When the days get longer and warmer, and summer approaches, it’s time to start shedding the layers that you’ve hidden in over winter and pack them away until needed again. This is a good time, however, to remember the old rhyme about winter woollies and when to wear them:
Cast not a clout
‘Til May be out.
Button to chin
‘Til May is in.
Assuming, then, that May is out and that you are ready to don your summer finery, you will need to pack away the warm winter clothes so they will be fresh and ready to wear next winter. One word of advice, however: you know how changeable the British climate is, so make sure that you have at least one warm garment ready to hand if things turn nippy.
Wash your winter clothes before storing them. Even if they don’t seem dirty, they will have picked up skin flakes, sweat and even particles of smoke from the air. This hidden dirt will encourage bacteria, which can make clothing deteriorate (at worst) or smell vile (at best) after a summer of storage. Dry clean garments if you have to, but handwashing in warm water, or even machine washing using the wool cycle will be adequate. Dry garments thoroughly – damp can provide a perfect breeding ground for mildew.
Mildew and moths are your two biggest enemies when storing winter garments. Polar fleece doesn’t seem to be too affected by these problems, which is another bonus, but natural fibres (wool, angora, cashmere, etc) do. Clothes moths seem to be gourmets who hunt down the finest fabrics to dine on rather than cheapies.
Moths, however, are deterred by certain smells. Camphor moth balls are a time-honoured method of keeping moths from eating your clothes, but the smell of camphor is pretty off-putting to humans as well as moths, and the smell can really linger in fibres. I, for one, don’t really fancy my best alpaca pullovers reeking of camphor, especially if I am planning on wearing perfume – the clash would give me a headache. Much nicer things can be used to keep the little wretches away, including a spray of perfume. It is better, though, to try something more neutral. Cedarwood, lavender and citrus are all pretty good. Make sure you clean out the place you are going to store the clothes in very thoroughly, as you will need to make sure that any moth eggs are destroyed. Vacuum and dust, but if you would like to make a proper clean, ask your regular domestic cleaning London lady to clean it for you.
The best way to put the nice-smelling moth deterrents into your clothes is to make them into little bags (you can buy lavender bags at many craft stalls and fairs) and layer these with the garments.
Some people swear by plastic covering as a means of keeping moths at bay. This may be all very well for deterring moths, but the disadvantage is that plastic provides a nice little home for mildew if the slightest trace of damp is about, whether in the clothes, the atmosphere or in the wardrobe. Air needs to circulate around the garments to allow them to dry, and this also helps prevent mustiness. Wooden or cardboard boxes work well, as they are moth-tight but not airtight. Line them with paper to prevent splinters or other snags; this paper can be impregnated with essential oil of cedarwood for moth protection.
Coats, of course, should be hung up. This does, of course, mean that layering lavender bags, etc. can’t be done. Instead, try putting lavender bags in the pockets, or even making an old-fashioned pomander out of an orange to share the hanger with the coat.
Need carpet cleaning Palmers End? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Many people who are interested in living more naturally and sustainably – and those who want to save a penny or two where they can in the current economic climate – have heard about the new so-called eco-bulbs. These lightbulbs are supposed to be a “bright idea” that will reduce your energy bills and reduce your carbon footprint. Many environmental lobbyists have pushed for them to be made more widespread or even compulsory. (On the other side of the world in New Zealand, the government seriously discussed making these bulbs compulsory and outlawing your regular incandescent bulbs. The resulting debate was nearly as incandescent as the old type of bulb.)
But are these bulbs such good news? Are they really a simple answer to our energy problems? Or do these lights have a dark side?
First of all, let’s take a look at what these eco-bulbs are and why they are supposed to be such a great idea. Eco-bulbs are also known as CFLs or compact fluorescent bulbs. They look like a cross between a DNA double helix (in some designs) and a neon light stuck into a standard light fitting. They use less electricity than other bulbs, and they have a longer life. The reasoning is simple: if you use less electricity to get the same amount of light, you’ll save on power, so if your power comes from a carbon-emitting source such as a coal-fired power plant, using these bulbs will reduce your carbon footprint (and save you quite a few bob. These bulbs may be pricier than regular bulbs but they last longer, so cost you less in the long run). What’s more, because you’re not replacing bulbs every two or three months, you aren’t putting as much unrecyclable glass and metal – both of which are non-renewable resources – into the waste system.
