Clean house?

On Easter, I discovered that my grandma literally lives right next to *the* Thelma Meyer.  That's right.  The one who supposedly wrote this book:  Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS and has a huge line of supposedly Eco conscious products. Of course, my grandma only lives next to her when they aren't snow-birding to Arizona...  After a bit of googling, I discovered that one of her daughters is the main influence behind the company, but apparently she wanted to pimp out her mother.  Even though my grandma doesn't appear all too pleased about the 'tales from the neighborhood' she claims are at the end of the book, she bought my mom a copy and got Mrs. Meyer to sign it...  Mom didn't read it, but now I'm thinking I should steal it from her just to see what it says.  The whole thing makes me laugh really hard.

In other news, I'm considering this as the next baby blanket I make... for my brother and sister-in-law from the Other Mother.  (A nice one, not some creepy Coraline style Other Mother)

This old house...

Since we moved into this house, it has been clear that the bathroom has undergone a lot of bad renovation.  On the surface, it looked like a tiny 1950s 'everything pink' bathroom, but the wall cupboards looked more like something done in the 80s or 90s.  Truthfully, it only seemed big enough for half a person.
The changes started when I tried to replace the toilet seat.  It was wooden, really old, and had lost its sealant.  So basically it smelled like urine all the time in there.  The screws holding it to the toilet were some kind of brass or copper and had totally crusted up and once I got Tim in there to try to help me loosen them, the toilet ended up cracked.  Tim's education in plumbing went pretty quickly there for a while.
Once the plumbing skills were confident enough, he replaced the pink sink that had been leaking and had a really tiny spout with a small white pedestal.  It made a lot more room for, like, walking into the bathroom.  We talked about doing some more stuff but nothing changed for a time until we watched an episode of this old house where they were removing wallpaper.  The bathroom had this pink wallpaper/tile/too high chair rail thing going... and I came home to most of the wallpaper removed one day.  And underneath was like a dark tan.
One of the things that has bothered me about the bathroom from the beginning was the medicine cabinet.  It was huge, old, and the shelves were all wonky.  On one side, the mirror wouldn't latch right.  At one point I lost a very full bottle of essential oil because it rolled down into the sink.  I'm pretty sure thats why we have a tiny chip on one corner of the new sink.  Anyways, yesterday I decided that I'd try to level the shelves by rehanging them, but I quickly discovered they wouldn't come out because they were additionally attached by something coming through the back.
Now, the reason we'd never tried to replace this before was because, first, we hadn't felt like spending much money and, second, there was a strip of vanity lights going across the top.  Ever since I got Tim Wiring Simplified: Based on the 2008 National Electrical Code for Xmas last year, he had learned an awful lot about wiring (whether he actually learned it from the book, I don't know) and had even put in a bunch of stuff in the basement.  This was the moment which decided that the medicine cabinet would finally come down.  We discovered that the only things that attached it to the wall were 4 giant flathead screws, 1 drywall-ish screw, and a thick layer of caulk or something where it attached to the tiles around it.  The latter was bearing most of the weight and doing the best job of holding it up.  It was good we weren't too attached to the tiles because it ripped a bunch off with it.
As you could have guessed with an old bathroom, there was totally a hole in the wall behind this medicine cabinet for a recessed medicine cabinet, but there was a problem... the size of the hole was 20"w x 16" h.  Most modern recessed medicine cabinets completely flip that dimension.  They are taller rather than wider.  There was some talk of getting one and then moving the hinges but then the shelves are the wrong way and stuff, so we decided to build one.  Also, we installed a new cute little light where the electric came through.  We also replaced the overhead light in the bathroom with basically the same fixture (but newer) because it was always losing its connection with the lightbulbs, but it turns out that even the new ones do that so we basically just made it look slightly better.
I just thought I'd blog this so that I can post some pictures later of the finished product (hopefully soon).

Dishwashers

A little while back, I decided to stop buying dishwasher rinse aid and start using white vinegar. I didn't really make sure that all of the rinse aid had gone out of the dispenser and I ended up with a red scummy substance that looked a little like rust. Despite my attempts at overflowing the dispenser to remove it, there was more and more of the stuff. Also, the overflowing attempts had left of streak of rust colored stain down the inside of the dishwasher door!

I discovered that the best way to clean out this thing was to either take apart the door (p.i.t.a.) or use a syringe. I happened to have a syringe from when Tim had his wisdom teeth out, but it couldn't reach all of the liquid inside... so I stole the little red flow director tube from a can of compressed air and fitted it on the end. Voila! I rinsed it out twice with water and twice with vinegar. I filled it with vinegar again and no more red junk.

Unfortunately, the stain and some others were still there. So next I had to figure out the secret behind dishwasher cleaner. It is made almost entirely of citric acid. There's really no secret to that because almost all products have to list their active ingredient for safety reasons. A bit of internet research led me to this little tidbit: 3 unsweetened lemonade drink mix packets in the main cup is enough citric acid to do the same job. It HAS to be lemon and unsweetened or you'll just make more mess.

So now I had a clean dishwasher, but the vinegar was doing just about the same job as the previous rinse aid: not that great. Now, we had been using some sort of Palmolive eco liquid that was doing an excellent job of cleaning, but we have a 'portable' dishwasher and they don't have the best cleaning power in the world. After searching around for more info, I discovered that nearly every dishwasher repairman with an internet presence believes that liquid detergents leave some sort of residue every time and recommends powder instead.... I also discovered that if you want more rinse aid power, you should get a product with built in rinse aid. This has led us to switch to Cascade complete powder. So far I would say it is worth the money, but it is really too bad that it is the only powder with built in rinse aid that I can find.