easy as abc

Here’s a tip that will make cleaning as easy as ABC…

well, actually S2W2 – that’s the acronym I remember this methodology with.  S2W2 stands for sweep, soak, wait and wipe and it’s really that simple!

You can apply this method to many different surfaces, from counter-tops, appliances, kitchen tables and floors, to porches, decks, patios, walkways, bathroom fixtures, and outdoor furniture. The cleanser might change with the application as well as the tool (cloth, mop, or squeege) used for the final step – but these four simple steps will handle most cleaning tasks. Here are the basics:

1. sweep the surface clean of loose debris;
2. saturate the surface with the appropriate cleanser;
3. wait for the cleanser to dissolved the dirt and/or grime;
4. wipe the mess up rinsing as needed.

scouring cleanser

As a general rule I don’t recommend scrubbing or scouring surfaces on a regular basis – it does eventually damage the material.  But there are occasions when it must be used if we are to rescue the surface in question.

For those times I like this cheap and easy creme scouring cleanser which is safe for a multitude of materials including glass, enamel, fiberglass, plastic, wood, stone, and metal with one exception.  This scouring cleanser contains baking soda.  NEVER use baking soda on aluminum surfaces. It attacks the thin unreactive protective oxide layer of this otherwise very reactive metal and the finish will oxidize and become cloudy and whitish.

1/4 cup liquid soap

1 Tbsp borax

3 Tbsp baking soda

3/4 cup very warm water.

Mix the water and liquid soap.  Add the dry ingredients and stir until grainy.  The shelf-life of this scouring cleanser is 3-4 months.  Remember to clearly label your container and keep out of the reach of children and pets.

work less

Sometimes, we, as human beings, limit ourselves by a view that something we know is situational rather than adapting what we already know to a different set of circumstances.  Even though we already know the principle we fail to apply it in other areas.  The easiest cleaning secret ever is just that.  In fact, it’s not a secret at all.  You already know this secret and most likely apply it in at least one set of circumstances – but probably not in many more circumstances where it’s use would make cleaning far less work than we make it.

So, in the interest of helping us as humans develop our adaptive knowledge and ability to apply solutions across domains, I’m not going to just tell you what the secret is.  I’m going to use a literary technique that will lead you to the discovery of the secret for yourself.  I’d like to introduce you to a couple of women who will demonstrate for you the concept of the easiest cleaning secret ever – Lea Schure and Ima Zausted.

Lea and Ima are neighbors.  They both have a son who is active in a scouting organization.  In fact, both of their sons are in the same troup and Lea and Ima quite often volunteer to assist the scout leader with activities.  On this particular Saturday morning both Lea and Ima had a dozen boys each at their homes for a pancake breakfast before a day of fund-raising.  After getting everyone full of pancakes and loaded on the activity bus Lea and Ima both faced the task of putting their disheveled kitchens back in order.

Ima begins with the dishes.  She scrapes any left overs into the trash, including as much syrup as she can, but it’s been a couple of hours and the syrup has already begun drying on the plates.  So she stands at the sink scrubbing all the sticky syrup off each plate before putting it in the dishwasher.  There are 12 plates, plus 3 more where she, her husband, and her daughter also ate, as well as 15 glasses, the batter bowl, griddle and utensils.  It takes Ima 2 minutes to get the gunk off of each plate – so she spends a minimum of 30 minutes just getting enough syrup off that the dishwasher can get them clean.

Next Ima tackles the batter and syrup splattered counter.  She wets a nylon scrubber and sprinkles a little scouring powder on it and begins scrubbing at the dried on splatters.  After a few minutes she has successfully loosened the mess in a small area and walks back to the sink to rinse the scrubber and apply more scouring powder.  Ima repeats this process until the counter is clean and follows the same procedure on the kitchen table and then the stove-top.  Another 45 minutes has elapsed.

Finally, Ima sweeps the kitchen floor and disposes of the loose debris in the trash can.  She gets out the bucket and mop and fills the bucket with hot soapy water.  She proceeds to mop and scrub the kitchen floor with the scrubber strip on the mop as she finds mess stuck on the floor.  After each 2 foot area Ima rinses the mop in the bucket.  Halfway through the floor she empties the dirty and now “unsoapy” water in the bucket and gets fresh soapy water.  Another 35 minutes gone.  At last, Ima finishes the floor and empties the mop water, wipes down the other appliances and washes down the sink – then she collapses into the nearest kitchen chair after the nearly 2 hour ordeal to sort out her kitchen.