So far, so good. On the surface of things, eco-bulbs have a lot going for them. OK, the light they put out is a colder tone, very much like those large fluorescent lights beloved of offices, shops and schools, but you can get used to this.
However, these CFL eco-bulbs have a couple of problems that make them not quite so good after all. The first problem is this: if you are really serious about saving energy and have been for quite a while, you have probably trained yourself to turn the lights out when you leave the room. This is a good habit, but it dramatically shortens the life of one of these CFLs – up to 85% shorter, according to some sources. This means that if you only have the light on for a short time (e.g. in the toilet), you may as well have an ordinary incandescent bulb: they’ll last the same amount of time, and the incandescent bulb costs less.
Another problem that some people have noticed with these CFLs in comparison to the ordinary incandescent bulb relates to the incandescent bulb’s so-called inefficiency. The proponents of CFLs state, completely accurately, that not all of the energy going into an incandescent bulb is turned into light; some of it goes into heat energy. CFLs put out much less heat. And this is the problem. That heat energy from the incandescent bulb wasn’t being wasted – it went to heat the room the light was in, and was sometimes all you needed to take the chilly edge off the air – or to quote the Goon Show’s Henry Crun “Come in, come in and warm yourself by this roaring candle.” With this heat source removed, people have to switch on heaters or raise the central heating a few degrees to compensate – so the CFLs aren’t really energy savers at all.
But the real problem with CFLs is in disposal. CFLs contain mercury, which is a very toxic heavy metal that is difficult to dispose of safely. These CFLs are very hard to dispose off and, unlike the old incandescent, you can’t just chuck them in the bin. You are supposed to carefully take them into your nearest waste disposal site and hand them over for an expert to dispose of properly. However, your local tip supervisor may not be such an expert – tales have been told of people carefully handing old CFLs over only to have the “expert” casually toss the bulb into the waste heap. Smash. Mercury everywhere where it can leach into the atmosphere and water.
What’s more is that you can break CFLs before their life is over, depositing mercury into your carpet at ground level where small children can crawl and get into it – as if the glass wasn’t enough of a hazard if someone drops a lightbulb, clips one with a ladder while painting the ceiling or smashes one with a pillow during an over-enthusiastic pillow-fight. You can’t even vacuum the mercury up, even professional carpet cleaning London will not help, as it will turn to minute particles and be exhaled from the vacuum cleaner and still be around.
Call me cynical, but is it a coincidence that the Roman god Mercury – after whom this poison is named – was the god of merchants, trade and commerce?
Need carpet cleaning Holland Park? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Curls tend to go in and out of fashion. If you have them, you usually hate them. But if you don’t have them, you probably long for them. And both sets of people turn to hot things (straighteners and curling tongs) or chemical methods to undo what they were born with.
If you have curls, then learning how to live with them and make the most of them can take out a world of bother and angst from your life. The advice in this article has been adapted (by a curly-haired writer) from the excellent book Curly Girl: More Than Just Hair…It’s an Attitude by hairdresser Lorraine Massey and writer Deborah Chiel. For more tips, styles and encouragement, read this book! It may sound cheesy, but it changed my life and my attitude towards my hair.
First of all, curly girls (and, I suppose, curly guys. My brothers have curly hair like mine; although guys do have the options of crew cuts and dreadlocks) should get rid of all shampoo, brushes and combs. Especially the shampoo: curly hair is drier than flat hair and shampoo really damages it. Would you wash a mohair or cashmere garment in harsh detergent? Neither should you do this for your hair, which is just as much a delicate and natural fibre. Like for many carpets made from natural fibre, carpet cleaning London for which steam is used is not suitable. For washing your hair, use plain water and conditioner. Lots of conditioner. Conditioner doesn’t just wash your hair; it also acts as a moisturizer. Forget the advice on the label that tells you to rinse all conditioner out thoroughly. You can leave it in. Your curly hair will absorb the oils, etc. in the conditioner very readily.
