Be A Good Mom

I am really messing my kids up.  You know I am cheap.  You know I don’t believe in wasting my money on cleaning supplies that are more advertising than product.  A conversation Geetle and I had today:

Geetle:  Mom, what is ketchup made out of?

BAGM:  Tomatoes.

Geetle:  And onions?

BAGM:  No, no onions.

Geetle:  But there is something spicy in there.

BAGM:  That’s the vinegar.  Ketchup has a lot of vinegar in it.

Geetle:  (horrified)  You can’t eat VINEGAR!

BAGM:  Oh yes, you can.   Are you worried because its the same thing I use to clean the floors?

Geetle:  Yeah.  heehee.

BAGM:  Sometimes you can use things for more than one job.  Making ketchup and cleaning floors.

I do.

You can clean with it.

You can do laundry with it.

You can do anything with it!

Succumb to the power of vinegar.  It is powerful and you cannot hide forever.

I am sooooo getting one of these! I already bought the dowels.

Effervescent denture cleaning tablets work great for cleaning toothbrushes. They will also take the buildup off an electric toothbrush handle. Just be careful not to get the battery part wet. I take the heads off the toothbrushes and soak the handle, top down, in a cup of water and 1 tablet. Minty fresh.

Here are photos from the kids’ first days of school. I know, I know…they are digital, so I should have posted them sooner. Both kids have been in school for at least 10 days. But, sometimes when you are 8 months pregnant and the memory card is on one floor and the computer is on the other, its difficult to get your act together.

By the way, if you have a plain old flat panel metal door in your house, consider painting it with Chalkboard paint. This door goes to our garage and is right next to one that leads down stairs. (we put a dozen cork board tiles on that one for an instant huge bulletin board). The chalkboard door is cool because on their birthday or the first day of school, I make them stand in front of the door and I write a message up above. Good photo - op.

Any idea what I can do with 8 boxes of table salt?

About a month ago, we were afraid we had a flea problem. Chloe (Mamaw’s dog) had come to visit and started to show signs of fleas a few days later. We also caught a jumping bug in the basement and one in the second floor. Plus, I had bites on my ankles, which we thought were Prurigo of Pregnancy at first.

Being 6 1/2 months pregnant at the time, we knew we could not use a bug bomb and smoke the fleas out. And we were not completely sure we even had fleas. I had bites, but no one else did. The doctor said they looked like chigger bites and we did have a patch of long grass in our backyard, perfect for chiggers. We saw 2 jumping bugs, but they did not look like what we saw on the internet. We did not know what to do.

We did some internet research and decided to start with low-tech methods of handling the situation. We washed all the bedding in hot water. BAGD vacuumed the house almost daily. Then we read that sprinkling regular table salt on your carpets could desiccate any flea eggs in the fibers. We decided to give it a try. We sprinkled 6 or 7 boxes of salt all over the house and vacuumed it up a a day and a half later. According to the article, we should do this again in a week or so.

Well….as with many things around here, we sort of got distracted and forgot. I bought 8 more boxes of salt, but we saw no more jumping bugs, my bites went away and Chole seemed cured. So, we never re-salted.

Over a month has passed, so either we never had fleas or the vacuuming and first salting did the trick. But now I have 8 boxes of table salt sitting around. Any ideas on how I can use it up?

We finally decided to get a larger fridge. We were tired of putting pizza boxes in sideways and cramming the door shelf back on once a week. We ordered this Amana 25 cu ft fridge from Sears last week. Its big. Its 35 1/2 inches across. I had measured our opening and it was 36 inches, so I was proud that we were maximizing our investment and getting the biggest one that would fit.

Well, when it got here yesterday, I learned something. Irwin, the delivery man, taught me a little something about measuring the opening for appliances. You can’t measure from wall to wall. You have to measure across the floor, from the edge of the baseboard trim to the other side of the opening. Aha. Well, so my opening was more like 35 inches, not 36 inches. BAGD, Irwin and his 2 helpers had to chisel the trim boards off the wall in order to squeeze the fridge in. It fits, but its tight. I was also reminded that almost nothing in a house is perfectly “Square”, so the cabinet just to the right of the fridge almost had to come out, because it tilts a bit to the outside, making the opening cock-eyed.

