Category Archives: Home, Car, Yard, and Pets

Spring Cleaning – The Basics

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There are a few tasks you should do in every room, so rather than repeat them in each section, they’re listed here and will be referred to as “The Basics” in future.

Light Fixtures and Ceiling Fans: Remove all light fixtures and clean thoroughly, inside and out. If you have a ceiling fan in your kitchen, you should be able to remove each blade of the fan to clean it with soapy water or whatever the manufacturer’s instructions suggest. If not, dust thoroughly and wipe with a cloth.

Draperies, Curtains and/or Blinds: Remove all window treatments and wash or have dry cleaned according to the manufacturer’s instructions. For blinds, use your feather or furry duster to dust between the slats and a vinegar based cleaner to wash afterwards. If you have cloth blinds, they need to be vacuumed.

Windows: To get that professional look, invest in a squeegee so you can truly have a streak-free shine. Fill your bucket with whichever solution you choose (we have a homemade window cleaner in this E-book.) Use rags to wash the windows down, then squeegee the moisture off and wipe clean with newspapers. Wash windows inside and out for a thorough Spring Cleaning Shine!

Ceilings and Corners: Dust and vacuum all room corners and ceilings.

Vents: Dust and vacuum. Use a ladder if necessary to reach ceiling vents and get on your hands an knees if you have floor vents.

Art or other Wall Decorations: Dust and or clean framed pictures or other wall décor you might have hanging around your home. When cleaning framed pictures, don’t spray glass cleaner directly onto the glass surface because the liquid could seep under the frame and damage your picture. Spray the cleaner onto a rag and wipe the surface clean.

Floors: A few times a year, we recommend getting on your hands and knees and really scrubbing those floors to achieve a deep clean. This is one of those times. Be sure to save the floor for last so you can let it dry while you’re cleaning another room in your house. Don’t forget the baseboards!

Carpets and Rugs: It might be time to rent a steam cleaner if you have a lot of carpets – or a lot of stains. You can also try spot treating a stain and giving it a thorough vacuuming afterwards. Bathroom rugs should all be washed and other area rugs washed or taken outside to be beaten or shaken if they’re made from wool.

Clean it Up & Clean It Out – The Four Bin Method

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Clean Up and Clean Out – The Four Bin Method

Before you do spring cleaning, you’ve got to do Clutter Control. Take the opportunity to clean out all of the junk that’s been accumulating in your house and get rid of it!

Choosing what to get rid of and what to keep can be extremely difficult. Entire reality shows have been based on this very struggle. One school of thought is to toss anything you haven’t used in a year – within reason. Grandma’s china can stay, but her costume jewelry might be better served in a yard sale.

To do clutter control, first, find four different large containers and assign them all with four different purposes:

• Trash • Sell/Donate • Store • Put Away

Go through each room and into every drawer, cabinet, closet and cupboard to sift through what belongs and what needs to have the heave-ho. Be vigilant!

Now is the time to get rid of the kitchen utensils you can’t even name, the spaghetti sauce-stained plastic containers, the knick knacks Aunt Sally gave you in 1997, the boots you wear once a year. You don’t necessarily have to trash everything, but you’ll probably find that there are tons of items that you don’t use every day or even once a week that you can re-house.

Three Clutter Control Tips:

If it doesn’t fit, don’t save it: Don’t keep clothing that’s many sizes too small. If you’re hoping to fit into that size again someday, reward yourself then with some new outfits. Keeping those old clothes can actually be depressing and not helpful in losing those extra pounds anyway.

If it’s broken, don’t keep it: Broken items that are missing parts, the ones you said you’d fix ages ago aren’t doing you any good at all, so get rid of them!

If you have more than one – you’re done: No one needs two salad spinners, collendars, footstools – or anything. Go through your house, and where you have duplicates, toss them into the yard sale pile – pronto!

Storing Winter Clothes

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Unless you live in a tropical (or at least warm) climate, it’s a great idea to store your winter clothes at the beginning of spring to make room for your warm weather wardrobe. Psychologically, it also helps to look into closets and drawers filled with clothes you can actually wear in the season you’re in, as opposed to looking at rows of wool turtlenecks in the middle of July.

The only challenge is how to best store those beloved winter clothes. To make sure your clothes are as gorgeous coming out of storage as they were going in, follow our tips:

1. Clean Before Packing: Any residue left on your clothes can stain and set in after several months of storage, so be sure any clothing you store is thoroughly washed before storage. Cleaning the clothes also reduce the chance that insects will infect your clothes.

