In which I wage war against hard water

A month or so ago, our hot water heater bit the dust and when the plumber came toiling up the basement steps, he said, "That hot water heater needs to drain out, but honestly, it's so full of lime scale, I'm not going to be able to carry it upstairs by myself."

He was kind enough not to add: "Because your basement steps look like they were constructed by Daniel Boone and I'm afraid I'll plunge backward down them to my death if I try to heave your crappy hot water heater up them and out to my van."

The plumber said that he'd give it a day or so to drain dry and then come back to remove it, which he did. I thought our problems were over since I could take a shower and wash the clothes and the dishes, but it turned out that the trouble was just beginning.

What we didn't realize was this: The old hot water heater, while it was busy filling its interior with a nice chunk of limestone (I wondered if we broke it open like a geode, I'd find a lovely decorative boulder for my front yard), it was actually functioning as a filter of sorts for all further lime deposits. Once the new, clear water heater was working, those lime deposits came swishing right on through and, well, DEPOSITED themselves on our dishes and our clothing, to disastrous results.

My husband and I have been making noises for the past five years about how we need a water softening system, but frankly, it would be just one more expense on a household budget that is already strained to the max. Every six months or so, I'd go out and buy some new glasses to replace the old set that had been permanently etched by the hard water in the dishwasher, but other than that, the damage wasn't really that awful.

But now? Wow. I bought a really cute new chocolate brown top around the same time we got the new water heater: twice through the laundry and it was utterly ruined, turned into a "heathered" version of its former cuteness due to the mineral deposits. And our dishes....oh, my heavens, I can't even think about the way our dishes looked without cringing. The plates, the glasses, the silverware, saucepans, ovenware....all of it looked like it had been rubbed with wet chalk and left to dry. SO GROSS. Which made me kind of worry about my dishwasher, you know? And my washing machine.

So several weeks ago, I declared war on hard water. We've asked the plumber to come back and run a dedicated water line -- lucky us, he was JUST HERE to run a dedicated water line for the ice maker, and now he gets to come back again and I hope he enjoys the vacation he takes with his family next summer because I believe we're the ones who made it all possible -- but in the meantime, I did some internet research on how to reclaim washing machines, dishwashers, kitchen stuff and clothing from the depredations of mineral deposits.

The items you see in the picture above are, from left to right, Dishwasher Magic, Lemi-Shine, Barkeeper's Friend, distilled white vinegar, CLR, Jet-Dry and Finish dishwasher detergent. For the laundry, I have white vinger and 20 Mule Team borax.

If you have hard water, I highly recommend all the above products because they helped me reclaim my dishes and have probably saved my dishwasher. Now when we run the dishwasher, we use one Finish tablet in the main compartment, fill the second compartment halfway full with Lemi-Shine (only available at Wal-Mart in my city, right where you find the other dishwasher stuff) and make sure the reservoir that holds liquid rinse agent is filled with white vinegar. We also have a little basket of Jet-Dry hanging from the top rack -- just make sure it's out of the way of your upper rack sprayer arm.

Once a month, we use the Dishwasher Magic. When you unscrew the lid of the little bottle, you see a wax seal. Leaving that seal in place, you turn the bottle upside down in the silverware basket and then run the EMPTY dishwasher on the hottest cycle available, which on my Whirlpool dishwasher is called "Pots and Pans."

I had to use the Barkeeper's Friend scouring powder on plates, pots, pans and silverware to get them to come clean enough to run through the dishwasher again and it took me about six hours and four fingernails. But boy, did it work! Everything in my kitchen is now gleaming with a brightness I haven't seen in a couple of weeks.

I'm sorry to say that my cute chocolate brown top is a bust, which makes me very sad. But at least we're getting things figured out before anything else gets ruined. I don't know why my NEW top had to be the one laundry item that completely bit the dust, but since we've started using the borax and the white vinegar (in the rinse cycle), our other clothes have felt better - the fabric is softer. I don't know if I could say that everything looks cleaner, but I feel like something good might be happening.

So! If you have hard water, or if you have soft water but still find that the natural state of your state's water is somewhat hard even after treatment, I'd recommend any of these things to help you keep your appliances and your kitchen and laundry items clear of mineral deposits. I plan to continue using the Lemi-Shine, for instance, even after the water softener is installed next week because I've never seen anything like my gorgeous, shiny glasses. They all look like they've been hand-washed every single time, and you know that glassware is the hardest thing to keep shiny and free of spots. Use and enjoy -- but BUY SOME KITCHEN GLOVES for your hands.

Spring cleaning in my bedroom - oh, the horrors

Where, I ask you, do you put the tiny little cast that cradled Aisling's fractured arm the summer she was ten years old?

