10 Great Uses for 1 Simple Household Product - Need Help!

I have found that I don't have a great sense of smell any more which I presume is an advantage at times.

But my husband does have a rather sensitive sense of smell sometimes so I am very gracious and do something that makes him a happier man when he is in certain parts of the house.

Yes I have on a Quick Easy Solution to some little problems.

Little problems that can occur in different rooms in your house.

Little problems that can occur in different places in different rooms in your house.

Hence my title for today's blog post:

10 Great Uses for 1 Simple Household Product 

And the Simple Household Product is

               something that many households will already have

                                 and is not very expensive


                                                     in fact I have a few packets of these all the time in the house.

Simply take one of these sheets and place it in

1.     The Laundry Hamper.

Especially for the smelly socks.


I can balance one on the hinge of mine but a little bit of sellotape can be used to stick a sheet on the underside of the lid or the side of the hamper.

And even the ironing basket if you are going to have your clothes lie here for a few days before ironing.

2.     The Storage place for bed linen

I do this in the underbed drawers in our Guest Bedroom and it is nice to keep that bed linen fresh smelling when you know it may be sitting there for quite some time between guests.

3.     Among the Hangers in the Guest Wardrobe

Even if you only do this a few days before your guests come the wardrobe will be very welcoming as they open its doors.

I wish some hotels would think of this as I often notice their wardrobes smell rather stale which is surprising as they should be used regularly.

4.     The Guest Towel Basket

I always try to get the guest room towels washed and dried and back in the guest room very soon after the guests leave but then it may be some time before they are used again so one of these tumble dryer sheets placed in between the towels just freshens them up for the next guests.

5.     The Guest Room or Bathroom Radiator

We don't keep the heat on all year in the Guest room when it is not being used so when we then turn the radiators on a day or so before our guests arrive it's nice to have the room freshened up this way too.


Of course it can just be an added bonus in the bathroom all the time!


Also placing a sheet in each of these few different places in the guest room is much less expensive than keeping one of these air fresheners on the go.

As these are expensive to buy and to get the refills.


Because I use them regularly for the Guest Room and its ensuite I try to make sure that there is always a box of them in the vanity unit in that ensuite so these are one of the items I would often think of for my Amazon Prime Pantry Orders along with their other clearance items.

6.     Cupboard under the sink

We have a small food recycling bin in the right hand side but even if you don't under the sink cupboard can soon get a little smelly.

Note to self: Getting rather untidy in here again!

7.     The Bathroom Hand Towels Sea Grass Basket

My husband Fred is not fond of the smell that can come from Sea Grass baskets.
We have some of this type of basket in our storage cupboard as well as this Drawer unit in the bathroom so this keeps him happy with the hand towels smelling nice and not of the Sea Grass.

8.     The Kitchen Bin

Obviously this will help especially as the bin fills up.

Our bin has a little groove at the back just under the lid which is handy for this but again a little bit of sellotape can be used to stick a sheet on the underside of the lid.

9.     The Vase of Silk Flowers

Yes I know they do not smell but sometimes it is just a nice idea to get a hint of a fragrance when you are near a flower arrangement or vase even if the flowers are not real.

Just another way of freshening up a living room.

10.     Your Slippers

Everyone in our family says that I have smelly feet but of course they are all wrong.

  

However I do know that because I wear slippers constantly in the house they can get (a little!!!) smelly and so I keep the rest of the gang happy by making them have a nice smell - for a while anyway!


Or you might want to try this with your boots.

Then of course don't forget there is also the 

Tumbler Dryer

Why not take a walk around the house the next time you are expecting visitors and you might be surprised where you could hide a dryer sheet (somewhere in the small toilet usually springs to mind) and not have to run out for an air freshener, light a scented candle or use one of those horrible can sprays which just make me sneeze.

Now isn't this more like Funwork than Housework?

Organising The Medicine Cabinet & The Smallest Room in the House

My husband Fred had Food Poisoning which we presume he got in Azerbaijan on a business trip or on the plane on the way home.  So because of this and because of some medical type things I discovered in the garage last month it made more sense to do the back toilet first this month as that is where our Medicine Cabinet is.

Yes it is as simple as that; sometimes I need to be flexible.


So I started by creating my TOILET OVERHAUL list
on the iPad Pocket Lists App which now looks rather different to before in both the icon and the content.

