Top ten cleaning products:
- Vinegar
- Baking soda
- Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
- Bar Keepers Friend
- Comet
- A steam mop
- Swiffer dry mop (you can replace the disposable cloths with a microfiber cloth)
- Scrub brushes
- Goo Gone
- Rubbing alcohol
Top ten uses for vinegar:
- Drain volcano! (Pour baking soda down drain. Pour vinegar over it. Watch magic happen.)
- Add a cup to your laundry to get rid of musty odors and fabric softener build-up, especially on towels.
- Microwave a bowl of vinegar and water to make cleaning the inside of your microwave a zillion times easier.
- Run your dishwasher empty with a cup of vinegar, face up, to get rid of stains, smells, and mildew.
- Descale your coffeepot or tea kettle.
- Take the sting out of sunburn. No, seriously.
- Clean your fridge, especially the cruddy rubber seals.
- Boil a pan of vinegar and citrus on the stove to get rid of lingering stink.
- Kill weeds. (Will also kill plants that are not weeds, so use carefully.)
- Put it in a spray bottle and use it to clean EVERYTHING.
Top ten general tips:
- Laundry and dishes have three steps: wash, dry, and PUT IT AWAY, GODDAMMIT.
- Direct sunlight will clear up mustiness in almost anything.
- Denture tablets are awesome for cleaning water bottles or stained tea cups.
- If you have a ridiculous amount of paper to shred, most office supply stores will shred for you (they charge by the pound), and many places have “community shreds,” where you bring your stuff and they shred it in front of you, either for free or a nominal charge. Google “community shred [your area].”
- Before you start cooking, fill your sink with hot soapy water. Chuck your prep dishes in as you go (except knives. Leave those off to the side). Once your food is cooking, wash up! Clean as you go.
- Ribbons on the duvet cover.
- Don’t put it down, put it away.
- Take pictures! Your brain doesn’t always “read” everything that’s in a room when you look at it, but a picture will let you notice things you might have otherwise missed.
- Do the stuff you’re dreading the most first. You’ll feel like a rockstar.
- Bring your empty hangers with you when the dryer’s done. Hang stuff up right from the dryer. Don’t give it the chance to languish in the laundry basket.
Someone posted where to find the traditional UFYH arsenal in Germany, so I thought I’d do the same for Sweden (because I didn’t immediately know where to find this stuff when I started this trip).
Magic Erasers = Fläcksuddare. These cost me 12kr for a 2 pack at Willys, and this brand is pretty common (ICA also has a store brand, about the same price). If you really can’t find them, you can order them online from Clas Ohlsson.
Vinegar = Vinäger or (as above) Ättiksprit. This is a 1 liter bottle, but it’s stronger than either normal vinegar or distilled (they are I think 5%, or 8, this is 12). So it goes a long way cos you can dilute it a bit. Rarely see it in bigger packages, but this particular brand/bottle you can find everywhere, all the time cos it’s the one used to make Sill (ie pickled herring) with.
Baking soda = Bikarbonat.
This is a pain, cos I can only ever find these small packages. Possibly because I live in a small town, but today I also went hunting two maxi grocery stores (a big Willys and a Coop Forum) and neither of them had bigger packages of bicarb either. Which makes drain volcanoes a lot more work than they oughta be :(
Is it bad that I think being trapped in Sweden might be kind of awesome?
