Wired For Noise

I know that last week was the doesn’t work for me theme, but I made an interesting discovery this week that I wanted to share anyway. And no, not Phentermine without a prescription. Something that really didn’t work for me, and even ended up costing me money. And you know how I hate to spend money.

Trey managed to get his grubby hands on the crayons and decorated a wall in their room. I wouldn’t have cared too much, except the landlady was coming over the next day with the realtor and a a women looking to buy the house. So it had to be cleaned. After a ton of scrambling through the house I noticed that the side of the box of washing soda said it works on crayon. Perfect!

Mix with some warm water, a little scrubbing, and it came right off. A perfect white wall. The problem is that apparently the mixture also removed wood stain. Like the stain from the wooden baseboards that are now streaked and smeary. That I have to pay to have redone now. Ouch.

So there’s my tip for the week. Mix some washing soda with warm water and get that crayon right off, just don’t do it near stained wood. Unless you already plan to redo your woodwork anyway.

Tags: Works For Me Wednesday, cleaning, washing soda, home

I am always looking for a new way to save money and be more eco-friendly. That’s why there are bottles of water in our toilet to turn them into low-flow toilets and why I collect the cold water that runs waiting for it to heat up and use it to clean and water plants. I’m frugal and I like to hug a few trees along the way.

Last week I was flipping through some eco-blogs and someone mentioned having a tankless water heater that saved money and used less energy. I’ve only ever known big tank heaters so it had me scratching my head trying to figure out how you have hot water without the big tank. A little searching and I found the answer.

1. When you open a hot water tap, cold water enters the heater and triggers the powerful heating elements or burners. Your hot water tap acts as an ignition key for the energy used to heat the hot water you need.
2. The water is heated as it flows through the heating elements or heat exchanger. As the water flow varies, the unit adjusts the heating elements or burner flame to maintain a constant temperature and maximum energy efficiency.
3. When the hot water tap is turned off, the heating system also turns off. The energy that is consumed is only for the hot water that is being used.

That actually sounds pretty cool. No huge tank of hot water sitting there all day, using energy to keep it hot, complaining when Dearest takes a shower that there’s no hot water left for me. The problem is that they are pretty expensive and we live in a rental. A rental with a landlady cheaper than me and dying to sell the place off. She’s already made it clear that she won’t pay to replace a single thing in this house. Have I mentioned how badly I want to move out?

Does anyone else use one of these? I can’t believe I’ve never even heard of it before. Sheesh, I’m living under a rock!

Tags: money, frugal

I was talking with some other moms over the weekend about our least favorite parts of our houses. I think there was a tie between the kitchen and the bathrooms. I know that’s a tie for me, at least in terms of cleaning. Both get dirty quicker than any other room in the house. And I never can seem to keep up with either no matter how hard I try. I’m almost ready to hire a maid to just come clean those two rooms once a week for me. Almost ready, the frugal part of me is still winning that war.

Both rooms are small, so there isn’t a lot of space to put things. That results in both getting cluttered easily. In the kitchen there is limited counter and cabinet space, as well as the washer and dryer and the cat area in there as well. All it takes is one day for the place to become overwhelmed.

The bathroom is just as bad. There is one small sink/cabinet combo, and that’s it for the bathroom vanities. With tooth brushes on one side, a storage box on the other, and the big sink in the middle the space is gone. We are lucky to have a long set of shelving against one wall, unfortunately it was built behind the shower so a lot of space is taken up with pipes and plumbing. That’s why the back of the toilet is covered in stuff that likes to fall off and hit me while I’m trying to pee.

I tried using the little storage containers that stick to the shower wall to put soaps and shampoos in hoping to help, but they just kept falling down. There isn’t really any free wall space to add shelves to, but I’m thinking I might be able to add something to the back of the door. Maybe something slim and simple like this shelf.

Of course that still leaves the kitchen, but no amount of shelving there will help. I need to just get off my butt keep it clean. Blah, June Cleaver I’m not.

Tags: cleaning, home, kitchen, bathroom, storage

I use the microwave probably a lot more than I should. It’s just easy, especially when on limited time. We make a big lunch so that Dearest can take the extra to work, and often additional left overs get stuck in the fridge to be eaten by me and the boys later. So when they’re hungry and grumpy I’ll just toss something in there, heat it up really quick, and we’re good to go.

Unfortunately that also means the inside of my microwave is kind of nasty. Or at least it can be if I don’t get to it right away. I used to try just scrubbing it but some things really get in there and don’t want to come off easily. Like that spaghetti sauce splattered across the side or the garlic butter on the top.Fortunately I found a little secret to loosen the junk off without scrubbing.

Fill a shallow cup with 1 cup of water and 1/4 cup of vinegar and set it in the center of the microwave. Then I heat it on high for 2 minutes. When it’s done the food stuck to the inside is already loosened up quite a bit. Sprinkle a little baking soda over it and use the vinegar water to finish cleaning it up.