Pocket Lists App

Unfortunately this week I had to take that drastic step of updating to ios7 and if you read a certain post from last year you would know that this then was a very sad week for me, but it had to happen as without it I could not update some of my apps.


Isn't the screenshot so bland compared to previous ones and so pale as well?   Rotten update to this app.

Well as you can see above even for such a small room I had 18 items on my list.

No way this room would be done in a couple of hours!

No way this room would be done in one day  -  all my time in any day is not going to be given over to housework and organising.


So armed with my cleaning kit and trusty steamer I got started.

I got the boring bits out of the way (you know the cleaning of the toilet etc.) and then it was time to reorganise the Medicine Cabinet and I just brightened up because those things are far more interesting to me than washing and cleaning and dusting and hoovering.

This is the Funwork part!



While I was rearranging I was of course checking dates of items and throwing out things and making out a list of things I would need to get to replenish my store.

I was pleased with it when I was finished because I took out some of the more bulky things and some other things that didn't sit so well on the narrow shelves and thought of somewhere else to put these plus the face masks that I had found in the garage (brand new provided by Fred's work but he had kept them in a travel bag in the garage).

So what was my idea for storing these things?

Simply to put them in the underused drawers and cupboards of the vanity unit in the same room.

You see this room is really only used for two things

          1.  Medicine Cabinet
          2.  Recycling

It is not really used as a bathroom because we have two ensuites and a bathroom so why need another one and have to always be cleaning a fourth toilet?


Up until now there was hardly anything in the cupboards and the drawers but that was going to change.

The drawers took some of those not too large items but ones that didn't sit so easily on the shelves of the Medicine cabinet

and the cupboard shelves took the larger health items.

There is also still some room for a few things I need to get like gel cooling pads. 

Then I decided to store the extra towels for this room in the vanity unit (brown top right), the toilet rolls went in there too as they had been in a basket but it has got rather grubby and finding out how to clean it is the first item on my ToDo list for this room now.

Of course I hope you have noticed the packet of wipes (green top left) which are very important in each room as you may remember from a previous post  5 Things to Make the Housework Easy  and the vinegar (bottom left).

Well after most of the overhaul list had been done it was

Then back the next day to finish off.

Things like cleaning the window blind and the light shade and the radiator were still to be done and sometimes these are the types of things that we can overlook so make sure you have them on your list and then you won't forget them.

And before I could do my inventory for this room I wanted to do the ToDo list.

It is not very long but does include a rather annoying thing.

 The people who owned the house before us had put up two hooks above the window probably to put up some kind of drape.   The walls are completely tiled (not absolutely ghastly but not as nice as all the rest of the tiles in the house) so this means they put up two sticky backed hooks.

But

why couldn't they have put up two hooks that were the same 

and

 at the same height?

So my main ToDo is to find out the best way to remove these hooks.


Any bright ideas?


If you have had to do something similar and are now an expert in this please leave me a comment to help me.

I you have noticed anything online that might guide me please leave me a comment.

I need help here!

     

5 Essentials Items for Any Kitchen

One of the best ways to make our work in the kitchen less of a hassle is really to make it

 easier to do 

 or 

 quicker to do 

 or

 both.

One way to do this is to have some simple but very practical tools.

I have picked out 

5 things that I automatically think of 

when I am considering  what I use often or a lot of to make things easier for me around the house.

Yes these are

5 Things I Don't Think I want to have to do Without.

1.  Clip-its



Both IKEA and Lakeland have really good sturdy clip-its and in a good variety of sizes.

However you can buy them almost anywhere now but they may not be just as good a grip.

How can we seal many bags without some of these???


USES
Bread bags
Bags in freezer
Large crisp bags





2.  Long Handled Spoons



LAKELAND sell them but I have also bought them from pound stores

I have some that are bent so that they will sit on the edge of a mug or glass and some that are plain but I also have 2 (not pictured here) that I got in South Korea that have a larger wider spoon part whereas the others are more of a teaspoon size.

Who doesn't need something with a long handle to do some scooping???


USES
Tall glass ice cream sundaes
Large coffee mugs
Getting to the bottom of jars of jam etc.






3.    Kitchen Scissors



LAKELAND, IKEA, Pound stores and  any supermarket now.

