cleaning up a greasy mess: how to get grease out of clothes

So a few weeks ago the starter went out in our car, and my husband decided he'd fix it.  He spent a good 4 hours on that project, and at one point his arms were c o v e r e d in grease up to his elbows.  This is what his hands looked like after he'd wiped them off:

I guess he didn't think when he started that he'd get so messy because he didn't change out of his nice jeans and before he knew it, they were also covered in grease.  I don't know if you can tell in the picture below (my husband is the one on the left...the one with the greasiest pants), but they are pretty bad.  When I pointed it out, he was totally bummed and thought he'd have to throw them out for sure.  Luckily for him (and his pants), my mother taught me the secret of getting grease out of anything....

 

 The secret is dishwashing liquid.  Now that you think about it, it makes perfect sense, right?  No matter what brand, dishwashing liquids all boast 'grease-cutting power', right?  So now that you know what to use to get the grease out of clothes, here's how I do it...

1. Get your supplies - a bottle of dishwashing liquid (I use plain ol' Dawn), and a scrub brush if you have one.  You're going to want to do this over the sink or tub, since it will get plenty wet and soapy. (Also, I never know about the dyes in the soap, BUT better safe than sorry....if there is grease in a white shirt, I try to use soap with little color, so I don't exchange one stain for another).

2. Get the greasy area wet, and squeeze dishwashing liquid onto the wet spot generously.  Scrub with the scrub brush (on something like jeans) or rub the clothes against themselves.  You're going to want to use some elbow grease (as if you needed more). :)

3. Keep adding soap and water, and scrub, scrub, scrub.  Once you think the grease is gone, rinse the suds off (it's nearly impossible to rinse all the soap out - let the washing machine do that).

4. When you're satisfied that you've done your best, throw the clothes into the wash.  Make sure you check them again before you throw em in the dryer.  If there is still grease left, it will be easier to get it out before it is set-in with all that heat.

Best wishes to you and here's to saving clothes from greasy blunders and oily misfortunes!

well....

So my cousin has 2 little boys ages 4 and 7 months.  She just went back to work, and I've been watching her kids while she figures out a permanent solution for them.  They are both as sweet as sugar, but the 4-year-old has got enough personality to go around.

The other day he was eating his highly nutritious lunch of mac n cheese and carrots, and when I thought he was all done, he asked for more mac n cheese.  My most responsible answer was, "I'll give you more carrots..."  to which he replied in his sassiest voice, "Well I'm not hungry!"  He sure told me.  humph. ;)

it outta be a four-letter word

You know the one I'm talking about.  You cringe when you hear it.  You hate to think about it and all that it means.  Housework.

Ya, so maybe that was a little high on drama.  And who wants more drama?  Not I, so lets pretend I didn't say that.  Why don't I just delete it, you ask?  Well because if I deleted that paragraph, then this paragraph wouldn't make any sense.  Neither would the title of my post.  Besides, I do what I want. :)

So at my house, I call housework "my chores".  I didn't think that was weird until someone laughed at it, and I gave it another thought.  I guess "chores" does sound like something I was assigned to do, that I don't want to do, by someone with authority to give me assignments, and I have to get it done before I can do anything I want.  Huh...now that I put it that way, chores it is.  I am smart!

Something I noticed a while back is that my chores weren't getting equal attention.  I would vacuum the living room a few times a week, because I really don't mind vacuuming, but I would never make it to cleaning the kitchen floor - which - (hang on, I just threw up in my mouth a little) I H.A.T.E.  And then by the time the week was over I had awesomely clean carpet (quite a feat with 2 pomeranians and a 6-month-old), and a dusty, dirty kitchen floor, among other things.  It's just an example.  What I really mean to say is that I was spending time doing obvious chores over and over, and missing some of the other ones.

So...I made myself a schedule.  I was inspired by my best friend's mom, whose philosophy on keeping a clean house is to become OCD.  Hah!  Just kidding, it's not funny.  She is totally OCD, and makes herself a schedule for the exact OPPOSITE reason that I do.  She makes a schedule to keep herself from over cleaning.  I do it to keep things hygienic around here.  But I see her point.  Let's get on with it.

Here is the schedule I made for myself.  This is not my final draft, which I'm not sure I will ever get to, since I always seem to be changing things up to make it work. 

