- Joined
- Feb 17, 2017
DO NOT search small grout brush and spend ~<$5 on the best damn grout brush on earth. The head is so thick it can't fit anywhere at all! I love this thing
Household tips and tricks! - Are you having trouble getting the wine stains out of your carpet? Do you clean your cookware with something extraordinary? Come share!
- Thread starter Miss Misery
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DO NOT search small grout brush and spend ~<$5 on the best damn grout brush on earth. The head is so thick it can't fit anywhere at all! I love this thing
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2022
Soliciting some advice: I have used Formby's Lemon Oil Treatment for nearly my entire life-- literally, since I was a kid, and polishing the furniture was one of my chores. It's been manufactured since at least the early 1970s, and now it's been discontinued. I have a lot of wood furniture, and the wood furniture tends to get a lot of sunlight (which makes the wood thirsty). The furniture in question is not antique in the sense that it's nice or has a hefty monetary value, but it's old.
All that said, does anyone have a furniture polish/care recommendation? I started reading online but found a huge array of options, and a lot of the blogs and such that make recommendations are linking sponsored content rather than the genuinely best products. It doesn't have to be all-natural.
So that I'm not asking for suggestions without giving any in return:
All that said, does anyone have a furniture polish/care recommendation? I started reading online but found a huge array of options, and a lot of the blogs and such that make recommendations are linking sponsored content rather than the genuinely best products. It doesn't have to be all-natural.
So that I'm not asking for suggestions without giving any in return:
- I use Method Hardwood Floor Cleaner with a dry Swiffer pad for my wood floors. Works beautifully and smells lovely.
- For a one-cat household, I bought dog poop pages for litter box-emptying purposes. It's a lot easier than trying to save plastic grocery bags (I prefer my own reusable bags for that, anyway) that you have to check for holes, and the bag size makes a lot more sense for daily scoops. I can also lie to myself and say that they're actually biodegradable, as the box claims.
- For kitchen drain odors, I use vinegar and baking soda. Bonus of watching a science experiment unfold in your drain.
- Industrial- and retail-use paper towels are great. They're the ultra-durable ones that you'd never want to use for your hands. For cleaning, you can't beat them. No matter how much water or cleaning solution you get on them, they won't disintegrate, and you can get an actual scrub going. Because it doesn't take a big wad of towels to get the job done, they end up lasting forever.
- If you're a renter, document every single mark and scuff when you move in. It might feel petty, but never trust that the owner or property management company won't try to charge you for repainting the entire place when you leave. You might not be a petty bitch, but you can be sure that a property management company is pettier than an entire cheerleading squad of middle school girls.
- Your washing machine doesn't require as much detergent as the bottle would have you believe. I once got stuck in an airport next to a washing machine repair guy, who talked my ear off and provided a ton of advice. The biggest piece was that using all that detergent doesn't actually help your clothes get any cleaner, but it will gunk up your machine.
- On a related note, if some sort of specialist is willing to talk your ear off, listen. They have the best advice, and it's all based in experience.
- I use empty clear plastic pill bottles to sort screws and nails by size. You can find what you're looking for at a glance, and you just grab up the relevant pill container and carry to whatever you're working on.
- In fact, empty pill bottles are pretty reusable for all sorts of stuff, including craft supplies.
- I use a fishing tackle box as my toolbox. It won't work for power tools, obviously, but it's a great size for the household stuff. The compartments are great for stowing all the odds and ends and keeping them organized.
- The natural life cycle of clothing is: wear to work, wear at home, wear for sleep, use to clean the house, car, and furniture.
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2020
I get fire ants in my lawn. I read about mixing instant grits with sugar and putting the mixture over the ant holes. The sugar attracts them, the grits make them explode. It worked quite well, actually.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
I just put some Borax and sugar syrup around my patio today because I'm pretty sure 75% of Earth's ant population lives there. It's the tiny ones that like sweets so I'm hoping to thin the herd a bit. I use 1 part Borax to 3 parts sugar then enough water to dissolve it.
