend. I went through old recipes and chucked out a lot of stuff. Some of it was duplication of things I already had written down twice or typed up and never got rid of the originals. I am just trying to get organized.

I went through my book collection to find books I was willing to part with. Surprisingly, there were a lot. I really don't want to ever re-read "The Devil Wears Prada" or "Goodnight Nobody" again, nor do I find the book "10,000 Dreams Interpureted" very useful. With my cleared out bookshelf space I was finally able to put these magazine holders I have had for over a year in a proper place.

I grabbed and enormous pile of magazines that have been collecting dust (literally) for over a year and started to go through those as I watched Beauty Shop. It was an ok movie, but I felt like I was multi-tasking so kudos for me. I got about half way through the stack. I also did the laundry and other household chores that I feel the need to do on Sunday to put the house right for the week.

At 5pm I went back to check on group work and found they were stuck again and sat down for an hour to plow through some stuff. This is frustrating to me because I had spelled out where to get all this information and how to do it. I feel like they aren't even trying.

I made dinner, well, technically, Rob made half the dinner. We needed sauce to go with raviolis. Delicious! I called my parents, made my coffee for tomorrow and now I am going to read my book and head to bed. It really has been a full day.

Spring Cleaning

For someone who moves as much as I do, I sure have a lot of junk. I have stuff too, but I have a lot of junk. Stuff I can classify as clothes, dishes, furniture, you know, the useful things we normally keep. Junk I can classify as boxes of unknown and barely used items that I cart from place to place because I think they are going to be important some day.

For example, I finally, FINALLY, got around to cleaning out my college notes box. Yes, it's been 5 years since I graduated and no, I have no idea why I still had them. I originally kept them because well, after 5 years of hard work, you want to believe you will use them again. Never once have I gone to look up formulas for calculus. I am now sitting next to a paper box full of old notes that are heading to the recycling center next week and I am feeling pretty good about it. It also freed up a bunch of binders that I need to use for organizing other things like my cookbooks that come pre-hole punched.

Along those same lines, I also cleaned out my filing cabinet. With most things being electronic (and my option for paperless bills) I find it silly to keep paper copies for most of this stuff. I have cleaned out about another 10 pounds of paper there that will go through my shredder. That thing is going to get a work out.

This is just the beginning. Rob and I really need to clean out this place before we can realistically move. Granted other people will hopefully come and box this stuff (and some junk) up, but it's not going to fit in a smaller place comfortably. We have figured where we are at right now is probably the largest place we could rent anywhere. We love the room, but we filled it right up with all of our belongings.

After merging our two households together, we now have to figure out which to keep of what. We have done a decent job so far in that we have things mostly settled now (aside from a pile of stuff we want to sell). I went through the hall closet and cleaned out blankets, towels, and sheets that we can get rid of. I figure start with the small places and just try and work them one at a time.

We will probably end up donating a fair amount of things such as old clothes, and things we aren't able to sell. However, I have a feeling that Craigslist is going to be seeing a lot of action in April once Rob finishes his classes. I know there's at least one kind of dopey filing cabinet that will be making it's way there. :)