Coronavirus cleaning schedule

It's a Friday night, but we're all stuck inside, so what better time to write about cleaning?! With everyone home 24/7 and our homes serving as our offices, schools, restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, and maybe even dance studios and soccer fields, things are getting messy.

Many years back in 2013 when I was pregnant with our second child, I wrote about our decision to hire a cleaning service. They have consistently cleaned our home every other week since then -- every other week, until now. We will resume our cleaning service once this global pandemic declines and we are comfortable having other people in our house, but for now we are going to clean everything on our own. (And, though we decided to temporarily suspend our cleaning service, we are continuing to pay the ladies who run it so that we do not contribute to the shuttering of their small business.)

We are pampered by this cleaning service luxury, and though I've contemplated at times canceling the service because of the little voice that tells me "we should be able to handle this job ourselves," 15 days in our house without them has unequivocally proven that would be a bad idea.

We are getting the whole family involved with daily, weekly, and bi-weekly cleaning. Clearly, some of this stuff we will always do, global pandemic or not, but some of the bi-weekly chores are more difficult to achieve in the absence of extra help.

Here's the schedule we are attempting (all organized in a Google Sheet):

We are trying to use some time on Saturday mornings to recenter from the week. Last Saturday, I clearly never got to the showers nor to the dusting, so I'll try to tackle those tomorrow morning. Like everything right now, the goal is not perfection but rather holding ourselves accountable and motivating ourselves during a time when it's probably easy to let things slide. Honestly, if I vacuum and dust rather than spend an hour reading the news, that's going to be better for my house, my family, and my soul.

One small win the other week involved turning doorknob and light switch sanitizing into a little game for the kids. They had to work together to find all the doorknobs and light switches in the house, and then take turns giving each a little Lysol spray. They seemed (mostly) happy in the process, so I'll take it.

Hiring a cleaning service

Speaking of exporting out help for improving our home, we have in the last several months hired a cleaning service for the first time, and let me tell you have much it has revolutionized our lives. One day over the summer I could tell that Matt had reached his limit with the gross-out factor of our bathrooms when he, while holding a flyer that had just been placed in our front door, said, "I'm calling this service for an estimate." We get about 2-3 cleaning service flyers a week shoved into our storm door. In the past I've always immediately taken them to the recycling bin, thinking, "Who hires a cleaning service?"

The answer: many, many people hire cleaning services. Having grown up, though, with the mentality that only the very wealthy or those who are incapable of basic household tasks hire cleaning services, I always vowed I would never be one of those people...

Deciding to hire a cleaning service
...But then our bathrooms would sit uncleaned not for weeks, but for months, and the mold would build and the task of finally breaking down and cleaning them became too daunting. Like anything that's allowed to fester, the problem just compounds itself.

Although I have been and continue to be an organized person, I have to be realistic about my limitations. I entered parenthood with an idealistic cleaning schedule that actually worked for a while, but then I started working more and my baby became a toddler (and toddlers are more time-consuming than babies, or at least that's been my experience). I have an ideal partner who truly splits household tasks and errands with me 50/50, yet between our jobs, our child care, and our desire to spend time with each other and maintain social lives, there are not enough hours in a day to get our house up to our level of cleanliness without spending all our otherwise unaccounted for hours cleaning.

What helped me mentality break away from the "no cleaning services for me!" philosophy of my childhood was putting the financial costs into perspective. Yes, a cleaning service is a luxury, and I know it is one that not everyone can afford. Putting it in terms of your personal hourly rate, though, might help you make the move if you're on the fence. How much is an hour of your time worth? How many hours does it take you to clean your home, even when you split the tasks with someone else? What can you do with the time you could gain by exporting out at least some of the cleaning duties in your house?

Negotiating a rate and a plan
After a quick consultation at our house, we were able to hire a cleaning service to come to our house once every two weeks. Four ladies show up and spend between one and one-and-a-half hours at our home (which translates to 4-6 woman hours that I am not cleaning!). Because we still devote a chunk of each day to basic household maintenance, and our two giant dogs' shedding habits necessitate that Matt vacuums our house 2-3 times per week, we figured we did not need every single service offered. We asked if the cleaning service would clean our four (! ridiculous, I know) bathrooms, dust the entire house, and clean all our wood floors for $75 every two weeks. The service's owner accepted our offer. Fortunately, though, the women who come every other week do so much more than what we signed on for -- they clean all baseboards and doors, vacuum the sofas and stairs thoroughly (no easy task thanks to our dogs), and clean the interior of all windows. They do not touch the kitchen, because I do enough daily kitchen maintenance and a bi-weekly deep cleaning so it's not necessary.