If I need to target ants that like oil-based foods, I mix in a little peanut butter.
Just be careful to put it where (non insect) critters can't get it, though they'd probably just get a little indigestion from it.
If I need to target ants that like oil-based foods, I mix in a little peanut butter.
Just be careful to put it where (non insect) critters can't get it, though they'd probably just get a little indigestion from it.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
When you need to poison ants and there are other beasties around, what you do is you get a clean, empty jar, punch a small hole in the lid, and put your antbait in there. Ants will be able to get in and out, but everything else will need to either smash or chew their way into the jar and most beasties generally give up because it's too hard.
In theory, anyway. I hear that American raccoons have opposable thumbs, which frankly sounds rather frightening.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
No opposable thumbs but they use both hands and may as well have thumbs.
I used to use things like bottles and jars to keep them out but they always found a way in, so I gave up and now I just put tiny amounts (like maybe a teaspoon) of the borax syrup in multiple places, so that if something gets into it, maybe they won't get much and certainly not all that I put around.
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
They're hella intelligent, too. Way more than you might give them credit for if you don't interact with them on a regular basis.
Here's an example: You know those monkeys in the Bahamas that know they can steal booze from humans to get drunk? Raccoons in some college towns know where the frat parties are and know that if they lurk around the perimeter, drunk college students will feed them pizza.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2018
Probably not a surprised to anybody that has kids but those baby wipes are great at cleaning up general household messes and don't lint up nearly as bad as some of the more commercially available wet wipes (Clorox, Lysol, etc) to the point that I'll probably still be buying them for this purpose once Baby Sword no longer needs them.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
I spent forty minutes writing down the details of the situation I'm in with my housemate, but ultimately it all boils down to this:
His dog is pissing everywhere, has been since we moved in here. The dog doesn't piss inside when the housemate is home and I'm awake to let him out; the dog is sneaky, and he's deliberately marking walls, cupboards, furniture, my rats' cage, and I discovered yesterday, my bookcases. I've lost about ten volumes, which were either historical or reference books for study. One particular book will cost me a minimum of $130 to replace.
No, the housemate won't do jack shit. He won't clean up, he won't train the dog. This went on at our last place, it's going on in our current one, and the dog is getting worse and worse. Moving out is not an option as I can barely afford rent right now, and there's a massive housing shortage and a shitton of people who do have jobs but are currently living in tents anyway.
After months of begging him to do it, I finally broke down and ordered a uv torch and an enzyme breaking/deterrent spray last night. The spray is fucking expensive and now I'm behind on bills. I'm planing on attacking everything stationary with the spray, and moving all but vital furniture and items into the spare room after they've been cleansed. I'm spamming links to get the dog desexed cheaply or for free to my housemate, but my housemate is ignoring them. After I get paid, I'll buy another deterrent spray from a different company and alternate them so the dog doesn't get used to them. The dog is weird about food, where he eats, what he eats, and when he eats are all impossible to to vary without him refusing to eat at all.
I'm also planning to get puppy pads, a spray encouraging urination, and setting up a little space in the bathroom where he can piss.
Can anyone think of anything else? Besides homicide or animal cruelty?
His dog is pissing everywhere, has been since we moved in here. The dog doesn't piss inside when the housemate is home and I'm awake to let him out; the dog is sneaky, and he's deliberately marking walls, cupboards, furniture, my rats' cage, and I discovered yesterday, my bookcases. I've lost about ten volumes, which were either historical or reference books for study. One particular book will cost me a minimum of $130 to replace.
No, the housemate won't do jack shit. He won't clean up, he won't train the dog. This went on at our last place, it's going on in our current one, and the dog is getting worse and worse. Moving out is not an option as I can barely afford rent right now, and there's a massive housing shortage and a shitton of people who do have jobs but are currently living in tents anyway.