To wash your hair in your morning shower, first let the water play over your scalp and hair, washing down your back like a hot rainfall. Then rub in conditioner on your scalp to wash it – just a little bit. Massage your scalp to loosen dead skin and dirt. Then rinse. After that, slather your hair with more conditioner, making sure that every hair is coated. Your hair should feel like wet seaweed at this stage. Run your fingers through your hair, raking out tangles and fallen hairs. You will get a mat of old hair in your hands – don’t panic. Everyone sheds a few hundred or so hairs every day. Leave the conditioner in while you do the rest of what you do in the shower.
After your shower, lightly wrap your hair in a towel and squeeze it a few times to remove excess moisture. Unlike their straight-haired sisters, curly girls should not dry their hair before styling and brushing. Curly hair should be set when wet and it shouldn’t be brushed, either! Use your fingers to style it, raking, scrunching and coiling. Use gel – this will keep your curls in place for most of the day. However, you can get away without gel every once in a while, especially if you’re having a casual “it doesn’t’ matter how I look” day. Scrunch and play with your hair and style it however you like – Curly Girl: More Than Just Hair… It’s an Attitude has some great ideas.
To dry your hair once you have styled it, don’t use hot hairdryers. Air-drying is best, but you can use a hairdryer on a cools setting with a diffuser.
If you have no time for a shower, then just dampen it with water from a mister (or in the sink), scrunch it with some gel and let it dry.
African hair looks great with traditional braiding such as cornrows (this looks good on guys as well as girls). These styles have their own maintenance techniques and they work well.
But never, ever straighten your hair.
Need carpet cleaning North Finchley? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Margaret (not her real name) was in a panic. Her husband was overseas on business and her drain was blocked. Normally, he was the one to take care of this sort of domestic emergency, but he wasn’t there to do it. What was Margaret to do? Late one evening, I got the phone from Margaret asking what on earth she was to do about this blocked drain.
Well, Margaret, here’s what to do if you’re in that predicament again. I trust that you haven’t been doing anything silly like pouring hot fat down the drain, or poking cotton buds down the plughole. Hot fat congeals and becomes solid quite quickly, and while it looks as though cotton buds would just drop straight down, before the downpipe gets to the sewers, it has an S-bend that stops the smells from the sewer rising and stinking out your kitchen – and this will trap long hard objects. Don’t call out the plumber or the handyman London just yet, Margaret. You know they can take ages to come, and you can probably do this one yourself.
First of all, just in case you have been silly enough to pour hot fat down the drain, pour boiling water down the plughole and melt the fat enough to move it through the S-bend and down into the drains. And never pour fat down the sink again.
No luck? Are you left with a sink full of hot water that is taking forever to drain away? The next step is to use a plunger. This will use suction and pressure to shift that blockage and break it up enough so that it swirls down the gurgler into the sewers. Plungers, large and small, can be bought at any hardware store. They are very simple to use. Just fit the business end of the plunger over the hole so that it covers it (plus some of the surrounding sink) completely. Then keep the rim of the rubber hemisphere firmly in contact with the porcelain as you push the handle down. Push hard – the plunger can take it. This will force air down into the pipe. Then let it bounce back. This sucks the air back again using the vacuum principle. You’ll create quite a lot of turbulence down there, and you can probably hear some gurgling noises going on. With any luck, the blockage will get slurped backwards, allowing the water to flow down, and the blockage can often get broken up enough to move it along.
You don’t have plunger, Margaret? Well, have you got a tennis ball you can sacrifice and a craft knife? Good. Cut that tennis ball in half and place it over the plug hole. Use the heel of your hand to press it down, and push as hard as you can.