Having these women come to clean our house every two weeks is amazing on so many levels, but one reason I especially like it is that it keeps me to a reasonable bi-weekly cleaning schedule of my own.

Bi-weekly kitchen cleaning
Because our cleaning ladies usually come every other Thursday, I've added a bi-weekly appointment in my Google calendar on Wednesday nights to clean the kitchen. I make this my sole duty because Matt contributes his fair share of domestic goodness with frequent house vacuuming, grocery shopping, and cooking. Of course, I wash dishes and wipe surfaces every day, but every other week I now perform a deep cleaning of the kitchen that makes me feel like a domestic rock star.

 

Here's my kitchen cleaning order of operations:

1) Wipe down all granite countertops. I say granite to share with you the fact that in the last year I've discovered the wonder of Method Daily Granite & Marble cleaner and I love it. I've linked to soap.com because that's the place where I find the best price (though I always stock my cart with plenty of bottles so I can earn free shipping).

2) Clean stovetop, inside toaster oven, and coffee pot.

3) Refill any canisters sitting on our countertops (cereal, sugar, coffee, flour, salt, rice) and wipe down stainless steel canisters with Method Stainless Steel Cleaner.

4) Clean out and reorganize fridge. Wipe down shelves before restocking with food. Update the Our Groceries app with any items we've run out of (or will run out of soon).

5) Reorganize pantry as needed, restock any staples (oil, vinegar, salt, pepper), and further update Our Groceries list with needed pantry items.

6) Go over our white cabinets to clean up spills and marks with a Clorox wipes and/or Scotch Brite erasers as needed.

7) Wipe down dishwasher, fridge, and faucet/sink with Method Stainless Steel Cleaner.

8) Wipe down the highchair and highchair placemat.

I was not doing nearly this kind of deep kitchen cleaning before, so I am thrilled to be able to keep our kitchen this clean. By cleaning the kitchen thoroughly the night before the cleaning ladies arrive, I get all the crumbs and dirt off the surfaces and onto the floor, where they'll be vacuumed and polished away the next morning.

Other business that's getting taken care of...
So, yeah, not only am I performing a deep cleaning of the kitchen every other week, but having a cleaning service has also freed up time for some items that were not getting done as quickly as I'd hoped they would. These include:

• Filing -- instead of allowing a pile, or several piles, to build up before I broke out the shredder/file cabinet, I file items away at least every other day.
• Laundry -- I've been doing a good job getting Natalie's laundry done one week and mine done the next, as I originally set out to do when she was about six months old, but doing laundry is the easy part -- folding is another story. Laundry would go unfolded often for several days. Now I make sure that I fold the laundry the day it's done.
• Cleaning outlet covers and switch plates -- These seem to get dirty so quickly, and they are not something the cleaning ladies cover, so I try go over them every other week.
• Changing the sheets -- We are not the kind of people who change our sheets every week. Instead, the bi-weekly cleaning schedule gives me a reminder that I should change the sheets at least within a couple days of the cleaning ladies' visit.
• Organizing kids' clothes -- As cliche as it is, kids really do grow incredibly fast. I feel like I am constantly sorting through drawers and bins for Natalie (and now preparing for her little brother). I like to make sure that anything in Natalie's dresser and closet actually fits her so that Matt and grandparents/babysitters won't dress Nat in something embarrassingly outgrown.

Of course, our world is about to get rocked come January, so who knows if our present household maintenance routines will still work for us then, but for now we love the day once every two weeks when for one perfect moment our home is impeccably clean. This would be impossible if we did not have a cleaning service.

Household schedule reality check

This blog keeps me honest and helps me set realistic goals for myself, so I thought it was time to reflect on my baby-friendly household maintenance plan I established back in June.

The good news is that I am mostly sticking to it. The bad news is that I hate to clean bathrooms. I really, really hate cleaning bathrooms.

To be a little more reflective, though....

Writing down a Monday through Friday "schedule" has been useful in giving me just one or two tasks to focus on per day outside of all the baby care activities that consume so much of my time. I definitely feel less overwhelmed.

Even though I do not have a full-time job outside the house right now, I still like to give our family weekends that are as errand-free and chore-free as possible. I'm happy to be a little more insane during the week if it means freedom during the weekend. Also, in reality, there is almost always something I didn't get to during the week that needs to get taken care of during the weekend, so it's nice to have that flexibility.

I have needed to rearrange what days I accomplish different tasks. Tuesday are particularly busy around our house, so I should not make Tuesday the day I dust or clean the bathrooms, since those tend to be more time consuming. The point is, though, that no matter what day I accomplish something, with a schedule generally in mind I am more likely to consistently take care of tasks that need to get done every week (or realistically, every two weeks).

