In which I gross you out

Would you like to see how how bad things can get if you don't vacuum the coils on your fridge regularly?

Regularly, btw, means twice a year if you don't have any pets and your home is not very dusty.

If you have pets and dust, it means every 2 months. At least.

Keep your fridge compressors running smoothly and efficiently by cleaning off the dust bunnies or puppies or kitties. You do not want your coils looking like this:

Eeeeeeeeeew. Bad, bad, bad.

Bad for the pocketbook as it causes the fridge to run inefficiently and use more electricity. Doubly bad for the pocketbook if it causes the fridge compressor to prematurely wear out.

So, if you haven't vacuumed your fridge coils recently, or if you're not even sure you have fridge coils, your assignment this week is to find them and clean them.

They're either at the back or on the bottom of the fridge. If they're at the back, you need to pull the fridge out. You can protect the floor with some cardboard from a cereal box & roll the fridge out. If the back of your fridge is completely smooth, the coils are on the bottom and you will need to pop off the decorative grill at the bottom to get at them. Some people say you should unplug the fridge before proceeding. If you do so, put the plug in your pocket so you don't forget to plug it back in. Use a powerful vacuum, preferably with a crevice nozzle. You may need some skinny stick things like rulers or your kids' paint brushes to poke around and loosen the stuff in areas where the vacuum can't quite reach and to give the vacuum a bit of help. If you keep the vacuum running and pointed in the right direction while you poke around, most of the dirt will just fly into the vacuum.

That's it. All that's left is to write down on the calendar when it's time to do it again - so your fridge doesn't suffer like mine!

doctor in the house

I spent the day with the Rug Doctor.

Cunning readers might link this with Nelly's arrival, and certainly Nelly has unfortunately proven to be somewhat dim about the differences between INside and OUTside. But our sweet Daisy is also partly to blame as she, poor girl, is a dribbler. Don't grimace. Odds are it will happen to you eventually, no matter how many Kegels you do.

Anyway, it's been a year since we moved in and did the carpets and it was time. I had done some spot cleaning before and then I was ignoring the carpet altogether because we're supposed to be putting floors in.... but then it became clear that these floors were not going to appear for some time and meanwhile the carpet was looking kind of dodgy and worse, smelling icky.

We used to have our carpets done professionally, once even by Coit who demanded an amount approaching my mortgage payment for their services. For the record, expensive as they are, they do a great, great job. The cheaper dudes were, well, cheaper, and not as good.

Lately we've been doing it ourselves. It's really not that bad & it saves a lot of money. And saving money is something I like a lot. (One day soon I'll tell you how I'm saving $5000.)

So here's how to have a great time with the doctor.

If you're in the Lower Mainland, try to pick the hottest day of the year to do your carpets. Life in a temperate rainforest unfortunately means mould is ever present. If you need to do your carpets more than once a year and can't wait for the summer heatwave, at least pick clear days with low humidity.

I got the machine last night so that I could start first thing in the morning. During the midweek, you can rent the machine for 48h for the same price as a 24h rental over the weekend. Having it longer lets you repeat rooms if necessary or do your car.....

Buy a good quality carpet shampoo. I like to use an additional carpet deodorizer, and due to my specific situation, I was adding Nature's Miracle to the water as well.

Vacuum thoroughly with the regular vacuum.

Pretreat high traffic areas. I used to buy the pretreatment spray but recently I've just been using the regular shampoo full strength in a spray bottle. Spray stains & spots at least 5-10 minutes before shampooing.

You can save money on defoamer if you just follow this simple instruction: fill the bucket with water first and then add the shampoo and deodorizer and gently swirl. Unless your carpets have a huge soapy residue from previous cleanings, this eliminates the excess foaming problem.

Wear clean runners.

Use the machine in straight lines and then go over the same area again, this time making your passes perpendicular to the first go.

The official instructions say to not go over the same spot repeatedly but I do. Bite me. It works for me. The big concern is if you oversoak the carpet and it starts getting mouldy. If you're doing this on the hottest day of the year, it's not an issue. That's why I spent my day here instead of at the beach - I could go over the icky Nelly spots over and over again.

When you're treating pet stain or leaky toddler spots, you must get down on your knees and sniff. If there's a strong icky smell, keep cleaning. If all you smell is shampoo, you're done in that area. If the smell of pee is pretty faint and you've already gone over as many times as you feel comfortable (& you worry that you're soaking not just through the underlay but also the subfloor & possibly the ceiling of the floor below you), do the following: mist the spot heavily with Nature's Miracle (or another enzyme pet stain cleaner) and put a damp facecloth on the area. You want that spot to stay damp long enough for the enzymes to work.