Still no luck and you’ve been using the plunger for the last five minutes and your sink is now full of grey scummy water? Right – go and have a cup of tea while you wait for the water to s-l-o-w-l-y trickle away, then try this old remedy. Pour about a cup full of baking soda down the drain – use a funnel if you need to. Now boil that kettle again. Once it’s boiled, pour one cup of vinegar and one cup of boiling water down the drain. The vinegar will react with the baking soda, and the reaction can shift the blockage. The hot water is to speed the reaction up and to dissolve the baking soda so the two liquids can permeate the blockage a bit before they react. While I haven’t tried this yet, I suppose you could also try boiling the vinegar so it’s more concentrated.
Still no luck? No – you’ve got one more thing to try before you get on the phone to the plumber. Get a bucket and a pipe wrench and open the cupboard below the sink, or otherwise locate the bend in the pipe below the sink. You should find a bendy bit that screws onto straight up-and-down pipes at the top and at the bottom. First of all, put the bucket underneath the pipe coming down from the sink ready to catch all the water, vinegar, baking soda and so forth. Now unscrew the bottom end of the bendy bit, using the pipe wrench. After that, unscrew the top end. Stand clear – here comes the water into your bucket below.
Right, now you have to unblock whatever it is that’s stuck in that bendy bit. Use rubber gloves, as gunk can take some time to build up in the bend, which means it’s been sitting there for some time and is probably black and slimy. Sometimes the blockage is obvious immediately, such as when some idiot has been dropping cotton buds or toothpicks down the drain (it happens!). Pull out the offending muck and throw it away properly. Sometimes, it’s not so obvious and is trapped further into the bendy bit. In this case, you’ll need to poke at it as best you can with bits of wire, bent coat hangers, knitting needles, a bottle brush you’re willing to sacrifice, or even a proper plumber’s “snake” if you have one. If anything’s trapped in there, it should come out with a bit of patience and poking around.
Once you have removed the wretched bit of gunk that was blocking the drain, screw the pipes back on again, but don’t tighten them too much. But do make sure that they’re tight enough to stop water dripping out all over your cupboards when you run more water down the sink.
Oh – the bendy bit is under the house? Or you couldn’t find anything in the bend? Hmmm…. maybe you’d better call out the plumber after all, Margaret.
Need carpet cleaning New Cross Gate? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
If you’re considering starting a garden, then congratulations. You have already taken a big step towards cutting your food costs, making sure that you have healthy fresh food and making sure that you get out into the fresh air and having some healthy exercise. Growing flowers is also a matter for congratulations – the sight and scent of fresh flowers may not feed your body, but it will feed your soul, which is just as important – and fresh flowers from your own garden are a much more thoughtful gift for a hostess or a loved one than a shop-bought bouquet.
If you listen to the people at the garden shops, you might think that growing a garden is an expensive business. You have to buy all sorts of this and that – sprays, fertilizer, snail bait, seeds, growth hormones for plants, even compost starter or special compost bins – according to these people who want to sell you things. While it is certainly true that you will need some outlay in terms of tools, seeds and possibly seedlings.
But with a few clever tricks, you can cut down on quite a few of your gardening costs, both for growing flowers and for growing vegetables.
* Practicing crop rotation means that any pests or diseases that may affect your crops do not have the time to build up. This will reduce any outlay in sprays and other treatments to eliminate the pests. In general, don’t plant crops from the same genus (or family) in the same plot for two successive plantings. For example, if you have planted cauliflowers (which are brassicas) in one patch, don’t follow it straight away with another brassica, such as turnips, cabbages or broccoli.
* Companion planting is another way to reduce the need for sprays, as your crops will protect each other.
* Compost is the best fertilizer, especially as it’s organic. You can find bits and pieces to go in your compost heap all over the place. For good compost, have a mixture of things, not just lawn clippings. Keep your eyes open in your community – can you take a neighbour’s fallen leaves away, or remove the food scraps after a church or club luncheon? Horse owners are often only too grateful if you take manure away – and other animals such as guinea pigs, rabbits and even caged birds provide good manure, too, so if you know a pet owner, offer to take away the old litter. The owner of a rabbit or guinea pig will often be only too happy to swap old straw and manure for edible weeds (dandelions, clover, grass) and other bits you don’t need from your garden, such as the outer leaves of broccoli and cauliflower, carrot tops and so forth. Also keep an eye out in public places – beaches are often a good source of seaweed, and if you don’t mind being thought eccentric and you aren’t squeamish, road kill and pigeon droppings off statues can also go into the mix.