Handling all the dog hair that is inevitably floating around our house is such a Sisyphean task, but a schedule for dusting and vacuuming at least ensures that even if everything does not get accomplished when I want it to, at least it happens roughly around the time I want it to. And that is fine. I am horrible, however, at ever remembering to Furminate the dogs these days. Poor dogs.

Oh, and always dust before vacuuming. Always.

So, if you're tired of looking at your house and wondering where to begin with trying to keep it presentable, I'm a believer in this personalized schedule idea. It will help keep you from losing your mind and maybe cut the dog hair around your house down by half.

New household schedule

I view this blog as a way to keep myself in line. If it helps anyone else, that's great, but there's nothing like some good ole public accountability to encourage me to stick to my goals. So, I'm trying something new, a Monday through Friday task list that I'm starting this week and hoping to continue (no doubt with modifications) through the end of my leave of absence from work in August 2013.

I'm doing this new system now for a few reasons:
1) Though I used to pat myself on the back for just emptying the dishwasher in a given day, soon I will have had a baby for half a year (!) and I think it's about time to step up my game.

2) A mom friend of mine helped push me in this direction as she shared her attempts at getting a couple things done a day.

3) I have a tendency to get hyper focused and want to clean the entire house and run 15 errands all in one day and then not do anything for a week. That's not only unhealthy, but it's just impossible now. By giving myself a couple tasks to complete per day I hope I'll feel less overwhelmed. I also just need to be honest with myself and what I can realistically accomplish.

4) I've felt less of an urge to keep our house clean since Natalie's birth because, you know, I've been kind of busy and all, but as I spend more time at home I have increasing opportunities to see the dust bunnies or, more realistically, the piles of dog hair everywhere. Oh my god, I am covered in dog hair and it disgusts me. It is seriously taking away from my happiness even though I am an otherwise completely happy person with lots to celebrate.

OK, so here goes:

Mondays
Meal planning and grocery shopping!

Tuesdays
A rotating task list...
One week: Clean the bathrooms.
Following week: Dust.

Wednesdays
Vacuum
Laundry...
One week: Natalie's laundry
Following week: My laundry

Thursdays
A rotating task list...
One week: Wood floors and walls/doors (by this I mean get out the Magic Eraser to handle any obvious dirt/marks that have accumulated)
Following week: Windows and sheets

Fridays
Kitchen wipe down -- counter tops, stainless steel appliances, check fridge for expired food, etc.

Every other day....wash a load of cloth diapers
On those days, like today, that I do not have to wash diapers I will dedicate that time to Furminating the dogs, which will hopefully help me maintain my sanity a little longer between vacuuming sessions.

A few important points about this list:
1) This is a "good enough" list. While my standards of cleanliness are maybe greater than those of the average person, experience would indicate that they are not greater than those of the average reader of an organization/home maintenance blog. So, when I say "windows" every other Thursday, I don't mean I'll be cleaning every single window in my house, but rather I'll attack those heavily trafficked windows (the front storm door and the bay window in the living room where the dogs hang out come to mind) and when the spirit moves me on a rare occasion I'll get to other windows.

2) On a similar note, it may gross some people out to only change your bedsheets once every two weeks, but that's good enough for us.

3) Matt will assist with this list. He still does the majority of the vacuuming in our house (and DJ Roomba continues to assist with keeping the main level of our house tidy), and he does all the cooking. Although I've taken on more grocery shopping than I have in the past, he continues to do a significant portion of grocery shopping and did, for example, go to both Wegmans and Costco last night while I was spending time with Natalie and putting her to bed.

4) I am already resisting the urge to be unrealistic in my expectations and deviate from this schedule. For example, I can see right now that the fridge and the coffeemaker both could use a wipe down, but I am resisting the urge to add that to my list of responsibilities today because I know I'll do it Friday. Or, today's Tuesday, and the bathrooms could use cleaning and the house could use dusting, but I'll have to pick one and save the other one for next week. It is oddly liberating, at least as far as a schedule can be liberating.

5) Obviously there will be other things I will do each day, some mini-projects (right now figuring out what to do with my classroom that it still packed up in my car will be a priority), but overall I'm most concerned about maintaining the schedule I've had going for the last few months that includes a social activity or excursion every day to introduce Natalie to new people, environments and activities. That is more important than a clean house.

Oh, and when I go back to work full time I think we're going to have to hire a cleaning service, because there's no way I could do this schedule, work full time, care for a baby, and still have some fun. Major props to you if you can!

