As I’ve said before, we’re not cleaning obsessives in this house but when we do clean, we’re the cleaning hardcore.

Cleaning sessions usually start with the hunt for a scrubbing brush, then follow with the application of gallons of elbow grease (we bulk-buy, it’s cheaper), then end with an exclamation of “oh! I forgot it was that colour!”

We’ve got a couple of scrubbing brushes lurking under sinks at the moment, all with the bristles somewhat bent out, tired from all the exertion. They’re still quite clean though (since we tended to use a lot of water and soap with the elbow grease) so it seems a shame to through them out but their effectiveness as scrubbing brush seems to have lessened somewhat.

Any suggestions about what we can do with them instead? Or how to bring them back to life?

(Photo by sparkules)

This one is from my mum.

She buys branded washing powder tablets quite regularly and each time gets a little net in the box. The idea is the tablets go in the net and then in the washing machine, and if you don’t use the net, then all hell breaks loose and demons run the earth (or something).

Anyway, as she just told me on IM: “i’ve got quite a lot of those bags,usually stick them under the sink or hang them in tall cupboard for storage” but it seems they just stay in storage.

Any suggestions on what she can do with them?

(If you can’t see the picture clearly, here’s a description of what I mean: they’re little nylon string nets with a drawstring at the top, and the drawstring has a toggle attached so you can close it up, stopping the tablet from falling out during the wash cycle. Because if it did fall out, hell, demons, etc etc.)

We have a number of cushions and pillows around the house that are not exactly cushioning or pillowy any more. For want of a better word, I shall describe them as clumpy – the stuffing has clumped together into uncomfortable lumps – and no amount of fluffing (…that I can do before my arm gets tired) will redeem them.

It usually seems to be one of those situations that gets worse over time – which preventative regular fluffing can keep at bay – but washing them certainly seems to speed up the process.

Any ideas of how to bring them back to life? Or how to reuse the cushion corpse once it has passed over?

(Photo by Justified)

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me-eeeeee,
Happy Birthday to me.

For no particular reason, why not let’s think about how someone can reuse or recycle greetings cards, like, you know, Christmas cards or perhaps birthday cards? And while we’re thinking about it, I’ll eat this gigantic cake.

Hurrah for nothing whatsoever of note happening 27 years ago today : )
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Since there was such a positive response to Em’s sponge scourer query, I’ll post about something I’d also worried about the gackness level: mop heads.

We’re not ardent moppers but have to change the mop heads themselves quite a lot because the coarse and often dirty nature of our floors means that after a couple of uses, they look really quite sad and/or not the type of thing you want to use when ‘cleaning’. We swap and change between using cloth mops, string mops and those new-fangled-super-dooper-cost-£3-a-time mopheads but none of them seem to be particularly hard wearing.

Any suggestions on what we can do when with them once they’ve been relegated from their rightful role?