"Out My Window" Post

I did not want to hijack Kim's post, but I wanted to give her some of my solutions to things she mentioned.

Dish towels, dish cloths, and napkins that have a grease smell. It is a stale smell, too, a stale grease smell. These are so obnoxious and putrid, I could not stand to use them.  As they became unbearably nasty smelling, I would take them out of the drawers, store them in a bag, a put out new ones. The new ones often were bought dirt cheap or from yard sales, unused, still in package or hooked together with the plastic string thing. The bag of stinky things might have been used once and put in the trash if I had not figured out how to make them cleaners and fresher than new.

One day, I was loading the dishwasher and using a freshly laundered dish cloth to wipe up water. Unable to even handle it, I put the dishcloth in the DISHWASHER. Yep. I strung it out down the area for glasses and set a couple of glasses on top of the stinky, clean dishcloth.

The dishcloth caught some food. All the food in the glass or cups was stuck in those. However, I rinsed the food out of dishcloth, glass and cups.

Unbelievably, the dishcloth came out fresher than new smelling. So, I put a couple of dishcloths or towels in the dishwasher every time I used the dishwasher. Palmolive was the brand I used and not the lemon variety. It was some flower scent.

I still have a whole bag of newish towels that still stink to high heaven because I never got around to putting them in the dishwasher. Maybe I will take them all to the laundromat and put Palmolive in their washing machine since they have boiling hot water available. Maybe not.

Maybe I will put on water to boil on the grill outdoors and put the stinky yet freshly laundered dish towels and dishcloths in the pot of boiling water with Palmolive. Our ancestors boiled laundry over a fire. Could work.

I do use Glad Wrap, but it frustrates me and wraps all the wrong way so I use very little to cut down on costs. I use storage dishes with glass lids, or put a saucer over things. I also use fruit jars of all sizes. I use foil when it won't touch the food. When I store an opened block of cheese, rather than fight the glad wrap, I put the whole thing in a Tupperware storage container. Sometimes, I use a Glad ziplock bag and store the cheese in that. I can use the same storage or freezer bag for months.

I don't buy paper towels. I use rags like my cut up knit pants for the yucky cleaning where you do not want rags going into the wash.

Click HERE to read her post and admire her beautiful and well-appointed kitchen.