Different colours and sizes available, but do get ones with a good comfortable grip because if you get hooked like me you will use them constantly.  

Who doesn't have lots of occasions when it is so much easier to cut with scissors than to chop with a knife???     Well Not Tomatoes anyway!

USES
Lots of meats and vegetables are actually easier to cut using the scissors than a knife.
So convenient for cutting foods into foods already cooking on the stove.
Also how else do you open those horrible strong plastic bags that seem to stretch as you try to pull them apart?






4.    Silicone Basting Brushes

LAKELAND and also in pound stores.

The round ones I have found to be softer and more flimsy.
But the flat ones I absolutely adore.

Who wants to battle with pieces of greased proof paper or kitchen towels to try to grease items???


USES
Oiling and basting roasts
Putting lime or lemon juice on fish
Spreading jam or any other similar mixture on cakes etc.
Greasing dishes.





5.   Resealable Bags



IKEA have the best and at such a good price. 

These ones seal easily and well not like some others you can find other places.

They have two different boxes you can buy with two different sizes of bag in each so between all four sizes you are equipped for just about any eventuality.

Great to have bags that seal so well that the contents don't leak over everything else in the fridge or freezer and bags that can be reused over and over again.



USES
DIY accessories like screws.
Transporting any type of food stuffs.
I have never tried soup in one but thicker foodstuffs are fine.
Freezer use as well as fridge use.

I reckon you could tell me of a few things you don't want to have to do without either.  If so let me know in a comment.

How to Organise your DVD's

Or maybe I should say

How many Dvds can one Room have?

Now I know that some people buy Dvds watch them and then sell them on ebay.
I buy them on Amazon or ebay and we watch them but we do not generally get rid of them.
Most of them are kept, especially the boxsets and they are stored in The Office

So this was the first thing I tackled in Fred's Office.   

Firstly because he would not ever consent to sorting them.
Secondly because he would not have done it properly - ie. in an organised fashion, noting what collections were complete and which series or episodes we had watched.


We had a little notebook which the kids & I had started some years back trying to keep track of the Dvds we were watching, who was watching and where we have got to in each series etc.

You see our problem was that in a family of five who were not always together it was hard to keep track of what we could watch depending on who was there.  Then it was the combinations of the five of us and what some of us could watch after Fred had gone on to bed (the kids and I are night-birds but Fred is not).  After that it was which series and which episode so we could end up wasting a lot of time looking through to see which episodes had been watched or not.

Nice little notebook and we kept it up to date for quite some time but then the same as everything else we got lazy about it.

I had a look through the apps for my iPad and found a free collections app to try out.
BUT!!! It would only take one collection and if you wanted more collections then the paid version was required.
SO!!!
I took Dvds as my one collection and I started to put in my box sets but after filling in several of them and then trying to put in further details I found that the app just did not give me the flexibility I needed just for the more general info and definitely would not be able to go into the finer detail I would need for noting which series of each set had been watched, which series I still needed to get, which sets had not been started yet etc.

So I came to the decision that a 

Spreadsheet

 was the only way to go.

At first I was disappointed as I thought I would have preferred to have that info in an app and so be able to access it easily via the iPad anytime I was out shopping but on second thought I realised that this would not be a great advantage as I rarely buy Dvds in the shops but mostly online so the spreadsheet would be fine for checking for that.

Hence a lot of time this week was spent getting this set up and filled in and some sort of logical system and Colour Coding thought out to suit me.

Of course this is only one section of the spreadsheet as it is quite long, it is in Alphabetical order and this only shows from A - F so is about one one quarter of my list of box sets.

As you can see from the Key I am noting which

• series are still to be bought
• series are bought but still to be watched
• series are watched
• titles are started/ongoing
• titles are all bought and all watched
• titles are all bought but not started yet
• titles are not all bought and not started yet

I have also included the years of production and the initials of the members of the family who have watched them.

The only thing I think has not yet been included is exactly which episode was the last one watched in each of the incomplete Series.  That will simply be done by typing in the number of the last watched episode in the coloured cell of the correct series, and then can easily be changed each time.  Some of that info will come from the little notebook before I scrap the used pages and keep the rest of the notebook for something else and for some of them I will have to guess roughly and look at some episodes to see what I remember and don't remember.


