Pinterest Project #1

I've already been trying a few ideas I found on Pinterest at home, and decided it makes sense to document how things actually work.

There are so many great recipes and tips that I've been pinning lately. One was about uses for vinegar. Don't get me wrong...using vinegar around the home is something I've been doing for a long time. But a couple that I hadn't thought of were using vinegar as 1. a rinse aid for your dishwasher; and 2. A natural fabric softener. (If you click on the picture it should bring you to the blog post which gave these ideas).

I decided to put this to the test.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we bought new cutlery this past month. It is great...but when I put it through the dishwasher, it came out covered in water-spots. So, I took the aforementioned advice and put some vinegar in the rinse-aid dispenser.

And...it worked like a charm! Here is a photo showing a spoon from before I put the vinegar in, and one from the vinegar wash. Pretty cool! I give this Pinterest tip a 10/10.

I am considering trying out the vinegar as a fabric softener...although right now we don't use anything so I don't know if it's even worth it. Although sometimes I wish our towels were a little softer :) So we'll see.

Cleaning Stainless Steel

One of the things I loved about our home when I moved in was the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. However, fairly quickly I became frustrated with them. Why? Because of their unmatchable ability to attract grease, water marks, fingerprints and any type of mess.

I tried various types of cleaners on them to try and get them shiny and streak-free. I even bought a specific stainless steel cleaner. Nothing seemed to work, and it was always a huge job to scrub them to have them be mostly streak free.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a co-worker who said she uses Norwex cloths and water to clean hers and it works really well. As I didn't have any Norwex cloths, I thought I would try it my own way.

First, let me show you what my oven looks like at the end of any given week (hence my frustration!)

Here is what you need: 

2 clean micro-fibre cloths; 1 damp with water, one dry. Yep, that's it.

All you do is wipe down the surface with the wet cloth in small sections. Then, immediately follow with the dry cloth and wipe the surface dry. Repeat until you've done the whole appliance. Et voilà! A clean and shiny stove, once again!

The greatest part about this is that it takes about half as much work as I was doing with the cleaners, and looks better! Yes, it is things like this that make me happy. Is that sad? And again, the before and after for your viewing pleasure :)