The answer is not "in the trash," just in case you wondered. I don't know why I can't throw it away. I only know that I still have the nickel Meelyn swallowed when she was three, stored in a specimen cup in the treasure box that dwells beneath my bed. And don't worry, you big sillies. That nickel didn't come out nature's way; it was removed from its precarious lodging place in her throat between her esophagus and her trachea by a crack team of ER doctors at Riley Hospital. Like I'd keep a poop-encrusted nickel...I ask you. Really.

I think I just need to squeeze that little cast in there too. Right now, it is sitting on my dresser, just where it has been sitting (hidden by a basket full of silk flowers) for about three years now.

Oh, my room is always so much fun to deal with! For some reason, instead of being the quiet, romantic retreat I always want it to be, it seems to be the depot for all the things people want to keep but have no place else to put, like a storm window with cracked glass; the impedimenta from three different 500 Festival Mini Marathons, all still stored in their plastic bags; scrapbooking stuff. A pile of clothing to donate to Goodwill. My grandmother's high school graduation photograph from 1937, which is still waiting to be hung on a wall even though we've lived here for four years. A baby blanket; a box of stuffed animals; some soccer cleats; a telephone book from 2004.

I fully expect a moving van to back up to our front door someday and for a man with a clipboard, chewing the end of a damp cigar, to say to me, "I've got some goods to unload here, a push mower and three kids' bicycles, a sitz bath and a butter cookie tin full of buttons. You want the guys to carry it on upstairs?"

"Wait just a moment!" I'll splutter. "That's not our push mower! Ours is orange and I'd know it anywhere because it has a Build-a-Bear Workshop sticker on it that Aisling was putting on all our outdoor furniture and stuff to identify it when we first moved here and she couldn't understand why people wouldn't just come up onto the front porch and steal the chairs. And I sold the girls' little pink bikes in a rummage sale years ago! And I don't want someone's old sitz bath -- eeeewwwww!!!! And I have no reason at all to clutter up my house with yet another butter cookie tin full of buttons! Take all that stuff away!" And then I'd make shooing motions at the men who were moving someone else's junk into my house as inexorably as the tide moves in.

"Look, lady," the cigar man would say with a note of impatience in his voice. "This here is McKinney Self-Storage, right? And there's a room upstairs where said items can be stored, right?"

At that point, I'll probably just give in, although I'll probably be called away to spend some time in a special place where I can while away the day's hazy hours by counting all my buttons from my cookie tins over and over and over and over again.

The good news is that I made great headway yesterday, actually unearthing the seat of Ma's beautiful Stickley style rocking chair. Now the only two things on the seat are a crucifix whose nail got knocked off the wall when I was vaccuuming and one lonely Child Craft book: we donated the rest of the set to Goodwill about a month ago and somehow missed that one volume.

Today, we move on to the next quadrant of the room. We may find the entrance to a new world, Jimmy Hoffa, or the holy grail. You never can tell.

Spring cleaning goes upstairs

Okay, here it is:

Today, THE BATHROOM

1. Shower curtain and shower curtain liner washed and rehung.

2. All rugs and other miscellaneous textiles, such as curtains, washed and possibly even ironed and rehung.

3. Linen closet swept, shelves dusted, and purged of all beauty unguents and ointments that are no longer used and have just been glumly sitting there.

4. Walls dusted; everything else washed and wiped down and scrubbed and cleaned until we DARED IT NOT TO GLEAM.

5. Baseboards dusted, floor mopped, corners delved into with a sponge, the place where I spilled hair dye and stained the tile floor mourned over.

6. Drawers and under-sink cabinet likewise purged of all the things that manage to drift in there; I saw a purple velvet hair scrunchie in the second drawer the other day that I know neither girl has worn on her head since they were about six and eight. Why do we still have this? And why am I keeping a set of hot rollers when I threw away the hot roller heater doohickey thing about twelve years ago because it wouldn't get hot anymore? Did I think that some coiffure genie was going to suddenly surprise me with a gift from Clairol or something?

The girls' rooms have already been cleaned for the spring because -- and I don't know why, either, that I've not yet mentioned this -- they now have their own bedrooms. They've been sharing a room since Aisling was one and Meelyn was three and just recently, they decided that they could be on their own. So we unloaded about a million books from the shelves and hauled furniture back and forth across the hallway and while all that work was being done, the girls cleaned out drawers and I swept and dusted and wiped down woodwork and furniture and took blankets down to the laundry room. So thank heaven THAT'S done.

Because whenever I think of my own room and the work that's going to have to be done in there, I just want to give out. Our room is big. And it has a lot of furniture that has to have a sweeper run underneath it, or moved so that the sweeper can do its job more efficiently. And a really big and heavy mattress that makes it difficult to get the bed ruffle on and off without bodily injury. And tall windows that require one to stand on a step stool in order to wash them. And a closet that is full to bursting, since it is a nineteenth century closet serving two twenty-first century people.