Lea begins with the dishes as well.  She also scrapes any leftovers into the trash but Lea doesn’t try to scrape the sticky syrup off.  Lea runs a sink full of hot soapy water and submerges the utensils and glasses and fills the batter bowl with hot soapy water as well.  In the other side of her double sink she runs a half a sink full of hot water to which she adds 2 tablespoons of white vinegar.  It takes Lea 5 minutes to scrape the dishes and run the water.   For the next 3 minutes Lea sweeps any loose particles off the counter, table, stove, and finally the floor, disposing of the refuse in the trash.  Lea washes each of the 15 glasses which takes about 30 seconds each after soaking in the hot soapy water for three minutes.  She rinses each glass in the sink of plain water and vinegar before putting it in the drainer.  Then Lea sets the stack of sticky plates in the sink of hot soapy water.  So far, 20 minutes have elapsed.

Next, Lea takes her dish cloth and spreads hot soapy water from the sink onto the counter, table and stove-top – it takes her about 3 minutes.  By now the hot soapy water has softened and loosened the gunked up syrup on the plates and it washes off easily.  She washes each of the 15 plates and rinses (again about 30 seconds each) and then the utensils (another 2 minutes).  The batter bowl, which has been sitting with hot soapy water in it,  is clean and rinsed in 1 minute and Lea puts the griddle in the wash side of the sink.  Another 13 and 1/2 minutes has elapsed.

Now Lea takes her wrung out dish cloth and wipes down the counter, table, and stove-top – all the dried-on, stuck-on batter and syrup has dissolved into mush and simply wipes away.  She rinses her cloth in the soapy side of the sink as needed and it takes her 5 minutes to clean those three surfaces.  Lea washes and rinses the griddle (1 minute).  Then she takes her mop and  spreads water on the floor from the wash side of the sink, lightly, not huge puddles, but paying particular attention to splatters or spills (about 3 minutes).  Lea lets the water out of the wash side of the sink and puts away the glasses, plates and utensils (another 3 minutes).  Lastly, Lea mops up the water and any gunk on the floor – which wipes up as easily as it did on the counter, rinsing her mop in the rinse water from the dishes after each 4 foot square.  This last process takes another 3 minutes for a total of 15 minutes since she finished the dishes.  Lea pours her self a cup of tea and absconds to the patio to do some reading since it only took her 48 and 1/2 minutes to clean her kitchen.

So what is the secret?  What was it that allowed Lea to clean her equally dirty kitchen in only 48 and 1/2 minutes when it took poor Ima 1 hour and 50 minutes?  You see it, I know you do – but maybe you can’t find the words to describe the concept.  So here is the secret – in a short, easy-to-remember phrase:  Let your products do the work.  Quit wearing yourself out scrubbing and scouring and let the solvents (water), surfactants (soap), grease-cutting and disinfecting (lemon juice) agents do what they do best – cleaning.  And, you know, you’re not only wearing yourself out by scrubbing and scouring – you’re wearing out the surfaces of the items you are scrubbing and scouring as well.  So relax. Let your cleaners clean.  Less really is more.

disinfectant spray

This is a much safer disinfectant that the commercial brands both safer for you and your family while you are using it and safer for the environment.  Remember, lemon juice (technically it’s the d-limonene in the lemons) kills a whole host of bacteria, viruses and fungi.

The shelf-life on this disinfectant spray cleaner is about 9 months.  Remember to label your containers.  And even though these are much safer than commercial products ALWAYS keep cleaning supplies out of the reach of children and pets.

1/2 cup liquid soap

4 Tbsp. lemon juice

3 cups warm water

Mix the ingredients in a clean, empty spray bottle and shake well.  Use your disinfectant regularly on surfaces people touch a lot, like faucet handles, door knobs, etc. – ESPECIALLY during cold and flu season!

clean windows

Cleaning windows is a chore that most of us would rather not do. We put it off until it becomes an absolute necessity.  Why?  Because it’s tedious. We try various methods and cleaners and still we end up with streaks and smears that seem to get worse the more we try to eradicate them.  What I’d like to share with you today is the absolute fastest and easiest way I’ve ever found to clean windows and mirrors.  No, it’s not hire a maid.  No, it’s not a new magic product or gizmo.  It’s a simple, time-tested method used by professional window cleaners.

Before we talk about what you will need to use this method, let’s go over what you DON’T need.  You don’t need newspaper or “lint-free” cloths.  To begin with, there really is no such thing as a lint-free cloth. Lint is the breaking off of pieces of fiber from a fabric.  Fabrics made from natural fibers, like cotton, wool, and linen, produce more lint than fabrics made of synthentic fibers like polyester and nylon.  But they all produce some lint. And who wants little pieces of lint all over the window they just cleaned?  You also don’t need any newspaper.  Newspaper, of course, is made of wood pulp – a source of plant fibers just like flax is used to make linen.  And just like linen, guess what newspaper produces?  Yup. . .lint.  Newspaper also leaves another residew – newsprint – or rather the ink from the print.  You also don’t need ammonia or alcohol (ethyl or rubbing) to make your windows sparkle.