After months of begging him to do it, I finally broke down and ordered a uv torch and an enzyme breaking/deterrent spray last night. The spray is fucking expensive and now I'm behind on bills. I'm planing on attacking everything stationary with the spray, and moving all but vital furniture and items into the spare room after they've been cleansed. I'm spamming links to get the dog desexed cheaply or for free to my housemate, but my housemate is ignoring them. After I get paid, I'll buy another deterrent spray from a different company and alternate them so the dog doesn't get used to them. The dog is weird about food, where he eats, what he eats, and when he eats are all impossible to to vary without him refusing to eat at all.
I'm also planning to get puppy pads, a spray encouraging urination, and setting up a little space in the bathroom where he can piss.
Can anyone think of anything else? Besides homicide or animal cruelty?
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2018
This is government psyop and is a total lie meant to waste the valuable time of new parents.
Yes, piss all over your house mate's things and then blame the dog.
I'm only half kidding.
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2015
swedish dishcloths and cloth mop pads have revolutionized my life because they're perfect for my cheap, lazy, hippie ass: use, throw in the wash with everything else, don't worry about going to the store to buy more things, consoom less product, save money, repeat. it's fucking brilliant. on that note i also highly recommend grove collaborative's catalogue for solid cleaning supplies that won't make you feel like you're huffing fumes (unless you're into that, i won't judge 
).
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- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
To follow on from my last post:
My housemate and the dog are still alive. You do not need to summon the police or emergency services. So long as they do not leave their room and stay very, very quiet, they may live and stay reasonably physically intact.
I received the UV torch today. It doesn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped, but it works well enough. My dining table and chairs have been hit a lot worse than I realise. Some areas where I knew the dog marks regularly didn't show up at all, but apparently only old urine shows up under UV. The material that some surfaces are made of definitely makes a difference. Metal, tile, and plastic don't show. Paint and carpet generally do.
The dog has hit both of my bookcases, as it turns out. And a collection that I've sent the last decade and a half building, has been destroyed. The eighties, when I was a kid, was the heyday of a cartoon strip series called Footrot Flats. Huge nostalgia thing for me, and while most of the collected editions are still easily available, my acquisition has been very slow due to my very restricted finances and the rising cost of the books amongst fellow nostalgia collectors. I had all books up to number twenty four. It'll cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars that I don't have to replace them.
And they've all been pissed on. A couple of spots on the carpet lit up so I pulled out the books and checked them. All of them- all of them- had dried or liquid urine covering them. They're destroyed. I was grudgingly willing to eat the cost of my other books, but now I'm honestly seriously considering adding a dog skin rug to the decor.
I'm going to move all books that won't fit in my bedroom to plastic storage containers into our storage space, along with any furniture that isn't in constant use. My bedroom and the spare room are going to have the doors shut at all times, which is a fucking bitch because the airflow in this unit is shit. The housemate will be replacing my books if he wants to fucking live. The carpet will be professionally cleaned, I will check all accessible surfaces for marking daily, as well as spraying fresh deterrent daily.
My housemate is pretty much oblivious to anything, so he can step in a pool of urine and not even notice. The dog's urine is comparatively scentless to both me and multiple people. On top of that I keep domestic rats, and if you don't stay on top of cage cleaning, the smell of their urine will drown out pretty much anything.
My recommendation for all is that if you have any animals, especially male ones that haven't been desexed, get a UV torch and check everywhere they can reach on a regular basis, even if there's no visible marks or wet patches.
EDIT: my entire accumulation of theatre programs, which I have been accumulating since I was eight, are all destroyed. Since I have significant problems with memory loss, these aren't just souvenirs , they are combination diaries/photo albums.
It's rug time.
My housemate and the dog are still alive. You do not need to summon the police or emergency services. So long as they do not leave their room and stay very, very quiet, they may live and stay reasonably physically intact.
I received the UV torch today. It doesn't work nearly as well as I'd hoped, but it works well enough. My dining table and chairs have been hit a lot worse than I realise. Some areas where I knew the dog marks regularly didn't show up at all, but apparently only old urine shows up under UV. The material that some surfaces are made of definitely makes a difference. Metal, tile, and plastic don't show. Paint and carpet generally do.