* Potatoes are very easy to grow and produce a good yield for a lowish amount of input. You can use seed potatoes to start them off, but don’t forget that you can cut these in half and grow two plants for one seed, as long as both halves have a growing “eye”. You can also use potatoes that have gone green.
* Old three-litre and two-litre plastic bottles – if they’re clear – can be used as mini bell cloches to protect lettuces and the like over window. Cut the nozzle off.
* Save seeds, either from one season to the next, or from shop-bought vegetables. I seem to get volunteer pumpkins growing from seed in the unlikeliest places all through my garden, and these seem to do better than the deliberately planted pumpkins. Tomatoes, if your area is warm enough , also grow well from seed.
If you decide to grow your own vegetables, you will not only need to do a regular domestic cleaning London, but also cleaning the garden regularly.
Need carpet cleaning Muswell Hill? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
The majority of natural domestic cleaning London products and methods are very old-fashioned. Baking soda. Vinegar. Soap, water and elbow grease. Essential oils. These methods were temporarily pushed to one side from about the 1950s onwards as advertisers sold consumers the story that our homes should be 100% germ free and you needed Brand X to get everything gleaming and healthy, tackling the hidden dirt and germs… with ostracism and disease being the penalty for not using Brand X. Now, people who want to reduce environmental toxins and live more sustainably – or more frugally – are rediscovering the cleaning methods our grandmothers used and stayed perfectly healthy (or maybe our great-grandmothers – this writer’s grandmother was of the pre-Silent Spring generation when everyone chucked DDT around the place and put all sorts of vile chemicals into the garden).
But with the move towards toxin-free environmentally friendly ways to clean and care for our houses, researchers have been investigating new ways to keep clean and healthy without pouring chemicals around the place with glib abandon. Some of these more sustainable ways of cleaning and living naturally are things that our grandmothers never even dreamed of.
Here’s a selection of high-tech (or exotic) natural products:
* Disinfectant essential oils now go beyond good old lavender and thyme and other European herbs. Essential oils that also do a good job of killing germs and smelling great come from much further afield – tea tree oil and eucalyptus oil originate from Down Under, while Neem oil, which acts as an organic pest control, an antiseptic and even as a medicine.
* Microfibre cleaning cloths use (as the name suggests) tiny cloth fibres that get into microscopic cracks in all surfaces to scoop out all dirt and gunge, with only water as an additional product. Enjo is the best known manufacturer of these products, and they have a large range of cleaning tools, including dish brushes, mops, mitts and cloths.
* Stainless steel absorbs unpleasant odours (or somehow neutralises stinks). A stainless steel disk can be used in toilets, in shoes or in refrigerators (not the same disk, obviously – a separate one for each place) to deal with pongs.
* Laundry balls do the same job as soap – making water wetter by changing the molecular structure and thus reducing the surface tension – but use ions rather than chemicals. These also save water as well as reducing the amount of chemicals in your environment, as you don’t need to rinse clothes twice to make sure all the soap residue is out.
* Solar power is being improved continually and becoming more and more available. While these don’t reduce immediate toxins in the environment, they are certainly more sustainable ways of producing energy than others. Both solar panels for generating electricity and solar water heaters are becoming widely used, and designs are improving.
* Women can use reusable items for that time of the month. The Mooncup is one popular option that reduces the amount of bleached and scented this and that applied to sensitive tissues, and also reduces waste.
* Ionizers put out negative ions, which counteract the amount of positive ions put out by electronic and electrical equipment. Positive ions and EMFs can cause sleep disruption, headaches and grumpiness, and may also have an effect on the body’s cells, even to the point of triggering tumour development, although the jury’s still out on this one. Moving water also puts out negative ions, and miniature waterfalls to be used as desk ornaments are now available.