DJ Roomba's flaw

You may recall that right before we brought Natalie into our home we brought a Craigslisted Roomba robot vacuum cleaner -- or as we like to call him, DJ Roomba -- into our home. So far DJ Roomba is doing a great job keeping our main level of our home remarkably clean with one exception. All too often I wake up in the mornings, go into the kitchen, and notice this:

DJ Roomba is great on carpet. DJ Roomba is not so hot on wood floors. He is swirling all the dog hair around and distributing it into piles on the wood floors, but he is not actually doing his job of scooping up the piles of dog hair. I guess this is his one flaw. Of course, I can easily grab the Dust Buster and get up those piles of dog hair quickly, but still, I think his advanced technological prowess should include him completing this final step.

I will say, though, that is remarkable that once his little vacuum cartridge is full of dust, dog hair, and debris every night while we sleep DJ Roomba does what I call his "ET Phone Home" moment when he returns to his little port where he lives for 23 hours of the day. Smooth move, robot!

It's official, we are living in the future, and it is weird and fascinating.

And our future dogs will be the kind that do not shed.

New addition

...DJ Roomba!

Matt's contribution to nesting around our house consists of him having purchased a Roomba Pet Series 562 from a woman on Craigslist (who also happens to be very pregnant and believes the Roomba is going to be too loud for her incoming baby....except it's way, way less noisy than our Dyson, so whatevs people. Her decision to sell it second hand saved us over $200 off the full purchase price.). We are currently testing it out. It is working its magic on our main level (living room, kitchen and dining room). Like everything we bring into our house, it is already nicely covered in dog hair.

The dogs do not know how to respond to it. Hopefully chasing it around will keep them occupied enough to ignore our daughter when and if she ever arrives on this planet.

And when we have a party, we can assure you DJ Roomba will play a major role in the festivities.

DJ ROOMBA - watch more funny videos     

40 weeks and 1 day pregnant nesting

What do you do when you're 40 weeks and 1 day pregnant? Your husband is back at work, even though you didn't think he'd be back following winter break, and the rest of the world is back to post-holidays reality as well.

Your house has been clean for the past two weeks because you gave it an insanely thorough cleaning, thinking this was the last time you'd do that for a while. You don't need to put your feet up and relax because you've been doing that for almost two weeks as well.

So, you scrub the base boards.

And wash all the windows.

You take all the knobs off your kitchen cabinets and remove the last remnants of plastic that must have covered the cabinets when they were first installed a decade ago. It's something that's been bothering you for the past five years. (Look closely below to see what I mean!)

You Magic Erase the white cabinets in your kitchen.

Then you Magic Erase all the outlet covers and light switch plates. If you go much further you'll Magic Erase your whole house.

You take a break for a mid-morning bagel and watch I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, all the while shaking your head as your overdue baby kicks you repeatedly in the ribs.

You make a diaper caddy for the main level of your house.

And you corral all your camera equipment into one location on the main level, since you figure having everything together will be useful when you get to start some baby photo shoots.

You organize all the toiletries and cleaning products in the hallway bathroom because this will become the baby's bathroom.

Your organize your husband's socks even though you thought that might wait until after the baby's arrival.

You do what you hope is your last round of baby laundry before the baby arrives. This time you wash 6-month size clothing you were initially going to hold off on until after the baby's arrival.

You finish reading the baby sleep habits book that you started two days ago on your new Kindle.

You return to your recipe notebook and finally make a grocery list, something you've been intentionally putting off because each day you think, "This is it! I don't want the food to spoil while we're in the hospital." But you realize that going to restaurants is getting expensive, your empty fridge is looking pathetic, it's probably a safe bet that you'll need several days' worth of food in the house after all, and frankly it's time to make some blue cheese dip. Because WHAT. ELSE. ARE. YOU. DOING? So you go grocery shopping at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday and envision your future existence of shopping with senior citizens and other stay-at-home moms for a while. And that is actually the best part -- no picked-over groceries, no plethora of carts left in the aisles, no long lines at the check out.

And when people ask you when the baby's due, you can finally use the line, "Yesterday," kind of like Amy Poehler in the classic Saturday Night Live sketch "I'm No Angel." (Sorry for the quality -- why can't I find this anywhere else online?)


And despite feeling a little stir crazy after being given by your doctor a month ago what now feels like false hope for an early delivery, you know that the baby has to get here sometime relatively soon.

Actually, you realize at 3:01 p.m. on a Tuesday, you're living the dream.

But the very, very best part of all this, no matter how you slice it, is that for this rare, beautiful moment, at least you do not have a single paper to grade, and for that you could not be more thankful.

Kitchen line up: Repurposing place mats

When we ventured to IKEA in September to pick up the Billy bookcase for the nursery, I also bought two sets of these Klistrig place mats, figuring that at $2.99 for a pack of 4 I could find plenty of uses for them either as just simply place mats or I could repurpose them to other areas of the house.

