BuckStopping

My son moved out of the house a few months ago, and after he got all his stuff out, we slowly have started claiming back our territory. His room had the only carpet in the house, and before it was his room, it was his sister's room, so it's had two teenagers living in it over the last 12 years, and the carpet was evidence of that! I was able to get  most of the spots out with my beloved Tuff Stuff , but there was one spot - an ugly, old, some-kind-of-red-dye spot. Was it Kool-aid? Paint? Nail polish? Marker? Who knows. But it WAS right where you can see it, not cover-able with furniture. Nothing was budging that thing, including a soaking with hydrogen peroxide: I figured I would just have to live with it, until I saw Jilleee's blog post about how to remove tough carpet stains (she's got an awesome blog!). I was intrigued, and as I did a little more research, I saw that this was a pretty well-known tactic to remove red stains. I really didn't have much h...

This is a tale of two outcomes. Two very different outcomes. How it happened: My oven was very dirty. So dirty that when I tried to bake pizzas, the stench of burning material filled my house. I reluctantly decided it was time to clean the oven. To my dismay, the can of oven cleaner I was sure I had under the sink was not there. So, I went where I always go when faced with a lack of the "real thing" - to Google! In my search for alternatives to oven cleaner, I found this video . It was put out by a cleaning service in Detroit, and since it only had three ingredients, I decided to give it a try, because that oven was messed up. I pulled out the products, which I fortunately had on hand: I mixed the Baking Soda and Vinegar together very carefully. The video didn't give specific measurements, but it looked like about 2 cups of baking soda and maybe 3/4 cup of vinegar. I used an old plastic bowl and a small plastic scraper. It was pretty fun to mix together, especial...

I have a lovely cushy La-Z-Boy recliner that I love. It was expensive, and not something I want to toss out for being grungy. It's been 5 years since it was last cleaned, and it had gotten dirty areas, especially on the arms and head rest, due to kids and dogs and life in general. It looked pretty gross. I thought right away that I needed to have the chair professionally cleaned, so I started calling around. The best price I could get in my town was $50. Not really bad considering what they have to do to clean a big old chair like that, with all its nooks and crannies. BUT. I am cheap and wanted to know if there was something I could do and not have to pay $50. So, I looked around to see if I could find a blog or video with "home-made" instructions. I found quite a few, but they all included a lot of water along with the vinegar, oxi-clean or whatever else they were using, and I wasn't sure my upholstery could handle a lot of water - some don't. I then...