* Paints have come a long way from the lead-based ones of the past, with many lines of low-toxin eco-paints or even organic paints. Wallpaper has also improved vastly in modern times (by way of contrast, Napoleon’s chambers had arsenic-impregnated wallpaper – arsenic produced a very popular shade of green) and you can buy wallpaper that is free of solvents, chlorine bleach, fungicide and all the rest of the muck they put in standard wallpaper, even if they don’t use arsenic.
One thing to remember when shopping around for modern high-tech ways of living naturally or for sustainable solutions for our homes is to watch out for modern jargon used to describe old-fashioned products. A “solar-powered exterior clothes dehydrator” sounds high-tech but is just a fancy way of describing a washing line.
Need carpet cleaning Mortlake? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Having your very own lady’s maid seems like the ultimate luxury for many modern women that is now totally out of reach. The closest we’ll ever get to living out this fantasy is at a health and beauty spa where you get groomed and pampered within an inch of your life.
Not that a modern woman really wants or needs someone to help her tight-lace corsets to the extremes favoured by Victorian women or, for that matter, help in getting a crinoline on. And most modern women would be rather put off by some of the beauty treatments suggested by Mrs Beeton in the section of her book directed to the lady’s maid. Hair pomade made from lard, castor oil and scent, or (even worse) whale oil plus some less alarming ingredients? A “useful mash for chapped hands” made from sulphuric acid, rosewater and almond oil (to be used diluted, however…)? Dried bullock’s blood for spot-cleaning grease spots from cottons or woollens? No thank you!
However, some of the advice for the lady’s maid or your domestic cleaning London lady is quite useful…
* To clean a hairbrush made from natural bristle, dissolve a piece of washing soda in warm water. Remove the hair from the brush using the comb, then dip the bristles into the water, making sure the back and handle of the brush stay as dry as possible. Repeat a few times, then rinse in cold water. Shake out, then dry the back and handle (but not the bristles) with a towel and dry “in the sun or near the fire”. Don’t use soap on natural bristle.
* To clean feathers, “cover the feathers with a paste made of pipe clay and water, rubbing them one way only. When quite dry, shake off all the powder and curl with a knife.” Pipe clay is powdered gypsum, known as terra alba.
* To clean silk ribbons, mix half a pint of gin, half a pound of honey, half a pound of soft soap and half a pint of water. Lay the ribbon flat and use the mixture to scrub any dirt off. Rinse three times and do not wring. Drip dry for a few minutes, dab with a towel, then iron with a hot iron (yes, Mrs B. actually says to iron silk with a hot iron).
* To “revive black lace”, either dip the lace into tea left to brew overnight, or into beer. After this, “clap it for a quarter of an hour” then pin to a towel in whatever shape the lace is supposed to be, cover it with another towel and iron with a cool iron.
* To wash silk (this is from before the days of dry-cleaning and should still be good today), lay the silk garment flat, then rub it evenly with a warm, soapy flannel until the dirt has gone. Then rinse with a sponge and cold water. Dry in the shade. Black and navy blue silk should be sponged with gin or whisky when dry, then re-dried.
The idea of all that liquor – beer, gin and whisky – being so freely available to the lady’s maid (and, presumably to My Lady) gives a rather different impression of Victorian womanhood than usual!
Need carpet cleaning Liverpool Street? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Maintaining the original sparkle and shine of the silverware has never been easy. Those of you who use silverware often would vouch for this fact. A lot of women also have a whole collection of silverware that they like to use for special family dinners, parties etc. But then again the problem remains the same, whether you use it once a while or you use it on a regular basis, with silverware it’s difficult to keep them shining.
The market is flooded with so many products including the bleach powders and dish washing powders etc but then they hardly come up to your expectations. Most of the silverware collect this haze on its surfaces with time and it seems almost next to impossible task to get rid of that collected haze. A lot of dish washing cleansers that are advertised as, specialized products for cleaning the silverware have harsh domestic cleaning London chemicals in it. Though you might be happy for a while with the results of such dish washing powders, in the long run they cause more harm than good to your precious silverware. These harsh dish washing detergents will gradually rob your silverware of the natural silver shine and make them look all the more duller. Some of the dishwasher detergents formulated especially for cleaning the silverware, actually have a high content of bleach in it. If you use these types of detergents for once in month cleaning of your silverware it’s still ok but if you use the silverware on daily basis and need to clean them frequently then avoid using the strong dishwasher detergents.
