Carpe Diem!

What wonderful thing did you recently shirk housekeeping for?

New Towels!

If you think I'm a geek about my existing towels, I shouldn't admit that I get giddy about new ones. Only because I don't buy them often, I splurge and buy good ones and I love colour.

If you want those new towels to be beautiful for longer, treat them right! Always launder towels before using them for the first time. Here are a few great things I have learned with new towels:

• For new, coloured towels, soak and then wash them in a vinegar/ water solution to help 'set' the colours. Salt (regular table salt) also helps set colours, so if you wanted to do a second 'soak' you could do this as well with about 1/3 cup of salt. With bold, saturated or deep colours, this is particularly important;
• Deep colours may bleed for a few washes even when treated, so be careful what you wash them with for the first 10 washes!
• Fabric softeners reduce the absorption of your towels. They also reduce the 'loft' of your towels. This is because they coat the cotton. If you are starting with new towels, never use softeners on them. If you have used softeners on them in the past, wash them with a 1/2 cup of baking soda to help minimize the silicone build-up. If you use dryer sheets, these too add build-up. Use a 1/2 sheet or old sheets (ones used already) if you must use them at all;
• Always wash sets of towels together to keep them the same colour and 'fading' at the same pace;
• Use less detergent than a normal laundry load to avoid build-up... about 1/2 to 3/4 is sufficient;
• Only use bleach on white towels. A colour-safe bleach might be used on coloured towels but it won't have the same disinfecting effect. Either sunlight or regular vinegar washes will help disinfect your coloured towels;
• Wash coloured towels in warm water. Cool water keeps colours fresh but hot water gets rid of body oils, dirt or staleness;
• Using lower heat to dry towels will increase softness/ reduce shrinking. A gas dryer is more gentle on all fabrics, if you have a choice; 
• Towels do create more lint at first and it might continue for a few washes.This is normal for good towels - just clean out the lint traps and don't stress it;
• Lint from cotton towels is perfect nesting material for birds... plush and natural and biodegradable. Won't hurt baby birds. I put some out in a suet cage and let the birds take it from there. Oh - and won't they have pretty coloured nests??
• Avoid using towels on sink areas or directly on toothpastes etc; some face creams, toothpastes, and cleaner residues have lightening agents which will discolour your towels permanently. Watch for terms like 'whitening', 'brightening' or 'peroxide'.

What kind of towels do you like? Did my tips help you? 

Is Fall the New Spring?

Is fall the new spring? Do you actually clean your whole house in spring?

Spring cleaning has always been a challenge for me. I try to do it but when the weather is still cool in March and April, I can't air out the house and really get to that cleaning. As soon as the weather is nice in late April and May, I certainly don't want to be cleaning. I get 'some' of my house done by my May 1 deadline.

Photo Pixabay

From the days of being in school and starting a new school year at this time, fall has felt like a new start to me. Summer is winding down, the days are getting shorter, and the air has a bit of crisp cool to it. To me, this is a perfect time to get to those things I am too lazy to get to in spring.

Honestly here are a few things that are smarter to do in fall:

• Steam clean the carpets.Before the house is closed up for the winter months and after the open doors and dirty feet run through the house. 
• Paint. Spring can be cool and damp and who wants to be painting when the nice weather finally arrives? The over-hot and humid days of summer are not the best time to paint and neither is any day under 12C. Fall is fresh and those low-humidity days are perfect painting weather - inside, so you can take advantage of a drying breeze and outside because you are so weather-dependent
• Wash the baseboards. This is not a fun task; it's not hard it's just dreary. I will put on my headphones and listen to a book on audio and get to it. It's a perfect fall task because you are cleaning off all the summer dust from the open windows and blowing breezes before the house gets 'sealed' against the weather. 
• Wash curtains. For the same reason, the drapes collect dust all summer long. I like to wash my drapes and hang them wet in early November. Why? Because the house has less windows open to let dust in and because I usually  have the heat on so the drapes dry easily. 
• Wash blinds... yep same reasons. Then they are clean through the winter and just need the regular cleaning to keep them in great shape. 
• Attack paper clutter. When there are cool or rainy evenings or afternoons, that is the perfect time to get rid of the build-up of magazines (consider donating them to an emergency room or doctor's office), piles of flyers or junk mail, and the other assorted piles of papers.

Besides, if you are a gardener, this is the perfect time of year to put in trees and shrubs! They have a couple of temperate months to settle into the ground before the winter comes, the earth is warm, and there is none of the full burning sun of June/July.

My version of LAZY means being smart about when I do my big cleaning jobs. My goal is to have the easiest time of it, have it stay clean for the most number of months, and get it right the first time. There is nothing I hate more than having to do something twice or having something half-done!