But in the end, the fridge fits and looks great. Now we just have to replace the trim boards. I guess BAGD also “chiseled” the floor boards a bit. I do not want to know. As long as its behind the fridge, I can ignore it. Its not like anyone is getting back there to look at it…trust me.

Take a lesson from Irwin, when you measure for a new appliance, include the space taken up by the trim boards. It could be enough to sink your dream of a 25 cubic ft fridge. It almost sunk mine.

There alot of reasons to visit your child’s classroom at school, but here is another one. Teachers have alot of really good ideas for things you can copy at home, like this one:

Almost everything at preschool has a home. A nice neat and tidy home. In order to do so, the teachers give everything place and label it so everyone knows what lives there. So simple, but I would not have thought of labeling the containers until I saw it at school. We do this at home now and it has really made cleaning up so much easier. The kids handle alot of these things independently now.

I think BAGD likes it too, because he never seems to understand why I put things where I do. Now all he has to do it follow the pictures too.

I am cheap.  But I think I already mentioned that.  I don’t mind spending money on good stuff.  But it bugs me to spend money on things that I know I can get cheaper.   I am also lazy.  I refuse to spend hours clipping coupons and running from sale to sale.  I like to find long term ways of saving money.  Here are a few of my tricks for cutting your cleaning budget.

1.  Flour Sack Towels instead of Paper Towels.   The flour sack towels are reusable and very durable.  They cost about $5 for a 5 pack at Walmart and I know I have had some of mine for at least 2 years.

2.  Vinegar and Water as a Floor Cleaner.  We have Pergo wood floors.  Well, not technically Pergo, but whatever Menard’s calls their brand.  Alot of store-bought cleaners leave a hazy film on the surface; you can feel it with your feet.   n the specialty wood floor cleaners are expensive.  On the advice of Great Grandma Bluegrass, (BAGD’s grandma) I started cleaning my floors with a mixture of vinegar and water (3 parts water, 1 part vinegar).  I mix it in a spray bottle, squirt and rub with a flour sack towel.  Works great!  And very cheap.  A gallon of vinegar is about $2 and will last months.  This also works as a window cleaner.

3.  Baking Soda to clean your kitchen sink.  We have a stainless steel sink.  Its very durable, I am sure.  But in our old house we had a porcelain one, so I got in the habit of scrubbing it with baking soda, rather than anything abrasive.   So, I still clean our stainless steel sink the same way.  Just sprinkle some baking soda in the sink, add enough water to make a paste, scrub and rinse.    Very safe and very cheap.  Baking soda is usually under $.50 for a box, which would last at least 6 cleanings.

4.  Boiling water to clear out your drains.  A plumber told us this trick.  Every once in a while, boil a couple giant pots of water, then pour them down your drain/garbage disposal. This will help melt any fats and greases which are clogging your drain.  This is preventative maintenance; it will not help with an already blocked drain.  On a related note, to get rid of garbage disposal smells, send a few citrus peels down there and grind ‘em up.

5.  Hydrogen Peroxide as a carpet spot remover.  This is also a trick from Great grandma Bluegrass.  I have not used it much, because my kids don’t tend to make “spots.”  When we have accidents they are doozies.  Plus we have a lot of hardwood in the house.  But,  she says that if you blot the spot with a white rag (to prevent color bleed) dipped in hydrogen peroxide, it will come right up.  I saw her do it at her Christmas party when one of the great grandkids dripped cherry pie filling on the carpet.  It worked.

I have made other homemade cleaners using recipes from like this.   They work and are non-toxic.  I usually stay away from using ammonia, just because it scares me.  And, of course…NEVER mix ammonia and bleach; the fumes are toxic.   I did find that ammonia was one of the few things that would soak baked-on crud off the stove burners, but I still don’t like keeping it in the house.   I do use a combination of baking soda and borax to scrub my shower and toilets and a liquid “all-purpose cleaner” made from water, lemon juice, borax and dish soap for the counter tops.  BAGD is a good sport about these things, he is 100% on board with the flour sack towels, “all purpose cleaner” spray and vinegar water.  He is not comfortable scrubbing the toilets with borax.  He does a good share of the cleaning around here, so I do keep a few store-bought things on hand, to make it easier for him.

I hope you find these tips useful.  Being cheap is not so bad.