The products advertised as the silverware washing detergents are again very expensive when compared to the ordinary dishwasher detergents and cleansers. There are a variety of products now launched as the specialized cleansers for cleaning silverware. Some of the manufacturers claim the products to be environmental friendly while others claim the products to be free of bleach but then finding a dishwasher detergent that would suit your requirement is a trial and error method. One can’t really rely on the marketing gimmicks by various vendors as most of the products that promise to give your silverwares the sparkling shine end up only bleaching your silverware but not really cleaning it.
The best way to maintain your silverware would be to go in for a combination of strong dishwasher detergents and the cleansers with milder detergents. Make it a rule to use mild detergents only for the daily cleaning and also ensure that you wipe your silverware dry with a rag or a cloth before you put them on the rack, this will help you to avoid getting those water stains on your silverware. Use the strong detergents sparingly only for stubborn grease or stains. You can create a routine of cleaning the silverwares once in fifteen days or may be month with the detergents that has bleach in it. But then again choose your products carefully and opt for the detergents that have lesser bleach in it and are environment friendly.
Need carpet cleaning Monument? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
We all hoard junk. I have had a poke through my cupboards and have come up with some items that I just can’t bear to throw out and probably ought to. But why was I holding onto them in the first place? What was I thinking?
I’m probably not alone in this hoarding habit. We all do it – it’s human nature, especially if you’re thrifty or have experienced poverty – or even if you don’t like the throwaway disposable culture that has led to so much pollution. See how many of the items below ring a bell with you.
1. An old, frayed alpaca wool jersey that’s full of unrepairable holes. I keep meaning to unravel it and roll the wool into balls for re-use. After all, it’s lovely soft grey alpaca wool and it would cost a packet to buy it at the shop… The jersey has now been sitting up there for two years. Verdict: either get on with it and unravel the jersey, or else bite the bullet and take it down to the local rag trader/charity so they can recycle it how they see fit (some charities and volunteer organisations do unravel old jerseys and knit blankets for foreign aid organisations).
2. A pair of blue curtains with pink and white flowers that don’t fit any of the windows in my house and I don’t particularly like the look of. These were given to me and it seems a real waste to just throw them away. Besides, my mother was on the lookout for second-hand curtains for the house my parents have just built and I’m keeping them for her. Verdict: give them away or give them to your mother this weekend.
3. Some articles and magazines aimed at the parents of babies – and the younger of my children is now eight years old. They seemed really helpful at the time, but I haven’t looked at them for ages and can hardly remember what’s in them. Verdict: scan over them to see if I can reuse the material for another article Anyclean can use, then chuck the articles and the magazines in the recycling bin.
4. A fountain pen with no ink cartridges left. Cartridges are expensive if all you want is plain black or blue, and I always seem to get ink all over my fingers when I use the pen. However, the pen’s a very good one and looks stylish. Verdict: look out for some fancy ink cartridges or ink (you can refill a fountain pen cartridge with bottled ink by using a syringe, if you have one handy) and learn to write more neatly. Then use the pen with the fancy ink for signing cheques like a high-flying corporate.
5. A cornflower blue sweatshirt that is too small for my husband and that I used to wear but now have rejected as being unflattering. It does cover a lot up when doing dirty jobs like domestic cleaning London or painting the house – and I’ve got the paint on it to prove it. Keep it for this purpose, but don’t keep any other old clothes with the same excuse. One cover-up’s enough.
6. Empty yoghurt pottles, the one-litre variety, with lids. They’re very handy for freezing things and storing leftovers. I got into the habit of keeping them when a friend of mine with five children was hospitalised with cancer and all of us were rallying around the family with meals. The pottles could fit food in easily, I could freeze things in them without any trouble, and because they were “free gifts with the purchase of a litre of yoghurt”, I didn’t have to worry about getting them back from my friend later, like I would with a “good” dish. However, my friend’s now out of hospital and has even got a good crop of hair back, but I’m still saving large yoghurt pottles, which are starting to pile up. Verdict: keep some for freezing things, but get rid of the rest – preferably by sending them to the plastic recycling depot or by giving them to a charity (women’s refuge? food bank?) with something in them.