UPDATE:
I think I have mentioned that I have the app "Things which has now been changed to "Things3" and it is even better for projects now as well as for lists so I am now thinking of putting this info into it as well.
However it did cost me money - it was the first app I ever got because my husband Fred insisted I did so as soon as he bought me my first iPad - and it is even more expensive now and so as I am always thinking of cost as well as best suiting my needs I would still recommend a spreadsheet for this.

Do you remember from my Not the Office!! Post just how bad the 2 bookcases with the Dvds were because they had so much else piled on top and in front of the Dvds and the Dvds were all mixed up?

Well if not here is a reminder

Now those two bookcases look like this

I am so pleased with them but Fred is not so pleased because some of the things I moved away have to be sorted out by him!!!

Now of course the inventory of these two bookcases has been made so much easier as well so a good few days work overall and I am very happy with the way things are going around here.

Do you have as many Dvds to keep in order?

Have you made a list of your collection in an app or spreadsheet?

5 Essential Items to make the Housework Easy PLUS a Bonus TIP

Yes I have   

                             5 things 

                                             that 

                                                      are essential 

for making the Housework as easy as possible in any room.

No matter what room, these 5 things will really make your jobs easier.

1.   STEAMER

 Since I bought my steamer I will not tackle a good cleaning without it

• windows
• floors
• tiles
• showers
• toilets
• baths

   these are just the main things I use my steamer on but not the only things.

Remember the fridge in the kitchen last month - yes I used the steamer to get the stain off the bottom of the fridge.   You are probably thinking  "Is she mad?" but if do then you haven't seen my fridge so click on over to  Is This the End of the Kitchen?

The flat attachment is great for a lot of areas but then there is also the nozzle attachment which means you can get steam into small areas and corners and along edges.

Plus most of the time you don't need to use any cleaners because the steam is such a great cleaner and what could be healthier than water and no chemicals.

Only one problem with my steamer  -  it's green, oh if only it were BLUE!

2.   VINEGAR



You only need to go on Pinterest to realise what a great item white vinegar is,  there are just so many uses for it  - but please remember you want brown vinegar
when it comes to chips (French fries)



Of course vinegar is even more powerful
                when it is combined with the next item















3.   BICARBONATE of SODA / BAKING SODA

This can be used with water to make a paste and is a great cleaning product.
Check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Or mix it with water and vinegar to have a sizzling cleaning experience.
Again check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Also have a look at a previous post where I gave a link to the 
Toilet Bombs















4.   SPRAY BOTTLE

Use the spray bottle with a mixture of water and vinegar to help clean loads of surfaces etc.
Check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

Or mix water and vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to have a stronger cleaner.
Again check it out in Pinterest and see the many suggestions there.

A spray bottle is great because you can spray a little cleaner or spray, spray, spray for a bigger amount and much more easy to control that trying to pour something out.

The bottle in the picture is from a Tea Tree Oil product which I used while in Belgium because it was not harmful to the environment but unfortunately my husband was not too keen on the smell so I don't use the product now just use the bottle.

Of course it is cheaper to use the water and vinegar than to buy a that cleaner.




5.   TOOTHBRUSH

Well this is that little tool that can get into the smaller places, corners, along ridges, and can be used for a light brushing or a heavy scrubbing.


Then combine this with any or all of the above and what can escape your cleaning attack.

















These last 4 things are kept in a plastic container with a handle that is easy to grab and take with me to each room (pity the steamer can't fit in too!).

OK I bet you thought I was forgetting about the bonus TIP I mentioned 

in the title of this post.

No way would I forget something!         Okay just don't ask Fred how true that is PLEASE

The Bonus TIP

I keep a packet of Cleaning Wipes in various places especially the

• bathroom
• ensuite
• Guest Bedroom ensuite
• Back Toilet
• Utility Room
• Kitchen

Then when I am in any of these rooms I can do a quick wipe over before I leave the room.

For example 
I go to use the bathroom so before I leave it I just check if the wash hand basin is ok and if not I grab a wipe and a give it a quick wipe over and leave.

If there is a small spill or stickiness in the utility room or kitchen I can get a wipe out of the packet quickly and deal with it rather than let it wait until later or waiting for hot water and getting a cloth out and dirty for the small job.  Just wipe and go no need to dry off.

Maybe you have the same essential materials or maybe you have something else you feel you can't manage without - if so let us know.