What you do need are two simple things.  The first is a good quality brass or stainless steel professional window squeegee and the second is a good quality glass cleaner.  Please read that sentence again.  Good quality.  This is not a run-of-the-mill plastic or aluminum channel squeegee from the local discount or dollar store.  You can find the good ones at a janitorial or commercial cleaning supply store.  They come in a couple of different widths. It depends on what kind of windows you have which one you’ll want.  Average prices are in the $6.50 to $8.50 range for a 10 or 12 inch squeegee.

You know those little wooden or plastic dividers between small panes of glass in a window?  Those are called muntins. If you have windows without muntins or that have removable muntins you’ll want a sqeegee a little less than 1/3 the width of your windows. So, if you have, say, a 36 inch wide window a 10 inch wide squeegee will do just fine.  If, however, you have windows with in-built (non-removable) muntins, you want a sqeegee the width of your panes. But what if the smallest squeegee is to wide for your panes?  Customize it!  Carefully remove the rubber strip from the brass or stainless steel squeegee channel.  Holding the channel in a vice or clamped to a sturdy worktable or saw horse, cut the channel down evenly on both sides with a hack saw to 1/2 inch LESS than your pane width.  Now cut the rubber strip exactly the width of the pane and reinsert it into the channel.  This leaves 1/4 inch of rubber at each end beyond the actual channel.  This is important so you don’t scratch your glass.

The process of washing the window is very easy.  First, remove the muntins if they are removable. Then follow these steps for each pane:

1. Wet the glass thoroughly, but not dripping, with your glass cleaner.
2. Let the solution work for about 2 minutes.
3. Holding the sqeegee against the glass with the right edge of the squeegee at a 45 degree angle to the top of the glass sweep a clean stripe across the top of the pane about 4 inches high. Wipe the rubber blade of the sqeegee on a dry towel.
4. Starting on the left, place the squeegee in the middle of the clean stripe with the left edge against the left edge of the pane and pull the sqeegee all the way to the bottom of the pane. Wipe the sqeegee blade again.  For small panes this one down swipe will cover the entire pane and you just go on to the next pane.
5. Repeat step 4 in the middle of the window pane, overlapping slightly the clean area to the left. Wipe the blade. If you have wide windows it make take several “steps” to get across the window.
6. Repeat step 4 on the right of the window pane with the right edge of the sqeegee against the right edge of the window pane.

Now, you may notice some small beads of water just along any of the edges of the window pane.   You’re first instinct will be to take the towel and dab at them.   DON’T.  If you do you will then find you have small smudges instead of the beads and your next instinct will be to wrap the towel around a finger and polish it clean.  DON’T.  It gets progressively worse.   So JUST DON’T.   Those small beads of water will evaporate and you’ll never know they were there and your windows will sparkle and shine, smear-free and streak-free and easy as pie.

homemade glass cleaner

This is the quickest, easiest, safest and cheapest glass cleaner you can make.  There is no need for hazardous chemicals like ammonia or ethyl/isopropanol alcohol to make your windows and mirrors shine.

Mix all the ingredients in a clean empty spray bottle and shake well.  Label your bottle.  I use a permanent waterproof marker right on the bottle.  Paper labels get wet and smear or come off.

1/2 cup white vinegar

2 tsp. liquid soap

3 cups warm water

homemade dishwashing liquid

This dishwashing liquid may not be as thick or suds as much as the store bought varieties but it cleans just as well, is much less expensive, and contains no ingredients that are harmful to people, pets, or the environment.  Remember — suds are like hype — it may make it seem as if a product producing lots of suds is doing a lot of work but the bottom line is that suds don’t clean. It’s the water and soap in this recipe that does the cleaning.  The glycerin is an emollient to protect your skin.  The lemon juice dissolves grease and kills germs and bacteria.

The essential oil of lemon is optional.  You can get many essential oils at very good prices at Mountain Rose Herbs.

1/4 cup soap flakes
2 cups hot water
2 tsp. glycerin
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
4 drops lemon oil (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a clean empty squeeze bottle. Cover, and shake well to blend. Label your container. I like to use a permanent waterproof marker directly on the bottle.  This dishwashing liquid has a shelf like of 3 to 4 months.

liquid soap

The basic liquid soap is used in multiple other formulas.  There are four choices with varying degrees of effort in creating a basic liquid soap.

Choice 1:  Make liquid soap using vegetable oil(s) and potassium hydroxide.  The advantage of making your own liquid soap from scratch is its purity.  The disadvantage is that it takes 4 to 8 hours to make soap.