7. Ziplock bags from the bulk-bin department at my local supermarket. They’re great for packed lunches. Sandwiches can be made up in bulk and frozen ready to go, along with a muffin – they thaw out without any bother, unless they contain lettuce or something else that will go soggy. If you’re not fussy, this won’t matter. The crumbs can be shaken out and the bag can be washed and re-used. Vegetables and fruits can also be block frozen for later use (e.g. peas, beans, stir-fry mixes, berryfruit and chopped up rhubarb).
Need carpet cleaning Mill Hill? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
Even if you live in an alternative lifestyle house that’s off the grid, you probably have electrical appliances in the house (alternative off-the-grid types tend to use solar/wind/hydro electricity to power up their appliances). Here are a few tips for getting the most out of your electrical appliances (and electricity in general) in terms of efficiency, cost-cutting and safety.
Got a radiant electric heater (the sort with the resistors that get red-hot)? The metal reflector at the back behind the “bars” is a crucial part of the heater – it has the job of reflecting all the heat produced by the elements into the room. It’s important, then to keep it clean. If you’ve stored the heater away over the warmer months, it’s a good idea to ask your regular domestic cleaning London lady to dust it off before using it for the first time. The grille at the front of the heater can usually be unscrewed. This will give you the chance to get rid of any gunk that’s gathered – this will also reduce the fire risk, too, as if the dust is thick enough, it will burn. Rust spots will make the heater less efficient, so the reflector may need a good polish to get the most out of it. Rust spots can be gently rubbed off with steel wool, or you can use a “rust eater” to remove this (you can buy this from an automotive shop). Even if the radiator isn’t dusty, giving it a good polish now and then will certainly help you get the most out of your heater.
To save a few pennies, try not to pull out the “big guns” for heating at the first hint of chillier weather. Your body can and will adapt to cooler temperatures, given time. Instead of turning up thermostats and hauling out heaters, try adding extra layers of clothing instead. As one person once put it “the jersey is already paid for, but the electricity isn’t.” However, if there are infants or invalids in the home, you should not let the room temperature where they sleep and/or spend most of their day drop below 15°C (other rooms in the house can).
Always check electric blankets before putting them on the bed, as they are a common cause of house fires and can be lethal. Store them away over the warmer months (they should be folded lengthways then hung up like skirts or trousers over a coat hanger rather than folded up like sheets and blankets and tucked into a cupboard. Always make sure that your electric blanket is fixed securely on the bed and that it is smooth and wrinkle-free. It will need daily checking to make sure it’s properly – and safely – flat.
If you have electrical garden appliances (edge-trimmers, hedge-clippers or lawnmowers), always use a circuit breaker or residual current device (RCD). This will stop the current getting to the wire if you accidentally sever the power cable while using the device, which is horribly easy to do. This saves you having a severed live wire suddenly dropping down near you, with the risk of it electrocuting you. Then get the cable properly repaired AFTER unplugging it. Splicing it together with insulation tape may be quite risky, so get a pro to do it.
Everyone has to change blown fuses from time to time. To save the hassle of pulling out every single fuse breaker to find the blown one (and having to reset clocks, etc. all over the house,) label each one clearly – use sticky labels, a permanent marker or one of those print-out labelling machines. If you don’t know which is which (e.g. you’ve just moved into the house), turn all the lights on in the house and begin the process of pull-it-out-and-see-what-dies so you can label things. Don’t forget porch lights and ovens.
Fluorescent bulbs last longer than the usual lightbulb, and if they are on for a long time, they consume less wattage per hour (this is why they’re they lightbulb of choice in many offices and commercial buildings). However, they use a good wallop of charge to start up, so don’t turn them on and off, on and off. This also shortens their life, making them less effective.
Need carpet cleaning Mile End? Call 020 8593 1317 for the best quote on your list. Fully guaranteed carpet cleaners
