DISMANTLE WHARF

This is where we can swap cleaning tips... FOR FUN!

I learned you can clean discoloration from enamel cookware with a baking soda paste and it work great. For the interior, you can also boil water, dump some baking soda in, let it bubble a while, and then use a brush to easily remove the stains. The exterior requires more effort with the paste, but the results are great!

What I want to know is how to remove a musty smell from a towel. You know when you leave a wet towel in a heap on the floor? And then even after washing it still smells a little musty each time it gets wet? How do you make it smell fresh (or not smell like anything) again? My hippie detergent does not do the trick.

This is a hot tip! We have enamel pans that I've just given up on scrubbing. Will try.

I DO NOT know how to get rid of the musty smell in towels but I do know how to get a grease stain out of a silk blouse: lay the blouse flat and dump a little pile of talcum powder on top of the stain. Let it sit for a day and then dust it off. Unfortunately talcum powder is now banned in the US and I'm not sure the alternative (cornstarch) works as well but...no poison, so it's a classic win-lose.

that's really helpful, i have a grease stain I've been stumped by

Terres de Sommières is the ultimate dry grease stain remover! Even old stains. Even on hardwoods or suede! Dump a little pile on let it sit for hours and brush off. If it isn't totally gone, do it again. It works!

I get bike grease on every damn thing. Here's the solution I have found for it: Scrub a blob of dish soap into the stain without any water. Scratch it in deep with your fingernail. Let it totally dry. It will look scary and much worse, like it is spreading into a ghostly black ring.
When you wash it out, you'll notice there are hardly any soapy bubbles even though you put a whole blob of dish soap. I guess it all got eaten by bike grease. When it is all dry, rinse and scrub and the stain will come out. If it is not all gone, repeat. Whatever is left after that will normally come out in the wash.

That enamel pots trick will be put to use!

Trick for towel freshness:
WHITE VINEGAR!
“Wash” your towels with white vinegar only. This will also help to remove old fabric softener/dryer sheet residue (avoid both of these products, especially with towels) that is part of what keeps them being stinky. I would follow up with drying said towels outside in the sun for extra stink removal & to get rid of any lingering vinegar smell. It will dissipate (even if you just put them in the dryer) but you can also wash them again with your reg detergent after the vinegar wash if you want.

Ma’am...Terre de Sommieres? I have never HEARD of such a thing and I am FROM FRANCE. Very excited to somehow procure a jar of this exceptionally absorbent European dust.

Love white vinegar! I make a homebrew surface cleaner with white vinegar, water, and lemon juice that I use for pretty much everything. Sometimes I put all of those things in a big jar and stuff the jar with lemon peels and eucalyptus or bay leaves and let it sit for a few weeks, or forever, for some extra good-smelling energy.

I have the same way! Fill a jar with white vinegar and lemon and/or orange peels, let it hang out together until the vinegar gets all citrus oilsy then pop it into a glass spray bottle. Batta bing batta boom!

I have dealt with towel must by just only ever using a big ol' slice of heavy linen fabric as a towel. For years. It just gets softer and more absorbant the more you wash it. I mean basically it is a huge dish towel... Korn's t-shirts on the other hand ALWAYS smell like closet, even if they were washed a week before. White vinegar might be the tee-savior.

gimme that french dust!!!

I dealt with MUCH towel/laundry funk when I lived in Berlin & had only a drying rack to use to TRY to dry things in my often chilly & damp room. Sometimes the whole load would get that sour smell & I would just have to wash everything again & hope for a warmer day
Re: t shirts, I am a laundry maniac, and I sometimes actually BOIL my laundry on top of the stove in a large cauldron to really get the funk out. I would recommend this, using some dish soap & borax/washing soda/baking soda, but it is HEAVY duty, and some things might lose color. I actually wash my sheets this way bc SOMEONE in my household is very oily by nature & thus leaves one side of the bed a noticeably different color.

my electric kettle has some kind of white build up... how do i clean it?

Clean it with citric acid. It is totally natural and environmentally safe. Put a spoonful in an inch of water and boil it. It will just eat all the white stuff off.

thanks!

My pleasure.

My cat barfed on a quilt (family history item) this spring and I'm putting off cleaning it because you aren't really supposed to wash them. I think a bathtub soak with some localized scrubbing is what needs to happen, followed by hanging or draping over some chairs outside.
I'm annoyed and scared to deal with it!

We just recently bought a shitty pressure washer to try and strip paint from some concrete (didn’t work) and I just used it to BLAST a Turkish rug free of dirt & 10,000 moth eggs. Rug washing is weirdly unsophisticated. Even if you take your rug to a professional rug-cleaning place they basically just hose it down in a parking lot.

I am learning so much- thank you!!

My uncle in law (??- Chris's uncle) uses a power washer to draw hearts and lil' love notes to his wife in the driveway.

Anyone had any luck cleaning a chemex metal coffee filter? I've got one soaking in some citric acid water now...

citric acid did not work

We are dealing with the musty towel funk issue up at the cabin right now. Trying baking soda first then going from there...

How does it stay around even after washing and drying! I don't get it.

So, my general take on how to have non-smelly towels is: wash on hot, and make sure it is hung in a way that lets it dry thoroughly after each use (e.g. with good ventilation and not bunched up). I know washing in hot water is terribly unfashionable these days, but I still do it for towels and bedlinens, and they are never stinky. Changing towels weekly is also helpful.