It took me about three hours to decide that I wanted to protect the shelves of our pantry with these, but then I quickly ran out of extras, and by that point I was determined to line all the drawers and a few cabinet shelves in our kitchen with these. So, over this past weekend I picked up six more packs from IKEA and got to work lining the most offensive cabinets and drawers.

With white cabinets and two giant dogs, the insides of our drawers and cabinets reveal wear faster than they would if they were traditional wooden cabinets. So, in order to attempt to semi-win my constant battle against dog hair, I figured these are a start. They're not exactly contact paper, but they're thin enough that they are easily cut down to size and they can be easily lifted out of the cabinets for quick cleaning, too. And they're super cute.

So, after emptying out the drawers...

...and giving them a much-needed wipe down...I created a template for each drawer or cabinet and pieced the place mats together like a puzzle.

I did not buy enough place mats to line every single cabinet in our kitchen, but instead I focused on the highly trafficked parts of the kitchen, the lowest-lying drawers (which are therefore most likely to collect dog hair and catch crumbs from the counters), and cabinets containing items that are likely to make the shelves dirty, like our baking supply mini-pantry.

It took me about two hours to complete this project, and it's now amazing to not have to look at scuff marks or sticky residue at the bottoms of our cabinets and drawers.

A special anniversary and a new lens purchase

A year ago this weekend, during the last Columbus Day tax-free Energy Star appliance weekend in Virginia, Matt and I purchased our stainless steel fridge and dishwasher. We've been thoroughly enjoying them all this time. Not only do they look great but they function perfectly and -- perhaps most importantly to us -- make hardly any noise. This is a major life upgrade.

But, last week, my typical need for cleanliness or my pregnancy nesting instinct took over (call it what you will), and I realized that I had not thoroughly cleaned the fridge and freezer in the entire time we've owned it. Yes, I have cleaned out each produce drawer several times and wiped down sticky shelves on numerous occasions, but our beloved fridge has never received the head-to-toe treatment it deserves.

So I started with the freezer and my handy Clorox wipes, which I find to be the most effective (though I once again admit, perhaps least environmentally friendly) way of cleaning out the various poppy seeds from bagels and leaves from various vegetables that get stuck in the nooks and crannies of our fridge. We're not big freezer users (yet) so there wasn't too much to sort through, and I am not someone who has an amazing system for organizing the contents of our freezer or our fridge.

The fridge is more satisfying to organize than the freezer, and completely emptying it out and leaving it spotless before throwing out expired goods and rearranging the contents of the shelves made me feel amazingly accomplished.

I documented the freezer and fridge clean-out progress using our new 50 mm f/1.4 lens (for our Canon Rebel XTi DSLR) which just arrived in the mail midway through last week. (We bought it through the site Adorama rather than Amazon because the two sites were charging the same price, but Adorama threw in a free 58 mm UV filter and lens cleaning kit -- two things I've been wanting for some time.)

Here's the (completely unretouched) photo of our freezer contents taken at approximately 9 p.m. Wednesday using our original lens

And here's the same photo taken from the same spot in our kitchen using our new 50 mm lens

Because of the lighting in our house I still had to take both photos on manual settings with an ISO of 1600. Granted, when I take photos to post on this blog or share with friends I almost always retouch them, adjusting usually the exposure and sometimes the saturation. But I wanted to show you the raw files of these images to help you get a sense of what the new lens will do. Namely, while the new lens does not have zooming capabilities, it does have a much more important feature: the ability to take better photos indoors in really low light. Though you might not be able to appreciate it in the examples above, the photos taken with the new lens have way less digital noise (i.e. obvious grainy pixels) than the photos taken with the old lens.

Why did we get this new lens? Well, probably at this point for obvious reasons. As we prepare our lives for Baby Awesomerod, we want to be able to take a ton of pictures of her, and since she'll be arriving during almost the dead of winter, we figure we are going to take almost all our photos indoors in low lighting. We'd rather not take photos using the flash since it tends to have a rather jarring effect.  Our friends Dawn and Jon have taken lots of adorable pictures of their daughter indoors using the same lens that inspired this purchase, and Matt, being the tech guru that he is, was totally happy to buy this lens after seeing what their lens could do.

I am totally thrilled to have a clean fridge AND a new awesome lens to document our lives. Now we need to get Photoshop Elements so I can learn to do a better job at editing photos.

Carpets like new!

The last item on our "Stuff professionals are doing for us" portion of our summer bucket list was to get the carpets in our house professionally cleaned. We intentionally saved this for last since we were waiting for all the professionals to finish tracking the mud from their work boots through the house, and we were especially waiting for the patio to be complete so there would be less mud in our backyard overall (of course, this plan was slightly foiled when all the backyard grass got destroyed during the patio installation, but you can't win them all).

