|
09.05.00
Welcome! Jump right to Zippygirl's
Emergency Clean Sweep
Join the Messies on the Web
Webring!
See the Books for Messies
Home > |Helpful Homecare Hints
Helpful hints from Zippygirl's file.
This is a small list: I've only been a homecarer
for about six years.
Think of your appliances as your servants
and put them to work every morning. Whether you work or not, there's no
reason not to let the efficiency of your servants work for you. Get a load
of laundry in the washer, start the dishwasher, get dinner going in the
crock-pot-- if you have a bread machine, why not dust that off and use
it to make fresh bread? Put your freezer to work, too, with Once
a Month Cooking. This will help give you more time in the day.
Make your bed every day. You'll be surprised
how quickly that brightens and neatens a room!
When you're cleaning, open all the curtains
and shades and get as much sunlight in the house as you can. You'll be
able to see more dirt that way. (If you're just a beginner, you might want
to wait until the bigger piles are taken care of, or this technique might
overwhelm you!)
Take your time. Take it one bite at
a time. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Better to do a little every
day than to do a lot at once and then NOTHING.
After you clean the oven, put tin foil down
to catch the spills. When it gets cruddy, lift it off, wipe down the oven,
and replace with fresh tin foil. (Stores now sell oven liners of
aluminum... they're about 50 cents each, but they save you the effort of
figuring out what size to cut the foil.)
Wash the drip
pans on the top of your stove regularly. This can help keep crud from building up and really
makes your stove top look great. You can throw them in the dishwasher
with the dinner dishes, or you can wash them by hand with your pots and
pans.
Use a toothbrush to clean around the faucet
and other tight spots
Mix your favorite cleaner with water in an
old spray bottle to use for bathroom and kitchen clean ups! This is less
expensive and works just as well as specialty cleaners.
Wipe down your microwave every day after you
do dishes. This makes it much easier to clean, though it's easy to forget.
Make it a habit.
Wipe the top of your stove every day when
you do the dishes.
Empty spaces look cleaner and are easier to
clean. Put as many appliances as you can away in cabinets.
This keeps the counters looking cleaner.
As for dishes... how many do you really use?
If you're a family of four who never entertains, why keep dishes for eight
or more in your kitchen, taking up prime space? Maybe there's another
place, reasonably close to the kitchen, where you can keep extra place
settings. Look at your mixing bowls and pots and pans. If you
don't use all of them, get rid of them. If they're in good shape, donate
them to the local battered spouses organization or the thrift shop.
If they're nasty, just toss them.
My number one homecare hint is this: DON'T
FEEL GUILTY ABOUT ADDING TO THE LANDFILL, at least not right now. There's
no reason to use your house as a landfill in order to avoid filling the
real landfill up. I know how you feel. Believe me, I feel guilty for throwing
anything away! The best way to deal with this is recycle what you can (clothes,
dishes, paper, compost, etc,) throw away what you can't recycle, and try
to cut down on bringing anything new in, if you can't decide its ultimate
fate. This takes a long time to get used to, but if you don't want
to live in clutter, this is essential!
< l < l Emergency Clean Sweep>>
Write me
|