I use vinegar to clean just about everything in my kitchen. Mixed equally with water for an all purpose cleaner, a little added to rubbing alcohol for a glass cleaner, poured down the sink with baking soda for a drain cleaner, and lots of other places.

Check out the Works For Me Wednesday post this week for other good tips.

Tags: cleaning, housekeeping, vinegar, works for me Wednesday

How many of you drink milk? Do you buy it in the big plastic jugs? What do you do when you’ve finished off the milk in the jug? You could just through it in the trash or you could recycle it into something new. Here are 5 things that you can do with your empty milk jugs to reduce the amount of trash your family is creating.

1. Make a bird feeder.  They’re not the prettiest, but they are functional. Cut out a small hole along the side, about an inch and a half above the bottom. Then fill the bottom with some bird seed and string it from the handle to a tree branch. The plastic can get hot so you’ll want to hang it in a shady spot, especially if you live in a warm weather area.
2. Use them in your garden. Cut the bottom off and stick the top half over young plants to act as small greenhouses. While you’re at it use the bottom part as a place to start your seedlings in. Or leave them intact, fill with water, punch a few small holes in the bottoms, and sit them in your garden for a slow trickle of water onto your plants. You can clean and store these easily during the winter months and pull them out again each spring.
3. Make a container. Cut the top off at an angle so that the handle is in place and you can use them to hold things in. Clothes pins, small toys, you can even use this in the kitchen to hold your scraps for composting. If you have animals that reguire a lot of food this can also be used to scoop up their feed.
4. Use the sides. Cut large circles out of the sides to use for freezing burgers. If you mike to make a lot of burgers and freeze them for future use you can stick the plastic circles in between. It’s better than wax paper as you can reuse them again and again.
5. Save water. Fill empty milk jugs with water and stick in the tank of your toliet. It will automatically become a low-flow toliet, using less water with each flush. Of course less water also means a lower water bill each month, that’s my favorite part.

I’m sure there are hundreds of other great ideas for reusing your empty milk jugs, but these are some great places to start. For other great tips gor check out the Works For Me Wednesday post this week.

Tags: recycling, reusing, milk jugs, works for me wednesday

Christine has a post up on being a stay at home mom and has asked for other people to share their own stories. I found an older post where I share far too much about our income, but I wanted to write another post to expand on it.

For me it was a choice that I had to make. I just could not imagine handing my newborn baby over to a total stranger to raise so I could “live the American dream”. I remember being just a few weeks postpartum and sobbing, begging Dearest to promise me that I wouldn’t have to return to work.

There are two common stereotypes about stay at home moms. One is that we’re sitting on the couch all day watching soaps and eating bon-bons. Frankly I hate soaps, I only dream about eating chocolate all day, and the boys only let me sit down in 15 minute bits if I can bribe them with puzzles or crayons. The second myth, however, is that we’ve all got this fabulously wealthy husbands who can afford everything. I’m still waiting for the one I ordered out of the catalogue to arrive, so until then I’m stuck with Dearest and his barely above minimum wage paychecks.

Funny/not so funny story. A couple years ago I was a month late on a credit card payment. Completely honest, it just slipped my mind. But they were ready to punce and I got the call soon after from an irrate woman badgering me about mkaing a payment immediately and threatening to take it out of my paycheck. When I laughed and explained that I was a stay at home mom and had no paycheck for her to take apart her reaction immediately was “Well, it must be nice to just have someone take care of everything for you.” in the snottiest tone ever.

That entire conversation has stuck in the back of mind since it happened.

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For today’s Works For Me Wednesday I wanted to share something that is perfect for the tree huggers who are also cat owners. Like me.

Pet Ecology Perfect Litter is an eco-friendly cat litter actually works. It is biodegradable, 98% natural, reduces ordors, and has a special color change ingredient that changes colors when your cat has an UTI. We have 6 indoor cats. 6 cats people! You thought I was joking when I said a houseful of cats, but I wasn’t. So we use a lot of litter. We used to buy the cheap stuff because, well look how many we’re dealing with. But the cheap stuff never masked the smells and always made me feel guilty with how much nasty litter was being tossed out.

According to the Bureau of Waste Management, and other reliable sources, billions of pounds of spent cat litter is dumped into U.S. landfills every year – more than the amount of disposable diapers. Moreover, clay-based products swell to 15 times their original size via water absorption, thereby exacerbating landfill capacities and resources even further. Simply put, the clay-based cat litter products that dominate the market are heavy, bulky, smelly when soiled (despite product claims to the contrary), non-biodegradable, and hazardous to the environment.

That’s gross, right? Really, really gross. And it’s not just the dirty cat litter hurting the environment. The clay used in most cat litters is obtained through strip mining. Thousands of acres of land are destroyed permanently just to get to the clay underneath. That makes me want to cry.

If you’re intersted in changing your cat litter you can get a 2 week free trial of Perfect Litter. Free trails are good, very good. OK, so I’m just a sucker for free. You only have to pay shipping and handling, which is $3.95. It’s worth it to try Pet Ecology Perfect Litter for yourself.

Tags: cat litter, environment, waste, works for me wednesday