2. Store Safely: Plastic storage containers are subject to dampness and cardboard can attract bugs, so the best boxes for storing clothes are acid-free storage boxes. A cheaper option is to use an unused suitcase and line it with acid tissue paper.

3. Cedar Before Mothballs: Mothballs are incredibly toxic and not the best chemicals to have on or near your clothes (or your kids!) so choose cedar blocks for moth and insect repellant. Another great tip is to use dryer sheets. Your clothes will smell great, and you’ll have another bug repellent built-in.

4. Say No To Plastic: Do not store clothes in any kind of plastic bags, including dry cleaner plastic. The clothes can’t breathe and you actually create an environment that encourages mold and larvae.

5. Clean, Cool, Dark, and Dry: Your storage area must be all 4 of these in order to protect your clothing. Clean any area thoroughly before storing. Choose a place that won’t be exposed to heat, including near heating sources like furnaces. The dark prevents fading and keeps the area and clothing cool. And don’t store boxes on a basement floor or any area that’s susceptible to getting wet. Damp clothes will attract bugs and mildew.

Canning Suggestions

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JUST THE RIGHT SIZE
Get ready to preserve a bit of summer when the abundance of fresh produce flits farmers markets and roadside stands. Large canning jars are great for the big jobs, but you need tiny jars, such as those made by Bali, for saving goodies from backyard gardens. Their wide-mouth, one-piece, screw-on lids make it easy to save small batches, and the size is right for gifts from your kitchen. Pick up a carton of them as soon as they appear in stores—they get away quickly. That way, when the spirit hits to can a little something you’ll be set.

Gardening Tips

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•Most perennials stay in bloom for about three to six weeks. So, the secret to enjoying them to their fullest is to select plants with staggered bloom times for a bed full of color throughout the season.
•Carefully choose your color scheme. Red makes a flowerbed seem larger and closer, while blues will make it appear smaller and more distant. Pinks combine well with purple, and red with violet. White is a good complement for any color.
•Prepare planting beds by digging the soil to a depth of 12-18″. Work in plenty of peat moss, leaf mulch or compost to ensure good drainage. Space plants properly, as crowded plants grow less vigorously.
•Get your perennials off to a good start by fertilizing lightly when planting.
• Some easy-to-grow perennials for any area of the South include: phlox, candytuft, dianthus, daylily, rudbeckia, salvia, hosta, purple coneflower and verbena.
•Now is also a good time for harvesting a variety of vegetables. For that “homegrown” quality and taste, be sure to harvest at the best stage of maturity and carefully handle vegetables that will be eaten at any time later than the same day harvested.
•  Weeds—Pull as many invaders out of your flower and shrub beds as you can before they produce seeds (and therefore more weeds). You’ll find that they are easier to pull after a rain. If your forecast is dry, use a sprinkler the day before you plan to work in the garden. If you have a lot of weeds to pull, try using a long-handled scuffle or stirrup hoe to save your back and knees.
•  Slugs—These pests can be especially dam­aging to hosta foliage, leaving it marred for the entire growing season. To be sure the prob­lem is slugs, look for the dried slime trail on the leaves. Slugs feed at night, so you rarely see them during the day. Although effective, slug bait pellets can be poisonous to children, pets, and birds. You might find a saucer of beer or a sprinkling of fireplace ashes in the mulch around the plants just as effective, cheaper, and safer than commercial baits.
•  Water—As the weather gets hot, remember that new additions to your garden will need watering more often than established plants.
•  Lawns—This is a good time to patch warm-season lawns such as Zoysia, St. Augustine, improved Bermuda, and centipede with sod of the same type grass. You can also sow seeds of turf-type fescues or cool-season blends to thicken bare or thin areas of your lawn.
•  Shade—Protect new transplants from direct sun for about a week until the roots get
settled in their new location. A light lay­er of pine needles or hay will help, or you can construct a small shelter from a mesh plant tray sup­ported by sticks or dowels.
•  Petunias—Pinch back plants several inches to prevent long, stringy stems and to encourage repeated bloom through the summer. You may need to pinch a couple more times during the season. Fertilize with timed-release granules, such as 17-17-17, or water with liquid 20-20-20 every other week.