How about you? Do you clean in fall? How do you get your 'spring cleaning' done? 

Housekeeping Chuckle (3)

@The Lazy Housekeeper

Housekeeping Chuckle (2)

@The Lazy Housekeeper

A Housekeeping Chuckle (1)

The Lazy Housekeeper

A Little Sass

What is life without a little sass?

Well, boring! That's what it would be! So I'm going to spend a week sharing a little fun each day. I really hope you enjoy it, go with it, share it, and come up with your own sass to get though the dreary bits of your day!

This one will launch us... it's not by me.. .it's by purple pixie:

Toothbrush Detox

Welcome to my germaphobic moment!

I will confess to being a bit strange about some things in life and my toothbrush is definitely one of them. I can count on one hand how many times I have shared a toothbrush with my spouse. I rough-traveled 5 months through Africa - camping, sleeping outside,or in abandoned huts - and my toothbrush head never touched a single surface. I am utterly icked out about the head touching anything and will juggle if I needed to ensure that my brush stays very clean.

Here's the thing: you rub a paste of plaque, saliva, and food remnants around your mouth and then do it again with the same implement day after day with barely a flush of water in between. Did I make you say 'YUK'?


There are 3 easy ways to detox your toothbrush:

1. Keep your toothbrush a good distance from the toilet (about 5 feet). A flush has microscopic mist which travels nearby to any objects lying in wait for the bacteria. Please don't make me describe it further - there are tons of articles which can substantiate it. 
2. Keep your toothbrush head from being in contact with other surfaces - especially damp ones where bacteria multiply very quickly. Allow it to dry 'head-up'. 
3. Disinfect it every few days. This is very easy to do ... a high-alcohol mouthwash will do it in about 1 minute. Just make sure all the bristles are submerged, shake it off, and let it dry. Boiling water also works - though I'd avoid the microwave because these plastics are not often safe for microwave-use. 

 That's it... fast and simple. Lazy and easy!

Key to Success

I don't know about you, but I currently have a dish of keys that I have no idea what they are for. This is not awful other than the fact that I really should know better because I had a great system. Keys add up... shed, relatives' homes, safe, multiple doors to the garage you may not use etc.

The easiest and best way to organize keys is to just colour code them. I used to do this with one dot of nail polish on each side of the key. I kept the colours unique so I recognized the keys easily. This is easy, can be done is a few minutes (just give adequate drying time to each side) and is simple to remove if you need to.

You can also colour-code by dipping the key-heads in kid's paints, using the snap-on coloured rings available, or with bits of colourful tape. I'm sticking to nailpolish.

If you have keys you don't often use make a little 'key legend' on card stock. Put a dot of the same nail polish on the card and label what it's for beside it. Put your key legend in one of those plastic name badge holders they use at conferences. Store your infrequently used keys on a keyring with the color-coded key legend in your utility drawer. Done! Never having to search for keys again is priceless!

And... take this opportunity to lighten your load but cutting down how many keys you carry. I carry ONE key now - how's that for simplifying life!

Microwave for Disinfecting

Image ~ Pixabay

Using the microwave to get water to the boiling point will disinfect a number of common-use things. Of course you can't go bat-crap-crazy and microwave anything with metal, anything that is not approved for microwave use, or anything that leaches chemicals (such as many plastics).

Here are a couple of things to put into the microwave for 30 seconds to one minute almost daily:

1. Your dish sponge. Or a dish cloth if you use one. Anything that stays wet breeds bacteria... and then we use it and spread those bacteria around. The microwave will kill them fast and easily: you need to soak your sponge or dish rag in water and put it (almost dripping wet) into the microwave and set it for about 1 minute. The more wet the better. Let it sit a while before you pick it up or you can burn yourself.  Being 'super smart-lazy', I like to do this at night... and leave the sponge to air-dry completely before the next use.... helps keep it even cleaner.
2. Your facecloths are the same as a sponge, and need the same disinfecting treatment. Unless you use a fresh facecloth each time, you are rubbing on yesterday's dirt and germs. Your microwave will help stop it now. Soak it well in water and put it in for about 1 minute (it depends on the microwave for how long it takes)

Don't believe me? Here's the same sponge info from an RN. The truth is that I haven't been doing this with my dish sponge as often as I should. I should do my dish sponge every 3rd day. (So I was right: creating this blog is helping me as much as it's helping you!)

Hey - while you're at it, give yourself a Lazy treat: soak a clean facecloth in lemon-water (or lavender water - remind me to tell you how to make this), and microwave it for 30-45 seconds. Let cool to 'comfortably hot' and then lie back and put it on your face for 3-5 minutes. Breathe deeply. You deserve it!