It's a tough balance. If it stays wet too long, you'll get mould & mildew smell. If it dries too fast, the enzymes won't have had time to do their job & you'll have pee smell. If you get it just right, the carpet will smell clean. You will kneel down, sniff, and come up smiling.

There's one more thing. It's THE SECRET. Much better than that other The Secret thing.... This Secret is really great. Not only makes carpet cleaning a snap, it also saves relationships, improves parenting, enhances marriages.



Just slip these on, and then the entire process becomes meditative and immensely satisfying. You make nice neat stripes on the carpet. You see ugly spots and dirt disappear right before your eyes. Dirt is gross. It's wrong. Here you are standing up for cleanliness and justice and all that is good. You can see that you're setting the world right again, and every time you empty that bucket of black water, your heart swells with satisfaction and you gaze with pride over the sea of saxony.

All you hear is a gentle quiet hum and the sound of your own breathing.

Fabulous invention. Crying baby? Whiny children? Long winded argumentative spouse? Incredibly loud carpet shampoo machine which would normally give you a migraine in 30 minutes? No problem. Just slip these on and stay serene.

Hornblower's handy hints

I was just getting ready to post some pictures of the laundry room renovation - a very boring renovation, like most of our current renos. The thing is, we're not making anything great, we're just making things look normal. So, it's not really anything you can look at and say 'wow, you've done something really nice!'. It's more that you look at it and say 'what? That looks normal.' Yes, it's only because the previous state of affairs was so appallingly hideous that the work we do starts to look good.

Like the laundry, which previously resided in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Now, in the condo, we had our laundry facilities just off the kitchen and it was handy. But here's the thing - the space it was in, was actually meant for it. The space was adequate for the machines, and there was (and this is important) a door. Yes. A door.

Which, you may have guessed by the stress I'm placing on it now, is what the laundry facilities here lacked. Yup. They rammed a washer and dryer into a too small a place, and shrugged their shoulders about the fact that you couldn't put a door on it because they stick out 3 inches into the hallway. And they left it like that.

So that standing in my kitchen, leaning on the counter while chatting, you could look at my laundry center, including the knickers hanging to dry on a hook because when I put them in the dryer they get all staticy and then too friendly.

We considered what to do about this, pondered taking another foot out of Hugo's room to make the laundry center deep enough for a door, considered the general lack of closet space upstairs, and decided to move it downstairs.

A bit of a snag - the sewer outflow pipe is fairly high so putting in bathrooms/kitchens/laundry facilities in the basement is tricky. Eventually, when we put in a bathroom & rough-in a kitchen, we'll need a central pump to move the 'effluent' up to the pipe, but for the laundry, we can get by with a small pump. Roo investigated it all, planned it all, got all his gear and purchased an obscenely expensive amount of copper pipe (have you seen the price of copper these days?). Last weekend, it was all done. We've been watching this pump, making sure it's all working fine and everything seemed OK.

And then today, a small disaster - but not the pump. A completely unexpected leak from the cold water pipe. Argh. Much water. Much mess. Ick.

And now, Hornblower's hints:

-make sure you know where the main shut offs for water (and gas) are

-keep piles of old towels handy at all times

-don't panic

-cuff up your pants

-put on flip flops

-start mopping up: drop the towels on the carpets and dance on them

-even though you have no water and you can't wash anything, you can use the washing machine to spin the water out of the towels

-after you've done this a whole bunch of times, put about half the towels in the dryer & keep working with the damp towels

-when the dryer towels are done, use them to mop up the rest of the water, & now dry the damp towels

-take frequent breaks for chocolate or beverages of your choice (remember you have no water so you have to drink the stuff out of the bottles, even the ones in the liquor cabinet)

-when you go to the workroom, which you've left for last because it has a stone floor and a drain in it, and you figured it was less important than the carpeted areas, and you're mopping behind the furnace and the hot water tank and you sweep out a mouse trap with a mouse in it, then it's absolutely OK to just throw your mop down and swear and leave the room and refuse to come back

-just open up all the windows, turn on some fans, and hide upstairs

I have no water. I can't leave because all the windows and doors downstairs are open to try and prevent a mould infestation. I have a dead mouse lying in a puddle in the workroom.

And how is your Monday?

Tags: home renovations, plumbing leaks, Hornblower

What not to wear

Low rider jeans, no matter how comfy and stretchy your really old ‘work pair’ is, can be a bad idea when you’re gardening, especially when you’re doing things like pruning Japanese maples, which involves you climbing around on your hands and knees inside the tree canopy, and snipping little pieces off.

Unless you like having a small green ecosystem forming in your underpants and scaring the beejeesus out of you when you go to pee. Count yourself lucky if all you find is stray flora in your crack, and no fauna specimens.

Just saying. Not like I speak from experience or anything.....

Happy Victoria Day!