From the category archives:

cleaning

What I’m Reading 12/4

by Carrie on December 4, 2009

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Make It From Scratch Carnival

by Carrie on September 22, 2009

Welcome to the September 22, 2009 edition of the Make It From Scratch Carnival.

Editor’s Pick

Pumpkins

Pumpkins

Make it from Scratch presents Pumpkin Pie from a Pumpkin posted at Make It From Scratch. This recipe comes at the perfect time because it appears there is a nationwide shortage of canned pumpkin going on. I couldn’t find any pumpkin at my grocery store this week so I won’t be making those pumpkin cupcakes after all but I did snag a box of Krusteaz Pumpkin Bread at Costco so I’ll whip some of that up while I wait for pumpkin to be available.

Cleaning

Katie presents Natural, Homemade Kitchen Cleaners: What’s Under my Sink? posted at Kitchen Stewardship.

Cooking

Cyndi L presents Lime and basil shortbread posted at Real Food Fast!. I love anything and everything lime flavored so this looks delicious.

Emily Simmons presents Homemade Vegeburgers posted at Be In Health Now.

Joanna presents Eatmore Bars posted at One Krusty Mama.

Julie Artz presents Home-Canned Bloody Mary Mix posted at Terminal Verbosity.

Kristia presents Mediteranean Orzo Pilaf posted at Family Balance Sheet.

Suburban Wife presents Party Time Apple Dip Recipe posted at Suburban Wife Life.

Wise Bread presents Eat Healthy this Winter Without Spending a Fortune posted at Wisebread.com.

Crafting

Alexandra presents Sea Salt: Inexpensive All Natural Facial Scrub posted at Happy Hearts At Home. I just love homemade scrubs, I’m always pleased to find another recipe.

Rachel presents DIY Silly Putty posted at quirkymomma.com. I may be 25 but this looks fun to me too.

Stephanie presents Elderberry Experiments posted at Stop the Ride!.

Next Issue

Next week’s carnival will be held at Kitchen Stewardship. You can submit your post at the Make It from Scratch carnival website.

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honeyMeet Honey. In the fall of 2003 she was a feral kitten living in my parents’ backyard and unlikely to make it through the winter on her own. I was a college student living alone in an apartment at the time. My younger sister who was still living at home was doing her best to catch the feral cats in the neighborhood (there were a lot of them and unfortunately they were all unlikely to live through the winter with such competition with each other for food; she successfully caught at least 6 – she kept one, I kept Honey, and the rest were picked up by the animal shelter). One day my sister asked me if I wanted a cat. I told her about how Honey would curl up in the sun on the patio furniture and I thought she was just the cutest ever and that Honey was the only cat I wanted. A couple weeks later she was mine and now we are best friends.

Honey is fortunate that I don’t need 2.5 bathrooms all to myself so one bathroom is exclusively used for her litter box. Maybe because I’m not in that room every day or maybe because it’s on the inside of the house and has no windows for ventilation, sometimes it gets a little smelly at which point I notice it wafting into the upstairs hall or the stairwell.

Clean+Green by SeaYu Litter Box Odor Eliminator and CleanerI had just put fresh litter in the litter box last night, so as soon as I got Clean+Green Litter Box Odor Eliminator and Cleaner home I followed the instructions for deodorizing and sprayed it about 12 inches over the litter box. I’m pleased that the product is totally fragrance free because both Honey and I are extremely sensitive to fragrances (the two of us also only use unscented kitty litter). I also felt that the product was safe enough to spray it in the air and sniff vigorously in attempt to detect any fragrance. Since I had just cleaned everything last night there were no major smells to cover up but I can say with 100% confidence that there are currently no smells wafting into other areas of the house.

Earlier this week, I went to put on a pair of jeans that had been sitting on my closet floor and discovered that they had been peed on. I got them straight in the laundry but Honey has still been a little too interested in smelling that area of the closet. Obviously there was still something to smell so I followed the directions on the Litter Box Odor Eliminator and Cleaner bottle and sprayed the effected area and then wiped in clean. She’s not sniffing around there anymore so I’m satisfied that the smell is gone.

SeaYu’s full line of Clean+Green pet cleaning products is available at Petco and Petsmart.

In the interest of full disclosure: 1) I was provided with this product for free in order to do this review. 2) As I’ve told you before, I work at a printing company. The printing company I work at happens to have printed the very label you see on this product. Since I worked on the label, I was already familiar with the product and wanting to try it out at the point this review opportunity was offered to me.

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I recently acquired a few small silver platters from my grandparents’ estate. They were not badly tarnished but did look like they could use a little clean up and I’ve been curious about this baking soda and aluminum foil method for cleaning silver so this was a great opportunity to test it out. I mean seriously, less chemically than silver polish and no elbow grease needed, as long as it works what is not to love? But will it actually work?

Silver Pieces Before Cleaning

Silver Pieces Before Cleaning

What you’ll need:

  • large pot
  • 1 tablespoon baking soda
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 4″ (approximately) piece of aluminum foil
  • tongs or something similar to get the silver in and out of boiling water

Fill the pot most of the way with water and put the aluminum foil, baking soda, and salt in the water. Bring the water to a boil.

Getting the Pot Ready to Clean the Silver

Getting the Pot Ready to Clean the Silver

Place your silver in the pot and boil for 2-3 minutes. The largest of my platters (which is still not very large) didn’t fit in the pot all at once so I did 3 minutes and then turned it over and did 3 minutes on the other end.

Silver in the Pot During Cleaning

Silver in the Pot During Cleaning

Here’s a picture halfway through cleaning that platter so that you can see the before and after difference.

Silver Partially Cleaned - tarnished on the left, untarnished on the right

Silver Partially Cleaned - tarnished on the left, untarnished on the right

After your silver is done cleaning in the boiling water, let it cool off a bit and then rinse in clean water and dry with a soft cloth to remove the baking soda residue (like you see on the right side of the above picture).

This method worked fantastically. It was super quick, simple, and green and got the silver looking as bright and shiny as new.

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August has been an exciting month for me. In addition to writing It’s Frugal Being Green I am now also writing Carrie Actually and tweeting. These additional outlets for my ideas will help It’s Frugal Being Green remain more on topic than ever before.

My favorite posts from August:

Top 5 most viewed posts in August:

It’s Frugal Being Green now has 340 RSS subscribers and 110 email subscribers. If you are not already a subscriber, I invite you to become one.

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