And so many, many, many drawers, all of which need to be turned out. *groaann.....*

Grandad gave me two of my great-great-grandmother's chandeliers, both of which were converted from oil to electricity somewhere in the nineteen-teens. They are both beautiful and valuable and I was rocky pleased to get them because we have the perfect house to display them. HOWEVER. The one I wanted to put in our bedroom has a whole bunch of little dingle-dangles and when I think of having to fetch an even taller step stool -- or, as some might call it, a ladder, which are unchancy things even when leaned up against houses, never mind in the middle of the bedroom floor leaned up against the air -- to get all those ten feet up to where the chandelier would be all snuggled up against the ceiling so that I could Windex it and wash the dingle-dangles, well, I am very very happy that my husband (who has been asked approximately five thousand times to please please please put Grandmother's chandeliers up) has not yet summoned the energy to make that happen.

Spring cleaning continues unabated

Yesterday, we spring cleaned the dining room and the downstairs bathroom, which doesn't sound all that bad until you consider that we had to unload and wash everything in the china cabinet, which isn't nearly as fun as it sounds, plus individually vaccuum a bunch of Longaberger baskets collected in that misty, far-off past life in which we had money, plus dust and straighten the books -- about eight million of them, feels like -- in three very large bookcases. Not to mention random baseboard cleaning, floor sweeping, furniture polishing, window washing and all that.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting in the shiny, sparkly living room with a cup of strong, hot tea, wishing to soothe my dust-parched throat, but without the strength to lift the mug to my lips. Meelyn came dragging into the room and slumped on the sofa, her eyes sunken and her hands trembling.

"I'm sure all this cleaning has cut years off my young life," she moaned accusingly. "I've never even seen half that junk in bottom of the china cabinet before. Why do we have it?"

"It isn't junk to me," I said with only a pale shadow of my usual vigor, eyes closed, refusing to raise my head from its resting place on the sofa back. "But what else am I to do with a commemorative plate from the Mt. Summit Christian Church? It's fake willow ware and that church always smelled like mildew, but Nanny and Poppy were married there, so I think of it as an important historical artifact. Someday I'll pass it onto you and you can keep it in your china cabinet."

"Fat chance," scoffed Meelyn. "I'll break it over my knee, more like."

I turned my head sideways and opened one eye to look at her. "No you won't. You'll think, 'This is fake willow ware and Mama said that church always smelled like mildew, but Nanny and Poppy were married there, so I feel sentimentally attached to it as an important historical artifact.'"

Aisling crept into the room, her small face pale and haunted. "My teeth feel gritty," she whispered. "My hair. My hands. Even my eyeballs." That was when I realized that the grey of her complexion wasn't due to actual illness; it was just a skim-coat of the dust we'd been taking off the tops of the bookcases and china cabinet.

Today we moved on to the kitchen, where we completely dismantled the interior of the refrigerator and found a couple of, ahh....science experiments...on the shelves. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. Taking out all those shelves and washing them made my will to live swirl down the sink drain with all the grunge I was scrubbing off with my sponge. Meelyn found some salad dressing with a sell-by date of 2007. I hung my head in shame.

Aisling was clearing out the cabinets where we store the canned and boxed food and the dishes. She tortured me by holding up a can of Eagle Brand condensed milk with an expiration date of 2001 on it. She also threw away a box of Thai noodles with peanut sauce and when I chided her for her wastefulness, complaining that we could have given it to the food pantry, she looked over the tops of her glasses and said coldly, "Mother. The date on that box was November 2006."

Heaven help us all.

On the up side, I found some butter I didn't know I had. Meelyn and Aisling and I had discussed moving our dishes to a different cabinet, and when Aisling got them transferred, we all agreed that they looked very nice indeed, very orderly.

There is still a terrible mess in the kitchen -- food that needs to be put back in the fridge, some clutter on the table, dirty dishes to be stowed in the dishwasher -- but we're on the downside of the kitchen duties. We have to wipe down the stove and dishwasher and go over the fridge with one of those Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, which is possibly the very best cleaning item to ever be invented in the post-modern era, other than the complete line of Swiffer products, all of which I heartily endorse.

We also have to wash the window, stick the sweeper wand back behind the fridge, and finish up by re-organizing the appliance garage, which currently has to be held shut by a bin of dog food in order to prevent an avalanche of baking sheets, casserole dishes, cake pans, mixers, food choppers and the like.

And then alllllll we have to do is GO UPSTAIRS. *sob!*

Spring cleaning

I'm sitting here, panting and sweating, enjoying a fifteen-minute break from spring cleaning duties. Holy Week seemed like a good time to undertake the twice-yearly horrors of finding out what is really lurking underneath the couch and in the back of the under-sink cabinet in the kitchen. (I'll spare you the details.)

