Scrub a Dub Glove

i'm a terrible housekeeper. due to a couple of chronic illnesses, i tire out easily so i tend to start cleaning with a vengeance and stop after 15 square inches of vigorous scrubbing. 

but i keep trying and sometimes i find a way to work smarter, not harder. 

this weekend i was having the usual fight with my cooking area - grease, spills, stains, etc.  kitchen crud, buildup, ick. and the places it hides. all those cute little fiddly bits on appliances: stove vents, exhaust hood vents, vents on the microwave. my microwave is a stove hood model so it gets crud everywhere. green scrubby pads and grout brushes weren't doing it. i needed something thin and flexible enough to get those crevices, abrasive enough to actually remove the crud but not rough enough to damage the finish.

what's thin, flexible, scrubby and good for sensitive surfaces?

bath gloves from the dollar store of course! so i ran out to dollar tree for a bath glove, and of course a couple of other things - oatmeal soap, cold cream and a shower squeegee.

i'm pretty sure this wouldn't work with more expensive bath gloves. the cheap ones are thin and a little loose and the fibers have enough give to squish into crevices. i've owned $4 bath gloves that had the firmness of a kitchen scrubby and the kitchen scrubby already failed this job.

i need to take some pictures of the microwave at the cleanest it's been since i moved in and update this later.

it worked really well for the microwave because i can sort of reach the top of the microwave if i stretch [i'm short] and i always worry about getting up on a stepstool and losing my balance while scrubbing an especially stubborn spot. but the glove was flexible enough and loose enough weave so that the fibers could really get into all the little places where ick likes to hang out.

all those horrible little crevices on the oven vents!

there's no reason this couldn't work for cleaning other places, just don't get your actual exfoliating bath gloves mixed up with your showerhead scrubbing bath glove.

oh, and of course to clean it, just wash your hands with the glove on. i used dish liquid soap to make sure to get the grease out and then hung it with my sponges over the sink

Hello hooks!

hi, my name is catastrophegirl, and i have a flat surface problem

as in, if it's flat, i'll pile things on it. and leave them there. so a few years ago when i bought a house, i started trying to move things onto the OTHER flat surface - the vertical one. specifically, i bought a house for the purpose of being able to make holes in my walls and hang things from them

which all comes down to hooks.

replace your failing memory - with a memory card

dedicated tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/3829ydl

my short term memory is shot. maybe it's the MS, maybe i'm just getting old [34, in case you wondered] so i've been gradually finding ways to make my memory card replace my memory. the key to this obviously is my pocket sized point and shoot camera. spare batteries and ridiculously inexpensive memory cards help a lot [dealextreme is my preferred camera accessory store and they don't pay me to say that]

oh, you want me to get to the meat of the subject? ok, here's a few of the ways i use digital memory in place of my organic one.  

diabetic without a level

why does being diabetic matter? well when i realized this afternoon that i have no idea where my real level is my brain did this:
"huh. i wish i'd bought that mini level cube thingy i saw at the hardware store. i could keep that in my toolbox and always find it."