Suzy Q Homemaker

My kitchen is huge, but I hate mopping it!  I think I hate it more than the boring zumba class I went to a few weeks ago.  The teacher seemed to be more out of shape than I was and she mumbled into her mic the entire time.

“[mumble mumble] left [mumble mumble] right [mumble mumble] WOO!”

I was so uninspired that I almost walked out.  The promise of a yoga class right afterward was my only saving grace, although that night we had a sub who thought it would be hilarious to call out every variation of boat that there was.  Canoe?  REALLY?  I considered it a major victory just to be able to let go of my legs in boat.  I’m pretty sure I ripped something that night.

Anyway, my kitchen.  Can you imagine trying to keep a kitchen floor clean with four boys?  Especially now that one of them (TIMOTHY!!) likes to say “Uh oh!” and then proceed to drop pieces of food over the edge of his highchair tray.  Then add to that a retarded cat who makes a huge mess while she eats and you’ve got a recipe for danger.

Asking all of the kids to stay out of the kitchen while I mop is a near impossibility, so I took an idea from my sister, who got the idea from my mom:

Four boys plus + bowl of soapy water =

Hey you guys! My cleaning confession video is up on the Kenmore Youtube channel.  I’ll embed it here so you can watch it and if I’m chosen as a finalist, voting will begin next Friday.  Enjoy!

Remember when I posted about Lemi Shine before?  I didn’t get to take a picture of the before and after of the dishwasher, but you saw what it did to that plate.  Well.  We stopped buying Lemi Shine for a while and our dishwasher got funky again (along with the plates).  So I finally picked up some more and made sure to get photographic evidence for your consideration.

I swear this isn’t a paid advertisement.  In fact, no one even asked me to post this.  I have just seriously never, EVER been more impressed with a product before now.  Here’s a little background:

We live in the country, which means we have a well.  It runs deep into our Georgia clay, and with the abundance of cool, clear water, we also get an untold number of minerals and deposits.  Before we got our water softener, the pump filter, the filter under the house, under the sink, and running into the refridgerator, our dishes and clothes would turn ORANGE.  We don’t have iron, just a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t like for our clothes and dishes to actually appear clean.  Even with the water softener, stuff looks dingy and a lot of our dishes just ended up stained.

If there’s a product out there for hard water, we tried everything, everything.  We tried The Works, Lime-Away, CLR, and every other “Hard Water Expert” product full of scary chemicals “guaranteed” to clean our tubs, toilets, and clothes.  But you know what? Nothing worked!

For the toilets, I found I needed to use one of those pumice stones and get down into the toilet to get the mineral deposits off.  I didn’t mind that so much, but how the heck were my dishes and dishwasher supposed to get clean?  Every now and then we bought one of those bottles of Electrasol dishwasher cleaners, but you only get to use those one time.

So the other week, I looked up and down the cleaning aisle at Publix when I saw this glorious product, surrounded by a halo of light, angels in chorus singing all around:

I was skeptical, but went for it anyway.  Afterall, what could trying just one more thing hurt?  Besides, it’s environmentally friendly, so…why not?

I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves:

We’re hip-deep in holiday projects around here, and since certain members of my family read this blog, I’m unable to post a lot of my WIP! It’s ok, though: all will be revealed in a few months’ time.

Last night we had dinner guests again, though there wasn’t anything fancy to the dinner. With Corey’s soccer game, we couldn’t do anything nearly as fancy as we had done in the past. Thus, pizza! The focus of the evening wasn’t on dinner anyway; our lovely friends came over for some movie-watching and…KNITTING!

Jamie and D exchanged several knowing glances as they listened to our needles going clickety-clack throughout “Hannibal Rising.” I was glad to have something else to focus on, though, because the movie was highly disturbing.

Today we relax because there aren’t too many things to do around the house. In preparation for our guests last night, I mopped the kitchen & the bathroom. This isn’t to say there’s nothing left to do around here, but at least there isn’t a dried-up puddle of milk under the kitchen table anymore!

My craft room/office needs some serious help today, though, so I may attack it. The sewing machine is sadly neglected under a pile of everything and I really need to dust it off for some holiday projects. Not to mention the fact that I need to whip up a new pincushion. My trusty tomato died last night. Thanks to a fellow hyena, I really want to make one like this out of some of the vintage fabric my grandmother gave me.

In other bloginess, I found this blog and I’m sure I’ll be spending most of my free time surfing all the wonderful tutorials like this one. I have a pair of too-big flip-flops that could use a face-lift. Don’t we all?