The dog has hit both of my bookcases, as it turns out. And a collection that I've sent the last decade and a half building, has been destroyed. The eighties, when I was a kid, was the heyday of a cartoon strip series called Footrot Flats. Huge nostalgia thing for me, and while most of the collected editions are still easily available, my acquisition has been very slow due to my very restricted finances and the rising cost of the books amongst fellow nostalgia collectors. I had all books up to number twenty four. It'll cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars that I don't have to replace them.
And they've all been pissed on. A couple of spots on the carpet lit up so I pulled out the books and checked them. All of them- all of them- had dried or liquid urine covering them. They're destroyed. I was grudgingly willing to eat the cost of my other books, but now I'm honestly seriously considering adding a dog skin rug to the decor.
I'm going to move all books that won't fit in my bedroom to plastic storage containers into our storage space, along with any furniture that isn't in constant use. My bedroom and the spare room are going to have the doors shut at all times, which is a fucking bitch because the airflow in this unit is shit. The housemate will be replacing my books if he wants to fucking live. The carpet will be professionally cleaned, I will check all accessible surfaces for marking daily, as well as spraying fresh deterrent daily.
My housemate is pretty much oblivious to anything, so he can step in a pool of urine and not even notice. The dog's urine is comparatively scentless to both me and multiple people. On top of that I keep domestic rats, and if you don't stay on top of cage cleaning, the smell of their urine will drown out pretty much anything.
My recommendation for all is that if you have any animals, especially male ones that haven't been desexed, get a UV torch and check everywhere they can reach on a regular basis, even if there's no visible marks or wet patches.
EDIT: my entire accumulation of theatre programs, which I have been accumulating since I was eight, are all destroyed. Since I have significant problems with memory loss, these aren't just souvenirs , they are combination diaries/photo albums.
It's rug time.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2019
I know you're pressed for cash, but if you can get it, see if you can get one of those compressed air pet deterrents and put it by your things that aren't in tubs now:
Also maybe dog diapers or one of those fake-grass patches. Unfortunately, it being a male dog means they have an instinct to mark, so it might not just be a "I need to pee" thing, but a matter of claiming his territory.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2018
I've used one of those.
Pretty cool.
You could also try to get one of these:
I know it says "outdoor", but there's no reason why you can't place this in your room as it works off either AAs or wall outlet.
Plus no expensive air can to replace.
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2015
and if the roommate eventually does get off his ass and neuters his dog, it's really fucking important he does it before the dog reaches adulthood, because if you neuter a male animal when he's fully grown it won't do much about marking since it's a solidified behaviour at that point.
i hate it when guys refuse to get their dogs fixed either out of laziness or the vague chance they might use them for breeding purposes. you're really just making life harder than it has to be for both the dog and yourself, especially since intact animals are more likely to develop reproductive organ cancer than fixed ones.
- Joined
- May 23, 2023
Dumb advice: if you live in a household that takes guests and also preps meals for them, maybe get yourself some camping cookware and stash it somewhere. You know, in the event all pots in the kitchen are full, and you don't wanna dump two liters of soup/coffee/whatever just to boil water for some pasta.
Illumithotty
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2022
A nice selection of camping cutlery is nice if you work. I have a set of stainless steel tableware - plate, fork and knife and spoon, plus a short mug - that was about ten dollars. Even if a lot of my lunch options are just 'leftover stew,' I have options other than trying to scrounge up paper plates or cups. It's nice to have options and has helped me consider different dishes that can survive being brought in and then nuked back to edibility; obviously in seperate containers, but every plastic or rubber plate I've tried has been a gross mess after just a couple months. The benefit of steel is that it's all really compact, so I can have my relatively luxurious meals and then rinse it off and leave it in a freezer bag for a thorough cleaning at home.