Choice 2:  Make liquid soap by grating a bar of pure soap and mixing it with boiling water until the soap has dissolved.  The advantage of this method is it takes far less time than choice #1 and less expensive than choice #3 or #4.

Choice 3:  Purchase pure soap flakes and mix with boiling water until the soap has dissolved.  I haven’t found any local establishments who carry soap flakes but I have found a couple on the internet – but they cost more than I was willing to pay.  Proctor and Gamble stopped making Ivory Soap Flakes in 1993.

Choice 4:  Purchase a liquid soap, such as castile.  The disadvantage of this choice is that these can be a bit pricey.

Unless you’re already a soaper (slang for someone who makes soap) choice #2 (or #3 if you can get the flakes at a decent price) is the easiest and cheapest for most people.  Making soap flakes is easy.  Just grate the bar of soap with your kitchen grater just like a vegetable.  It won’t hurt your grater – just be sure and wash it well and rinse in a mild vinegar bath (3 tablespoons of vinegar to a gallon of water) so the next veggie you grate doesn’t taste like soap.

To turn your pile of soap flakes into liquid soap mix 1 cup of soap flakes with 3 cups of boiling water in a wide mouthed container with a tight fitting lid.  A large quart jar (save the earth and reuse an empty one!) works wonderfully.  Now just imagine you’re south of the border at a fiesta and the jar is a maraca and shake, shake, shake!  You could even put on some spicy Latino music and burn a few extra calories while you’re making soap.  Multitasking FTW!

white vinegar

Vinegar results from a natural fermentation process – the oxidation by acetic acid bacteria of the ethanol found in beer, cider, wine or any other alcoholic liquid. Acetic acid bacteria are a gram-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped bacteria present universally in foodstuffs, water, and soil. The acetic acid concentration of vinegar usually falls around 5 percent by volume for table vinegar up to 18 percent or higher for pickling vinegar. At a 5% concentration vinegar has a pH of about 2.4, slightly less acidic than lemon juice. Acetic acid is detectible by a characteristic smell.

Concentrations by weight of 10% to 25% are classified as an irritant. Higher than 25% is corrosive and must be handled with great care as it can cause skin burns, mucous membrane irritation, and permanent eye damage that may not even appear until hours after the exposure. Concentrations over 90% are also flammable. Common table vinegars, including distilled white vinegar, are safe for humans and animals.

Among vinegar’s versatile aspects you’ll find the following:

1. Vinegar is antibacterial.

2. It is also antifungal.

3. Vinegar will dissolve mineral deposits including limescale and hard water spots from glass and hard surfaces.

4. Vinegar included in a bath and tile formula as a rinsing agent will help prevent bathtub rings and soap scum.

5. It is an effective solvent for epoxy resin and hardener.

6. Vinegar is safe as a herbicide as the acetic acid is not absorbed into root systems. It will kill top-growth but perennials will reshoot.

sodium bicarbonate

Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate and to a lesser extent as sodium hydrogen carbonate, is a chemical compound found in the mineral natron. It is a white solid that is crystalline in structure but can appear as a fine powder with a slight alkaline taste. The natural mineral form of sodium bicarbonate is nahcolite but it can be produced artificially. Besides helping our baked goods rise and have a light texture, baking soda is a wonderful additional to our cleaning arsenal. Here’s why:

1. Baking soda is antiseptic and helps kill germs not only in our homes but for personal hygiene as well. A paste made from baking soda and 3% hydrogen peroxide is a safe and effective alternative to commercial toothpaste. It also makes a good natural deodorant. It is more effective than vinegar, salt, or hot water alone when washing vegetables to remove pesticides.

2. It’s anti-fungal and not only helps kill mold and mildew but will neutralize their odors.

3. Baking soda will dissolve tarnish. A solution of baking soda in warm water ( 3 Tbsp to a quart of water) with a piece of aluminum foil laying in the bottom of the container will remove tarnish from silver when it comes in contact with the foil.  Caution: This method should NEVER be used on any plated items, only solid metal, and never on any piece of aluminum, or the finish will be damaged.

4. Baking soda is a powerful odor absorber – in the fridge, freezer, down the drain, on carpets, upholstery, fabrics, even a pair of smelly sneakers.

5. It’s gently abrasive. A smooth paste of baking soda and water will help scrub off caked on, baked on, dried on gunk from glass cook-tops, porcelain, fiberglass, stainless steel and enameled metals.

6. Baking soda softens hard water and is superb as a fabric softener. As an aside. you never want to use a fabric softener on towels and washcloths – it hampers their absorbency.

7. Baking soda will extinguish small grease or electrical fires. Don’t use baking soda on a deep-fryer fire though – it might cause the flaming grease to splatter.

8. It is effervescent when combined with vinegar and will work wonders cleaning a grimy oven or clearing a clogged drain.