3 Principle Ingredients of Carpet Powder

I see no point in buying manufactured carpet deodorizer.   Why do so when it's mostly baking soda which is cheap?  I mix my own around three principle ingredients.  Baking soda is the main freshener, but salt and borax offer side benefits.

Baking soda:  it absorbs odor.  Awesome stuff.

Salt:  This can draw away stuff in the carpet, helping to brighten carpet color.

Borax:  While this can also absorb odor, I use it to repel bugs.

I also like to add essential oils.  Because those are fun.

Mix according to whatever recipe you like, sprinkle on carpet, wait awhile,  vacuum.

Poop on the carpet and ink in the laundry

I am being punished.  In a life, either this or past, I did something wrong.  Now Karma is after me.

I've just had the cleaning disasters from hell.  In fact, my husband had to lovingly tell me to knock off my pity party and just accept things and that he loves me.

So, Husband is going to a training for the Army next month.  He said he needed his uniforms washed.  I'll come back to that.

I put in the laundry and started getting Ruby for bed.  I took off her diaper.  Immediately, she pooped.  Lovely soft green lumps full of corn kernals.  So I freaked and tossed her in the shower.

I have had poop disasters before. Before, I used vinegar and baking soda and it worked beautifully.  Now, I usually use the white vinegar.  Today I only had apple cider vinegar.  I prayed it wouldn't stain.

It did.

Now back to the laundry.

Husband had a pen in his pocket.  Then pen exploded.  Only a couple of undergarments are what I would call "ruined", but the pen also got all over the dryer drum.  And that dryer is my grandmother's.

I'm slowly, slowly working at getting an ink stain out of the ACU top (that wasn't too bad) using warm water, hand sanitizer, and dish soap. Slowly but surely, it's working.

As for the dryer, well...

This is where happiness comes in!

I Googled it.  A moderately tough solution is to soak some old white towels in a bleach solution (2 parts bleach to 1 part water) wring them to just dampness, and stick them in the dryer on a normal cycle.  It mentioned one may have to repeat this several times, but, by golly, it works incredibly.  And that's not even the aggressive approach.

I'm feeling a bit better about the laundry, though I'm still not sure what to do about the apple cider vinegar stain on the carpet.  

Two reasons you may have trouble stripping your cloth diapers

I cloth diaper.  Yes, I have jumped on that bandwagon.  Long before Baby Girl was born I talked with a few cloth diapering friends and felt it fit me. I don't do it 100% of the time, but I do it a significant amount of the time and I love it.

I'm a simple girl:  prefolds and those adorable Thirsties covers.  They work great!  I loved washing them, I loved the way those diapers looked in the basket, I loved the padded bum my baby had.

But the other week I ran into a bit of trouble:  After almost a year of cloth diapering, they were starting to stink upon urination and I knew it was time to strip them. 

A quick Google search says plenty about stripping diapers.  Some say you should never have to do it if you have a great rinsing system, others say they are a regular part of the cloth diapering world.  I lean toward the former notion and couldn't figure out why I suddenly had to strip them.

So I went one route:  a few cycles of hot water and nothing else.

Six cycles later, I would open up the washer to see not just a few soapy bubbles, but an entire bathtub's worth.  I clean the washing machine monthly.  I added no detergent or soap.

What the heck? 

I narrowed my troubles down to two reasons:

1.  Wrong detergent.  Now, I've seen all those great lists of the best detergents for cloth diapers and it seems Seventh Generation Natural Detergent always gets a bad wrap.  Not a terrible wrap, but not the best.  But I also thought most everything would rinse out of cotton and those lists always admit there are far too many variables in laundry to give 100% accurate advice. So I had the mistake of picking that off the clearance rack at Smith's.

2.  Water temperature.  I believe this was the biggy.  We currently live in my grandmother's basement apartment.  Recently, terrified the baby would get scalded, she turned down the water heater temperature.  Which is fine and caring, but does affect laundry.

The basics of laundry science require some balance of time, cleanser, and temperature.  This next boils down to I needed hot water to properly rinse out those diapers because I didn't have much else going for me. 

Sure enough, turning up the heat assisted with rinsing out those diapers.

And now I understand why I had to strip them in the first place!

When something doesn't have a place...

You know what seems to be the biggest problem in keeping a place neat and tidy?  Having a place for everything. 

I love that old adage "A place for everything and everything in its place."  Such wisdom, such logic, such sense.

Except... except I'm not sure all the time just how to find a place for everything. 

The cleaning bug hits me.  Not the one I've been trying to cultivate for daily tidiness, but the one that reallyreallyreally wants to get the house looking nice.  And so beings the all-encompassing make-this-room-awesome. 

And I find a basket or some knicknack... and where the heck does it go?  I stand in the room, holding said item, and realize just how important that "a place for everything" sentence fragment is.

So I've learned that one of the most vital parts of cleaning and organizing is having a place for everything.

Put all those homeless objects in their own area, write them down, and determine a place for them.  Write that place down.  Keep doing so until you've established "a place for everything."

If you can't find a place for it, you probably don't need it.