First of all, we've been in the process of shoring up our souls during this long season of Lent through the self-disciplinary measures of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Secondly, if deep housecleaning isn't a penitential act of self-discipline, I don't know what is. Third, Easter Sunday will hopefully dawn sunny, warm and bright and we won't have to look through winter-grimed windows as we eat our candy and say, "Eeeuuuwwww...."

Fourth of all, I hate it when my hair gets damp with perspiration and little strands stick to my forehead. I wish Pat were here because, although you'd never know it from his snarky attitude and elevated left eyebrow, but he is a wicked good house cleaner and not only works faster than I do, but also with a great deal more determination, being less likely to sneak off upstairs or outdoors to "get some furniture polish" or "shake out a rug" leaving everyone else to toil on.

Here's our living room/foyer cleaning list:

1) Wash ornaments, glass shelves and inside/outside glass of curio cabinet

2) Dust baseboards and window frames with lambswool duster; use sweeper's wand attachment to go around the floor line of the baseboards

3) Wash all inside window glass (outside is inclement today, thank heaven, I mean, darn it) and polish all glass in framed artwork and photographs

4) Run all throw rugs, curtains, afghans and sofa pillows through washer/dryer

5) Dust walls allllllll ten feet up with Swiffer dust mop (God bless the person who invented all that Swiffer stuff)

6) Move all furniture and vaccuum beneath; any furniture too big to move, attach long wand to sweeper hose and suck all dust and cobwebs from behind

7) Polish all wooden furniture; use brushie sweeper attachment to dust lamp shades

8) Feel sad over the fact that budget won't allow rental of upholstery cleaning machine, ditto carpet cleaning ditto

9) Clean the stairs, banister and balusters

10) Sternly quash feelings of bitter envy for people who have cleaners to come in and do all this crap for them while they go out for lunch -- thinking such thoughts is not Lent-like behavior

We've been at it for nearly three hours, and laws-a-mercy, I am ready to take to the bed. But everything looks very, very lovely. You'd have to see it. All we need to do is move the furniture back, sweep the rest of the floors, polish the wooden furniture and put the pillows back on the sofa and we're done.

Unpopular, unloved and undelighted

"You should write that you're totally unfair," Meelyn groused as I sat down to write this post. So please add 'unfair' to the list above in the title.

Why am I unfair? Because I am making my beautiful, strong, sturdy young daughters help me spring clean our house.* Why? Because it builds their character and helps them have strong teeth -- all that gnashing, you know.

We cleaned the living room and foyer Monday and Tuesday. That cleaning involved wiping down all wooden furniture plus the stair rail and the part of the stairs not covered by carpet, washing the glass in the curio cabinet and dusting the shelves and figurines within, dusting silk plants (I kill the real kind) and other activities that brought a snarl to their lovely lips and dire threats of further manual labor to mine.

Today was their breaking point, however. Their assignment was to tackle the two big bookshelves in the dining/study room and they both chose to forget that one of my requirements for bookshelves is that the books be ordered from tall to short, left to right. It's just how I roll. I told them this on Monday. I told them this on Tuesday. So here we are on Wednesday and they acted like I'd made this job up on the fly to persecute and annoy them. Aisling, who like her mother before her doesn't have the sense to just shut up and get on with it, whined and complained and forced two large, salty drops out of her tear ducts and tested me to the point, after two fair warnings, to say in a calm and pleasant voice, "Don't you wish you'd just minded me? Because now? You're in trouble."

Meelyn remained tight-lipped, shooting me a couple of hard glances that I chose to ignore only because she didn't have the courage to actually meet my eyes and turned her withering gaze away every time I looked in her direction. I coached them through the task and the bookshelves look absolutely beautiful.

Now that they're finished and no longer need my constant supervision, it's time for me to get my own task started, which is taking the display items out of the china cabinet and washing them, wiping down the shelves and shining the glass, then going over the whole body of the piece with the brush attachment on the vacuum, which I find removes dust from carving and other crevices much more efficiently than even a Swiffer.

To keep myself company, I plan to shed a couple of angry tears, shoot myself wicked glances, whine several remarks about how this just isn't faaaaaaaiiiiiir and then punish myself by sending me upstairs to spend time alone in my room, reflecting on my many sins. Or maybe reading my library book.

That'll teach me.


*I am writing this all down so that I'll have it as a handy reference next year. This year, the girls refused to admit that we'd done any spring cleaning last year, even though I clearly remember hauling furniture out from the walls so that we could sweep under it ("Hey! There's that piece of candy that fell out of my mouth that I never could find later!" said Aisling in delight) and going around the edges of all the vinyl floors in the house -- upstairs and downstairs bathrooms -- with scrub brushes.