Chore Schedule

Monday:  

Laundry - washing/drying

Monthly Rotation **more on this below

Tuesday:

Laundry - folding/ironing

Vacuum

Wednesday:

Bathrooms

Give Jackson a bath

Thursday:

Kitchen Floor

Laundry Room Floor

Friday:

Dusting

Grocery Shopping

Vacuum

Saturday:

Weeding/Yard Work

Give Jackson a bath

**Monthly Rotations are chores that need done only monthly.  I rotate by 1st Mon, 2nd Mon, etc.

Monthly Rotation Schedule:

1st Week:

Bathe/Brush Dogs

2nd Week:

Clean Laundry Room

3rd Week:

Cut Jeff's hair

4th Week:

Filing/Organizing

And then of course there are the daily items - dishes, straightening up, making my bed and everything else that comes up in a day.  The nice thing is that I feel like I can handle doing a few chores every day, and I know that everything is going to get taken care of.  It makes me feel more in control and gives me more time to do whatever I want because I don't feel like I have to clean the whole house every day.  I can be okay with doing just a little, then moving on to my lists and lists of projects.

For example, if on Monday I see that the bathroom is especially messy, I can tell myself to let it go, because it's on the schedule for Wednesday.  All I have to worry about on Monday is laundry.  I mean, I'm not saying that if my dog harfs on the laundry room floor that I'm not going to clean it up unless it's a Thursday, or that my son isn't going to get a bath if he's especially stinky on a Monday.  Buuut, if he's a little messier than usual on a Tuesday night, I might give myself some time off and wait a day, know what I mean?

Anyway, I don't know if something like this will work for you, but give it a whirl.  Oh - and a hint:  If I miss something one day, I never make up for it the next day.  It will get taken care of the next time around.  See what you think

Laundry Shmaundry

When I lived in Brazil, I remember doing my laundry several times by. hand. and thinking, "When I get back to the U.S., I'll never complain about doing laundry with a washer and dryer again."  Then I got back, and I despite my declaration to never complain again.  I do complain and hate...a lot.  Laundry is by far my least favorite chore.  I don't know what it is.  In my mind it's not a hard chore, and once it's done, I feel like my own mother saying to myself, "see it wasn't that bad".  But I still dread it every week.

I have tried everything I can think of to make it a more painless chore.  I tried doing 1 load per day.  Again, you wouldn't think it would be that hard.  But I felt like I was doing laundry all. the. time.  So after a year, I quit that routine (and don't let me fool you into thinking I was perfect at it either...when I say I did a load a day, I use those terms loosely.  Very loosely.)

The next thing I tried was getting it done in two days a week - I would do a couple loads on Monday and a couple loads on Thursday.  Looks good on paper, right?  Wrong.  This was even worse.  I only lasted a few weeks.  I felt even more like I was doing laundry all the time.

You know what I think it is?  It's the folding.  That's what gets me every time.  I am okay putting the dirty clothes in the washer, then changing them to the dryer.  Heck I'm even good at getting them out of the dryer.  And that's where I experience some kind of freakish paralysis.  The clean, warm laundry goes onto my bed and that's where it stays until every last load is done.  And sometimes it stays there until late at night when I'm too tired to fold it before I fall into my bed at night, so I throw the laundry on the floor.  Then when I wake up I put it back on my bed.  This would sometimes go on for days (how embarrassing....seriously I'm blushing a little).  Now that I think of it, I should kiss my husband for never complaining about it.  He's so good to me.

Anyway, it's time I announced to the world that I have solved my laundry woes.  Or, I've found a way to deal with them. I mean, it's not like I've gotten rid of laundry all together, which would be the only true solution.  So here it is...the secret of laundry.  I call it the Band-Aid method.  Get it done as fast as you can, and then don't think about it.  I still do my laundry 2 days a week, BUT (thanks to my sweet sissy, who taught me her tricks) now I do it on Monday and Tuesday.  And ya, the {clean} laundry still sits for a day before I fold it all at once, but by Tuesday afternoon, my laundry is d-o-n-e for the week and I don't have to think about it again for 5 -count em FIVE- days.

I might even be able to do laundry for the rest of my life.  Heck maybe I'll even learn to fold each load as it comes out of the dryer.  Maybe.

Hestia - goddess of hearth & home

I love that Hestia isn't the goddess of housekeeping or chores or something like that.  She is the goddess of hearth & home.  That sounds so much warmer and so much more like the kind of goddess I want to be.  Since becoming the goddess of my own hearth and home, I have learned quite a few things.  Number one: that an orderly, clean home with a good spirit inside doesn't happen by accident.  For some reason I didn't get that growing up.  Our house was always clean and orderly, and heck, I don't know what goes on in a kid's (or teenager's) mind to make em think that kind of stuff happens magically, but I did.  Luckily, I've wised up, and now I realize that if the dishes are done, it's because someone did them (probably more than once that day), and that throw pillows don't stay fluffed - they don't even stay in the right place, and if your house is anything like mine, they're put back and fluffed more than once a day.  Here's to Hestia and all of us who work so hard to make our homes retreats and havens for our families.