Daily prompt: These dishes won’t clean themselves

Tags

cleaning, dusting, postaday2015

What’s the household task you most dislike doing? Why do you think that is — is it the task itself, or something more?

My first chore assigned to me by my mother was drying the dishes at the tender young age of 6 and I received a quarter a week. I then graduated to washing and drying the dishes, ironing followed and later vacuuming. My sister eventually inherited the dishes and then she gained dusting, but I held onto the ironing and vacuuming along with the grocery shopping. I can honestly say that I never minded doing the ironing or the vacuuming while I was living at my parent’s house.

Fast forward many years and I now dislike all aspects of housework because it never stays neat or clean for long and it is such a repetitive process with little to no internal satisfaction because you just know that it won’t last at all. But if I were to pick just one chore it would have to be dusting. I despise dusting, I have allergies, nothing ever stays dustfree and dust is just everywhere, just when you think that you got it all, you turn around, there it is,laughing at you “you can’t get rid of me! Why you ask because I am you, all of the dead skin cells, so that is why I am your nightmare, you are dusting all of your dead skin, a little macabre n’est pas?”  

I hate dusting.

White distilled vinegar, who knew?

Tags

chemical free, cleaning, household chores, postaday2013, stainless steel, tips, white wine vinegar

I have posted a few pictures of my kitchen and I am fairly sure that my stove has been featured in those photographs. I have a fairly large stove, all stainless steel, I love it, it’s industrial and serves me so very well whatever I choose to cook. Anyone who has stainless steel anything, however, will tell you about the fingertips, the smudges, the way grease seems to find its way to it and linger.

I have tried over the years, so many different brands that were specifically formulated for stainless steel and I had never found a brand that quite lived up to their claims. I have been on the web looking for alternative ways to clean stainless steel and I did find one “green” site that suggested warm soapy water but that seemed to easy and also I kept thinking that the stainless steel would get water spots. So I resigned myself to the commercial products.

Last year when our Rex was getting incontinent, I googled to see what could be used as an alternative to the carpet cleaners because the commercial brands weren’t working in getting rid of the ammonia odor and what I learned was that white distilled vinegar was perfect because it dissolved the nitrogen bonds in the urine that produce the ammonia like smell. I soaked the carpet with warm water and white distilled vinegar, scrubbed it and sucked it back up with my carpet cleaner and it was as good as new.

Ever since then, I have been turning to white distilled vinegar for more and more of my cleaning duties and stainless steel has been the latest recipient of the white distilled vinegar treatment. It works like a charm, all I did was apply the vinegar directly to my microfiber cloth and wipe down my stove and the viola, the grease and the smudges were gone.

I have been converted to the efficacy and the efficiency of white distilled vinegar. According to the website, it is good for cleaning windows, dishwashers, getting rid of mold and mildew and cleaning everything else except for marble. Why pay for those chemical laden commercials cleaners when you can get something non-toxic and cheap that works even better?

The Viking

Tags

chores, cleaning, postaday2012, Restaurant, Viking

Today I rolled up my sleeves and decided to tackle the Viking, my professional series six burner, grill, double side by side oven, to clean it thoroughly from top to bottom. Cleaning a Viking oven is so much easier when it is at your father’s restaurant, one, because in the kitchen you have floor drains, floor tiles, rubber mats and a hose so that everything can get hosed down, scrubbed down top to bottom every night by the kitchen crew. Second, all the removable parts went into the industrial steam dishwasher that could scrub the stockpots, cast iron pans, you name it, those dishwashers clean anything at extremely high temperatures to kill any bacteria and make everything scalding clean.

When you don’t have the help or the proper equipment to fully scrub down the Viking, it becomes the dreaded chore. It is at least every bit of a few hours of taking apart and individually scouring the stainless steel, the baked enamel and the cast iron pieces. Everything weighs a bit, is a little sharp and doesn’t quite fit in the sink so that the whole kitchen gets a bath which was never really in the game plan. The hood is the next piece that gets dismantled and scoured, that takes a few hours because I can only get a few pieces at a time into the dishwasher, the reason I put the pieces of the Viking in the dishwasher is because the dishwasher gets the water hot enough to strip the grease off the pieces.

So after all this is done and I am huffing and puffing, putting back the last piece of the hood in place, I step back and look at my hard work and feel that deep satisfaction of a job well done. The next feeling is that now that the stove is all clean, I do not want to cook on it ever again or at least not tonight, the microwave is looking real nice as far as gadgets go. If we still lived in the city, take out would be a great option but when you live in a small town up in the hills, take out or delivery really isn’t an option since everything edible is at least a half hour away. This thought only lasts the day, I’ll be over it by tomorrow. I just need to keep the husband away from the stove, that will keep it cleaner for a while longer.