Feb 17 2010

I love Vinegar!

Okay, yeah. I’ve heard of “Works for me Wednesday”, also known as WFMW around the blogosphere, but it’s not something I’ve ever felt compelled to participate in. Until the other day. I was trying to find some decent crockpot recipes, and I just happened to find this recipe for crockpot Dijon chicken, posted by the delightful Domestic Chicky, and I figured, it’s probably pretty tasty. I met Deanna in person at the Sony Mommy Blogger Event, and I have faith in her recipe pickin’. So then I clicked through to some other WFMW blog entries, and realized, OMG. There are a lot of smart cookies out there sharing some great ideas – why haven’t I gotten in on this sooner? I thought to myself, surely I have LOADS of ideas to share. Pure gems. Right? I’m a mommy of five. Raising two sets of twins. Parent of a teenager. Advocate for my special needs child. Kickass wife. I have wisdom to share. I’m certain of it.

Until I sat down to write a post, and realized I don’t have a damned thing to say here. I’m happy, and my family is happy, but we live at the Casa de Chaos, remember? If anyone should be writing “works for me!” it should be my husband. He’s the organization expert. He’s the enginerd who can design and build anything. I sat here and scratched my head for a minute, trying to come up with SOMETHING worthy of a blog post. And then it came to me. VINEGAR. Yep, that’s the sort of thing I get excited about. Writing about the virtues of vinegar. Hey, my younger twins start Kindergarten in July. I’ll try to use that extra free time to get a life. Anyway, here are some things I’ve learned while parenting five children and cleaning up the messes they leave in their wake.

VINEGAR IS AMAZING. You can clean anything with it. It’s cheap as hell. You can buy a whole gallon of it for like two bucks. Here’s what I do with it.

  • SHOWER DOORS – we have crazy ridiculous hard water, which WRECKS our glass shower doors. They look horrible all the time, unless I spray them down with white vinegar, which almost instantly cuts through the mineral build-up. Lime-Away does an even better job, but I don’t feel as good about liberally spraying down by shower with something as toxic as that. Spray your shower doors with vinegar, wipe, and voila. Clean shower doors. And a craving for vinegar potato chips. You’ve been warned.
  • LAUNDRY – once in awhile, I forget a load of clothes in the washer and they start to smell like mildew in a couple of hours. Actually, pool towels are the worst. We always end up with a forgotten towel in the wayback of the Tahoe, and then the whole vehicle smells smelly. Those stinky towels and clothes can be immediately revived if you throw them in the washer and add about half a cup of vinegar to the detergent.
  • DRAINS – got gunk in your drain? Is it draining kind of slowly? I got this tip from my own grandmother. Half a cup of baking soda, half a cup of salt. Pour those right down the drain, and then add a good sized glug of white vinegar. It will immediately start erupting and foaming. Let that sit for about five minutes, then hit it with hot water for a few minutes. Nice clean drain!

    • These are my top three uses for vinegar, but this isn’t even all I do with it. I pour it over my kids’ heads in the bath after we go to the pool – it gets that chlorine out really well. I put it in my mop bucket when I clean my kitchen floor. I run it through my coffee maker once in awhile to get rid of that hard water build-up that I mentioned earlier. I’m telling ya, vinegar is magic, and it’s cheap!

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    Sep 28 2009

    Laundry Day! Uh…yay?

    I cannot BELIEVE the amount of laundry we have accumulated around here. I mean, I know I’ve been kind of busy here and there lately and blowing it off – but I’m shocked to realize that the kids are basically OUT of clean clothes to wear, at least where socks, pajamas, and decent looking pants are concerned. Yesterday, I noticed one of the girls wearing a shirt that is technically part of a Halloween costume. Obviously, it’s time for me to get my ass in gear.

    And my OWN laundry is so piled up, it won’t even fit in my hamper. I’ve been randomly tossing things into Paul’s hamper, and he’s starting to notice. I always do his laundry separate from everyone else’s, so his is never piled up like mine and the kids’. And Kayley does her own laundry nowadays. Considering the kids don’t go to uniform school anymore, I should have LESS laundry, not more! I’m blaming the little girls. Lexi in particular. If left unchecked, she’ll change clothes two or three times a day. Little punk!

    You know, in our last house, the laundry room was upstairs, about two feet away from the kids’ bedrooms. In our new house, it’s downstairs, next to the garage. It’s less of a laundry room and more of a mud room, really. It’s essentially the passageway for entering and leaving the house, which means I can’t just leave laundry going 24/7. I’m not sure if this has made it easier or harder to stay on top of it all. Actually, I’m leaning more toward the notion that I HAVE done a better job of keeping the laundry done, except for the past few weeks. There have actually been many occasions where ALL the laundry is done and put away – ALL OF IT – which never happened in the history of the world, until we moved here.

    I think I’ve adequately psyched myself up; I’m ready to dive right in. Send help if you don’t hear from me soon.

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