Backsliding on Chaos

The month of July has brought a boom to our summer business at the coast - so much so that I feel that I have been backsliding on my quest of turning chaos into order in my house.  We've been spending four nights at the beach each week and 3 nights at home.  I barely have time to catch up on laundry and paying bills when I'm at home.   My poor kitchen is suffering from loneliness and depression.  She's depressed that I brought a bushel of peaches home and plunked them on the counter and haven't yet found the time to prepare them for the freezer. She's depressed that I made a quick trip to the grocery store this morning for pantry stocking items and didn't have time to put them up before leaving to go sit with my grandchildren while their mom is working.  She's not happy that I haven't swept and mopped her floors this morning after hubby tromping in and out from a rainy wet, and then freshly mowed lawn.  She's lonely because I've not been spending enough time with her.  She does have my rooster collection on the shelves to keep her company but they're the silent type and not very good companions.  But we'll work it out somehow.

My quiet little eclectic rooster collection

I did stumble across a cleaning tip last night that I thought was worth sharing.  My guest bathroom doesn't get a lot of use since we're not home enough to have guests so I've noticed lately that the sink is discolored right at the drain - nowhere else.  I don't know if it's sediment or minerals in the water, but it looked dirty.  I've used cleaners on it to no avail, so I thought I would tackle it with something stronger.  As I looked in under my sink in my lonely kitchen, the first thing I saw was a box of dishwasher detergent.  I remembered that I had luck using the gel kind on some outdoor furniture one time, so I thought that using the powder kind in my sink might work.   I shut the drain plug, sprinkled some in and turned on the tap just enough to make a paste.  I left it for a few minutes and then scrubbed it off.  My sink looked like new!  I'm not sure why it worked, but it did such a great job, I'm going to try it on other things in the future - not just in the dishwasher. 

Speaking of dishwashers,  I recently posted on how to organize your utensils in your dishwasher so they would be easier to sort when it's time to take them out and put them back in the utensil drawers.   Now it's time to clean the dishwasher itself.   I borrowed this tip from a website called Tipnut.

Cleaning the inside of dishwashers isn’t high on To-Do lists since they do a great job cleaning themselves while they wash dishes. Sometimes though there may be a few rust stains, detergent or mineral buildup or even an off-smell inside your dishwasher that you want to get rid of. Here are few quick & easy tips for cleaning things up.

• Using citric acid to clean dishwashers is a popular trick, here’s how you do it: Fill the soap cup with 2 tablespoons of powdered citric acid (some even recommend just filling the soap dispenser with powdered Orange Tang since it contains citric acid) and run the dishwasher through a full cycle. This is especially good for removing rust spots inside the dishwasher (you may have to do more than one treatment).
• To remove buildup of minerals or stains, run a full cycle with vinegar, here’s how you do it: Start the dishwasher and once it fills up with hot water, open the dishwasher and pour in a cup or two of regular household vinegar. Let the dishwasher finish its cycle. Another method is to set a bowl filled with 3 cups of vinegar on the bottom rack of an empty dishwasher. Let the dishwasher run for a full cycle.
• Borax or Baking Soda Freshener: After dishes are done for the night and the dishwasher is dry, sprinkle a layer of Borax or baking soda on the bottom of the dishwasher. Close it and let it sit overnight. The next day take a damp sponge and scrub the powder into the inside walls and door of the dishwasher. Remove most of the powder then run a full cycle on empty to remove all traces of the powder. Another method to freshen up the dishwasher is to toss in a cup of baking soda to an empty dishwasher then run it on the rinse cycle.

Smelly Dishwasher Tips:

If your dishwasher smells, you could have food trapped in the bottom filter. After running a load of dishes, remove the bottom rack of the dishwasher and look for any crud trapped in the filter on the bottom. If there’s food trapped in the holes, you’ll need to remove it and clean it. Also look around the gasket (particularly at the bottom where the door and dishwasher meet), you could have an accumulation of gunk in there that needs to be cleaned.

This is going to be my project for this evening when I get home.  I'm sure my kitchen will be a lot happier.  I may even get a start on preparing my peaches for the freezer. 

The key is not to tackle too many projects at the same time.  If you can't obligate yourself to a couple of hours of organizing, just tackle a small fifteen minute project.  You'll be surprised at how those fifteen minute segments can achieve your goal of going from chaotic to orderly - one step at a time.