I just took a look at Cheryl Mendelson's excellent book on laundry; she also recommends changing towels weekly and washing in hot, remarking that "water temperature affects more than cleaning power. Hot water kills many microorganisms as well as dust mites and nits." Given that smelly towels are smelly because of actual microbes (such as mildew & bacteria), you really do want to kill them off rather than rubbing them back onto on your skin right after washing your hands or body to *remove* microbes.

p.s. lest anyone thing I am humblebragging about what a great housekeeper I am: I am not very good at keeping a house clean! (Especially because if I have time to clean, I would rather put that time towards a cooking project.) But I do love Cheryl's books Home Comforts and Laundry - she's such an extraordinarily good writer that even I have managed to absorb some good practices, especially around laundry. Highly recommended books if you live in a house and want to know how to keep it nicer and cleaner than it otherwise would be.

I'm finally washing my quilt- it only took a deep, deep feeling of sadness and anger r.e. the world to convince me that doing a hard chore might feel good today!
Right now it's cooking with some oxy clean paste on the cat barf spots, and soon it will take a nice bath in the tub with some more oxy. A clean tub, at that.

Having a chronic health thing that often makes me tired has made the tub my nemesis. It takes a lot of muscle juice to scrub a tub, wtf. Somewhat tempted to get one of those hand drill attachments for cleaning, has anyone tried that?

I have never seen these drill attachments but they look so cool! Please purchase and report back.

I have also been rage/grief cleaning. Everything is terrible but my duvet smells great? Bleg.

I gotta say, the amount of ambient filth that started seeping out of the quilt as soon as it was submerged in water was really a sight. Looks like I have to wash all the quilts now?

It's pretty clean! The first soak was gnarly, water totally brown. Second soak was less so, and final soak was just water to rinse it out. The absolute worst part was trying to wring it out. A big wet quilt is heavy as fuck and I needed assistance to wring it out a bit, carry it outside, and spread it flat on a clean sheet to dry.
The worst stains are almost gone and probably could be gone with more soaking and scrubbing, but this is the least fancy/special of all the grandma quilts and already has weird ink stains and stuff. I honestly got pretty tired of dealing with it after several hours but I'm happy with the result and the fact that it really filled a restless day!

Triumph!! I'm v impressed.

thank you! now that the heat wave broke I'm going to absolutely fuck off household tasks and try to use my critical thinking brain again until it hots up again.

[mention]meadows[/mention]
I have those drill brush attachments & I will say they are a GAME CHANGER when it comes to bathroom tub scrubbing!

oh shit, I was going to write it off as something ridiculous but now I'm pumped to get some!

I had never oxicleaned my whites and I feel now my life has changed.

Long boiling hot water and oxi soak for all the sheets, oxi'd those pit stains, did the white dish towels and tees.

I am addicted to Oxi.

Inspiring! I feel like Oxi has not helped me with pit stains in the past—is hot water the secret??

The pit stain secret is make a thick paste. Paint it on, roll up and leave on for six hours. When I unrolled I used my hottest faucet water and rinsed/rubbed. All stains completely gone, even years old bf soccer shirt stains.

It did slightly discolor one pink shirt, but that looks more sightly than what was.

Wow okay! Here I go!

Is Oxi biodegradable? I'm confused by it!

Apparently, yes!
https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/guilt- ... cle-159074

Yea my understanding is it’s pretty chill... degrades to O2 and soda ash.

Which seems crazy cause it WORKS.

It works yet is mostly gentle, so weird. I used it to soak a quilt, an item that needs careful cleaning, and it worked great.

DIY wood/furniture polish:

2 parts white vinegar
2 parts olive oil
1 part fresh lemon juice

Just restored an old chess board to sparkling brilliance with this potion!

going to try this potion on some synth sides rn

Just learned about soda crystals or washing soda. It is not baking soda but it IS the biodegradable degreaser, water softener and clean-it-all magic we've all been looking for. It's cheap and our great grandmothers used it!

What's the trick to get discolored cotton bright white again?

PS alternate wash for a floor:
2 parts white vinegar
2 parts olive oil
.5 part dish soap*

And then wipe with a watery towel and dry. Maybe the lemon juice is better!

*Mrs Meyers for the veggie formula and the aromatherapy

Random cleaning tip:

I use citrus essential oils on a cloth/Q-tip + witch hazel for dusting tiny fine objects, like glass perfume bottles or tiny porcelain or wooden statues. It cleans fast and smells nice.

Citrus essential oils, used sparingly, are also mean lil' removers of paper stickers (useful if you're a pathological jar re-user like yours truly)

Good call with the stickers!! I've used this method on books with a glossy finish so they don't absorb the oil.


Can someone remind me what is the product that brightens whites??

oxiclean (sodium percarbonate)?

I have closet moths. : (

Lots of time hot washing and steaming and putting away in bins. I hope they all die quietly and uneventfully.

Attempting to clean lime deposits from the leaves of a houseplant that lives in our shower. I tried water, then Bronner's and water, then rainwater, then white vinegar diluted in rainwater. The last option kind of works, but my poor plant still has faint white crust on its leaves.

Maybe try to apply vinegar to a cloth, wipe the leaves, then wipe again with a bit of oil? Neem is a good insecticide but even olive oil, wiped off, might help the brittle minerals detach. We have hard water and it is a constant battle.

Marijke did the moths come back?

Fruit flies take up residency in our sink no matter what. I've used DIY and commercial traps and they haven't worked. Help?

Drain flies! We had those in our bathroom sinks. They show up when there's standing water in the pipes. Solve the root cause and they should disappear? We usually do a combo of hot water, baking soda, and vinegar to blast the pipes clean of any gunk that would cause water to pool. Try this:

https://www.thespruce.com/freshen-and-u ... da-1900466

Moths are still here and depressing me. All clothes in bins, much dry-cleaned, all rugs piled outside and going to the cleaner. I still can't find where they were hanging out or what they were eating, but I stirred up a few when I pulled the rugs outside so maybe one was a culprit.

But now I'm excited about cleaning my drains, thank you YFC and good luck RCH!