On my 30th birthday we had a house full of these...

These giant industrial fans really did get all the carpets dry in a few short hours.

We chose Hew's Carpet Cleaning to get this job done. We found their recommendation through a friend's Angie's List account. We've had our carpets cleaned once professionally prior to this, and another time Matt rented a carpet cleaner from the grocery store and did it himself. Now that we've used Hew's Carpet Cleaning, though, we do not plan to use another company nor will we choose the DIY option for this task. We've never seen our carpets look so good -- in fact, they look brand new -- and we were thoroughly impressed with all aspects of Hew's service, including the use of these industrial-strength fans that dried our floors in no time.

The downstairs = the real test of Hew's prowess. Fortunately, these once-dirty carpets are spotless!

We found Hew's prices to be comparable to those of other companies we looked into, but thanks to a special on Angie's List we got an even better deal. Our house falls into the "up to 1950 square feet category" listed on Hew's website, so the cost of a whole-house carpet cleaning is $199. Through Angie's List we were able to get $100 off, so we signed up for our own Angie's List account for a month (instead of continuing to mooch off a friend's account), which costs $13.25. Once our carpet cleaning person arrived, we let him upsell us by agreeing to add the pet odor removal option to our downstairs level, costing us another $40. He explained that since that's the level where the dogs spend half their days, the dog smell will really come out once he gets the carpets wet, and once the smell is out he won't be able to get it out without this option. Who knows if this was absolutely necessary, but the downstairs does have the messiest carpet, so we agreed. All in, we spent $153 for this service. It's worth it to us for this to become an annual summer event. When we moved in we talked about doing this every summer, but travels or forgetfulness have gotten in the way before. Still, we've had our carpets cleaned three times in four and a half years, which is probably better than the American household average.

In addition to the fact that the professional work being done on our house this summer is complete, the carpet cleaning also came at the perfect time because we've consolidated the furniture in our house. Without the large desk in the office/nursery and the large table in the living room, it was easier for us to quickly move coffee tables, chairs and accessories onto the wood floors of our house (in our dining room/kitchen and foyer) and create pretty open spaces for carpet cleaning. Granted, Hew's did not clean under our sofas or under our beds, but since those are not high-traffic areas we think that's fine. And, because we have not brought any nursery furniture into the house yet, we are even starting the nursery transformation process with some spotless carpet.

As you can see, this space is difficult to photograph, particularly in the morning when so much light is flooding through the window, despite the fact that it's covered with a shade. I think I'm ready to tackle those DIY no sew curtains. I'm afraid of messing up my nice fabric, but I guess I need to get over it! Matt's about ready to start the dresser refinishing project, so we're about to start the real work!

A greener sponge

I know a bunch of you are probably grossed out by the idea of sponges, thinking they're yucky because they get dirty and smelly. This is true, which is why I was pleased to discover these...

They're the four-pack of the Quickie Green Cleaning Microfiber Kitchen Sponges. I bought these about six months ago, and so far they have lived up to their promise of being durable even after quite a few rounds in the washing machine. They're not made for scrubbing pots. Instead I use them for wiping down the kitchen counter tops, and when I'm cleaning our bathrooms one usually travels with me to each bathroom sink and counter top in the house. At $4.99 for the four pack at the grocery store, this has been a worthwhile investment.

Experiments in stainless steel cleaning, take 2

I can't believe it was back in November when Matt and I purchased these Method Steel for Real Wipes and I blogged about my experience. Yes, they worked well in the beginning, but then I went to reach for one a couple weeks ago and they were completely dried up. Clearly, these wipes are good if you're going to use them often; if you're like us, and you use about half the package between November and June, they're not the best.

So I was happy to discover the Method Steel for Real spray bottle in the grocery store the other day. Granted, I had not tried very hard to look for it, and it was sitting there all along next to the wipes.

This spray bottle is definitely the way to go for me. Spray on a cloth, clean with the grain of the steel, then buff with a dry cloth (or the other side of the cloth you used if, again, you'd like to channel my minimalist energy).

One 12 oz. bottle should last me through 2014!

In search of guidance: carpet cleaners and sewing machines

As a creature of habit, this morning I woke up feeling the urge to clean. In particular, I've been tired of our dirty garage which has been covered in all the dirt of winter and road chemicals in particular. This, of course, means that today I did what I did almost exactly one year ago when I got started with some spring cleaning.

With the cleaning kick now in full swing, I'll be ready soon to clean windows, purge closets, and plan out our spring annual plantings. For now, though, I have two other items on my mind, and I would love your input.