I used to have a full set of cutlery made out of Lexan plastic, but apparently all those people went out of business. I haven't turned into a mutant yet from using that set, but having reuseable utensils is just good sense. Maybe not even from cost anymore, but just knowing what you can eat without the stupid plastic knife bending or the spoon melting. Maybe a set of reuseable utensils isn't cost effective because the disposeable set saves you .03 cents a year, but knowing that you won't snap a knife off while cutting into leftover roast or have to take half bites because disposable forks aren't long enough for noodles is worth a little initial outlay.
I used to have a full set of cutlery made out of Lexan plastic, but apparently all those people went out of business. I haven't turned into a mutant yet from using that set, but having reuseable utensils is just good sense. Maybe not even from cost anymore, but just knowing what you can eat without the stupid plastic knife bending or the spoon melting. Maybe a set of reuseable utensils isn't cost effective because the disposeable set saves you .03 cents a year, but knowing that you won't snap a knife off while cutting into leftover roast or have to take half bites because disposable forks aren't long enough for noodles is worth a little initial outlay.
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2021
How my husband fixed our floor care and clutter issues (or I suck at housekeeping and have various health issues and limitations):
Shark robot vacuum with grid cleaning and self emptying feature
We had gotten our first Roomba years ago for a different house and while we liked them, they were buggy and one or another was constantly under repair. Our latest house has a mix of hardwood and carpet, some tile and I bought a Miele Complete C3 dog and cat cannister vac several years ago because our shitty Hoover uprights bothered my back and were loud and shitty to boot. But using it meant picking stuff up and abusing my back and knee so I just kind of gave up and only wished for clean floors and a floor fairy to come in the night to fix it.
However we've (the royal we as I don't lift a finger) been using it for a couple of months and let me tell you our floors have never been this clean. It really is a mood lifter and has helped motivate me to start cleaning other bits as I wait impatiently for knee surgery. The clutter is put away and stays there.
Also we had gotten a Braava floor sweeper/mopper when we first moved in and he's been employing it to mop our kitchen.
Reason to get the Shark over a comparable Roomba: price
Bonus: the Shark is for the main floor and my man has returned two of the elderly Roombas to service the basement living areas
I have to say the Miele is, to use a very old saying, the Cadillac of vacuums but the Shark goes under the beds and it cleans every fucking day. And there is no way I would/could vacuum this oversized house every bloody day.
Added bonus, maybe: my brother's wife is allergic to cats but was able to stay in our previous home because the Roombas ran every day picking up all the cat grit and fur that 2 shorthair cats can spread.
Shark robot vacuum with grid cleaning and self emptying feature
We had gotten our first Roomba years ago for a different house and while we liked them, they were buggy and one or another was constantly under repair. Our latest house has a mix of hardwood and carpet, some tile and I bought a Miele Complete C3 dog and cat cannister vac several years ago because our shitty Hoover uprights bothered my back and were loud and shitty to boot. But using it meant picking stuff up and abusing my back and knee so I just kind of gave up and only wished for clean floors and a floor fairy to come in the night to fix it.
However we've (the royal we as I don't lift a finger) been using it for a couple of months and let me tell you our floors have never been this clean. It really is a mood lifter and has helped motivate me to start cleaning other bits as I wait impatiently for knee surgery. The clutter is put away and stays there.
Also we had gotten a Braava floor sweeper/mopper when we first moved in and he's been employing it to mop our kitchen.
Reason to get the Shark over a comparable Roomba: price
Bonus: the Shark is for the main floor and my man has returned two of the elderly Roombas to service the basement living areas
I have to say the Miele is, to use a very old saying, the Cadillac of vacuums but the Shark goes under the beds and it cleans every fucking day. And there is no way I would/could vacuum this oversized house every bloody day.
Added bonus, maybe: my brother's wife is allergic to cats but was able to stay in our previous home because the Roombas ran every day picking up all the cat grit and fur that 2 shorthair cats can spread.
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
UNSCENTED FEBREZE IS MY FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE WORLD!
That is all. Go back to your lives, citizens.
That is all. Go back to your lives, citizens.