1) I am considering investing in a carpet cleaner. Our dogs and the general traffic in our house have a tendency to make our light-colored carpet get rather nasty. We rent carpet cleaners from the grocery store every now and then, but I'm betting that with the cost of renting one many times over the years it probably makes sense for us to own one, provided we can find one that's both affordable and effective. So, dear readers: do you own a carpet cleaner you would recommend (or, equally helpful, one you would not recommend)?

2) I have said it for years, and it's finally time I made good on my promise to myself: I need to learn how to sew. I want to sew several curtains, pillow covers and even a cushion cover. Do you have a recommendation for a reasonably priced sewing machine this novice sewer could grow into? Right now I don't see myself doing anything too fancy. I don't think I want the world's most basic sewing machine, though, because I'm relatively crafty and might want to leave my sewing-improvement options open for the future.

I would love your advice, and I thought it was time to harness the powers of the interweb! Thanks!

Air filter day!

It's the one year anniversary of the first time I encouraged you to change your air filter. How's that for a moment to commemorate?

Well, in commemoration, I will not be changing our air filter, and it's not because I don't want to. Instead, I found out this week that we have been using the wrong size air filter the entire time we've been living in our house. That's four plus years of breathing poorly filtered air. How's that for an anniversary?

Tomorrow I'll run by Costco and see if they carry the filters we actually need, and I'll also fill (ha!) you in on how we came to this little discovery.

But for now I need to speed read my way through the rest of Superfreakonomics, a book I have on 14-day loan with no renewal option from the library. The book I began leisurely reading on the beach in Mexico is good enough that I want to finish reading it in time to meet this deadline!

DIY dish washing liquid

I've been making my own dish washing liquid for handwashing dishes for a while now, and I realized I'd never shared the simple recipe. It involves just a couple basic ingredients: castile soap, water and essential oil. I found the recipe in one of my favorite domestic books, Clean Home Green Home, that I've referenced here before.

Although the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup of castile soap and 1/2 cup water, I find that combination leads to an overly watery dish washing soap, so today when I made more dish washing soap I used the remaining 1 cup of castile soap I had and a little less than 1/2 cup of water. Then I added 10 drops of lavender essential oil.

This old Seventh Generation plastic bottle has been the holding ground for all my homemade dish washing liquid, but then today while I was at Home Goods looking for a new rug (no luck so far!) and containers (of course) I found a cheap glass dispenser for $4.99 and immediately thought of another organizing blog I read. Although the author just wrote about how this glass dispenser has not worked well for her dish washing liquid, I thought I would give it a try because having to reach underneath the sink to get out the soap has been keeping me from cleaning the kitchen counters more often. (As a side note, this DIY dish washing liquid is an eco-friendly way to clean granite counter tops as well.)

I also picked up this cheap glass tray at Home Goods to make the dish washing soap and hand soap dispensers a little nicer looking. And, yes, I totally ripped this entire look off of IHeart Organizing.

And, even though I got about 11 hours of sleep last night, for some reason I am exhausted, so I think I may need to take a nap before tonight's neighborhood dinner party commences!

Experiments in stainless steel cleaning, take 1

Last month when Matt and I made the decision to splurge on some stainless steel appliances, I did have one concern: How would we keep them clean? I've heard plenty of stories of people complaining about how stainless steel shows every little imperfection (which, of course, sounds like a White Whine).

Fortunately, I have a husband who is more cleanliness obsessed than me, and before I even had a chance to bring up the topic, Matt had already purchased these Method Steel for Real Wipes.

The verdict? I'm pretty satisfied.

We've only used them a few times, thanks to the fact that we have a relatively low-traffic fridge, with just two clean adults in our household. Still, our fridge does show fingerprints and sticky food residue, so I've found myself reaching for these once, maybe twice, every two weeks.

The trick to using these wipes appropriately is to move your hand in the direction of the grain. Our stainless grain is horizontal, and vertical swipes clearly show. Additionally, another trick is patience. The first time I used these wipes, I was a bit dismayed because I could see the residue the wipes left behind. Give the wipes about 30 seconds to do their magic, and any leftover residue should disappear.

Streak-free and ready to party

Overall, I like Method products, though I do recognize that despite the company's best environmental efforts, disposable wipes, like paper towels, can only be so green. So, I will continue to experiment with other options, but I'm pretty happy with this product.

In the meantime, do you have any stainless steel secrets to share?

Good to know: homemade laundry detergent lasts!

Back in May I wrote to you about my DIY laundry detergent experiments. After making a huge batch of laundry detergent, I predicted I might have enough to make it through February. Well, that was hyperbole, but it turns out that this DIY detergent managed to last for over six months! And, it is getting our clothes just as clean as the chemical-laden store-bought stuff. Victory!

One of Matt's colleagues laughed at him when he found out we make our own laundry detergent. He said, "This is how I know you all don't have any children." All I have to say is that spending 10-15 minutes every six months doesn't seem like a big time commitment, kids or no kids.

Now that I've made my second successful batch of laundry detergent this weekend, it's time to find a better storage solution. The aluminum foil lid is not working out too well, but at least the detergent is pretty great.

How to spot-clean carpet

It looks like dog-shedding season and dog-vomit season in our house have intersected. First it was last week, when Doc threw up at 3 a.m. and my killer reflexes caused me to bolt up in bed, groaning and annoyed. Then it was this morning at 5:30, right after Maxwell ate breakfast and threw up not once, not twice, but a solid SIX TIMES in a row. If I didn't know my dogs, I would think there was something terribly wrong with them. But, they occasionally throw up, kind of like cats and babies. Even our vet sees no cause for alarm.

So, I monitor the little guys and what they put in their mouths, and I come up with a plan for cleaning up the mess.

Back in my not-so-green days I would use Spot Shot for cleaning carpet stains. In my experience, it really does work well, and I was happy when, a couple years ago, I could buy some non-toxic Spot Shot (and a double-bonus for the non-aerosol bottle). But then I decided, people have been cleaning carpets way before Spot Shot entered the picture, and Spot Shot doesn't last long and it's pricey (when you have two big, pukey dogs).

I'm happy to announce I've found a solution!

This rag, this measuring cup, and this book have become a bit of an institution in our house.

Here's the procedure (slightly adapted from Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts)

1. Mix together a solution of half mild detergent and half lukewarm water. (I used my homemade laundry detergent; the point here is to use a non-bleach detergent.)
2. Blot the stain using the detergent solution and a rag. DO NOT rub the solution farther into the carpet.
3. Mix together a solution of one-third white vinegar and two-thirds water.
4. Blot the stain using the white vinegar solution.
5. If you're still not satisfied after you give the area time to dry, try sponging the area with clean water.

How to de-tarnish brass

This weekend, despite my general rage regarding some of the bogus violations we received from our latest HOA inspection, I decided to tackle what seemed like the smallest and most necessary project: de-tarnish our brass door hardware. Last weekend I successfully de-tarnished our brass outdoor light fixture (imagine it looking almost black, and me nursing it back to health).

For some reason, though, the door hardware tarnish is out of control.

Warning: don't be mistaken; this is not a "small" project. Many hours later, my labor is complete.

I've never de-tarnished brass before, so I looked up some helpful how-to's in Home Comforts, a book my buddy Sam thoughtfully sent me when I started this blog. This book is great, and it has helped me in several areas already, which I'll highlight in later posts.

Home Comforts told me to:

1) mix equal parts white flour and salt (I used table salt) with enough white vinegar to make a paste. (Oh, white vinegar, is there anything you can't do?)

2) Apply the paste to your brass surface and let it sit for an hour.

3) Remove the paste using a rag, and you should notice that the brownish tint has been replaced by a rose tint that can then be polished using standard metal polish.

There unfortunately does not appear to be a good non-chemical metal polish out there. If you know of a home remedy, I'd love to hear about it! So, I purchased 8 ounces of Brasso at Home Depot for $3.49.

Our outdoor light fixture only required one coating of the homemade paste before it was de-tarnished, but this door hardware was especially stubborn and required two applications.

Here's the hardware before

And a close-up for purposes of comparison

Here's how the hardware looks when covered in the paste

Here's the hardware after one application of the paste

And all clean, many, many hours of polishing later

The before-and-after close up

And here's the stupid thing I did: I failed to cover the lock when I was applying the paste the first time. So, the paste hardened inside the lock, and then we couldn't get our keys in the lock. Tired and running out of options and needing to lock our door and needing to get some items at Home Depot anyway, I asked a Home Depot employee what he thought I should do. Get a tiny file? Just buy a new lock? He said, to my surprise, take a hair pin and some WD-40, and that should do the trick. Genius! He was completely right, and I was fairly stupid.

Why didn't I just buy a new light fixture and new door hardware, or spray paint them black, and call it a day? Well, two reasons:

1) to be as green as possible, I generally try to operate under the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, and in this case both items are fine and fully functioning

and

2) apparently the only acceptable finish for light fixtures and door hardware in our neighborhood is brass, so spray painting was out. Add that to the Draconian list.

The Brasso directions recommend polishing brass once every three months. So that I never have to spend a Sunday afternoon polishing brass again, I am going to get in the habit of maintaining these brass finishes once every three months on the same day I change our air filter.