Elegant Survival
Stylish Living on a Shoestring
M-J's Household Hints
Sunday, March 23, 2008 Microfiber Dust-Mop and Photos Copyright M-J de Mesterton 2007 Update: I have found that a microfiber rag will adhere to a sponge-mop. Tie the ends and you will be ready to clean and polish a smooth floor with very little moisture. Fill a one-litre spray bottle with water, leaving room to add a third-cup of white vinegar and one teaspoon of lavender oil. Shake it. This is my preferred cleaning fluid. Mist the floor with it, and go over it with the dry microfibre mop until it is dry and shiny. This cleaning mist can be used on sinks and fixtures, mirrors, microwave ovens, jugs, anything that needs cleaning and shining about the house. It is also a deodorant. The scent of the lavender overpowers that of the vinegar. Careful--this method of cleaning is so easy that you may be cleaning as a hobby if you don't temper your enthusiasm! M-J's Miscellaneous Hints Keep newly-polished silver free of tarnish by storing it with a piece of aluminum foil (one of the safer uses for aluminum). Omit the fabric-softener when washing and drying towels. It leaves a coating which reduces their absorbency. I prefer a sun-dried white cotton towel, which is excellent for an invigorating rub. Lightweight cotton towels for the kitchen and bath can all be washed in a solution of detergent and a little bleach. They dry much faster than coloured velour ones, and lend a look of sparkling cleanliness. Lightweight, white cotton towels may be bought in bulk at wholesale stores like Sam's Club in the U.S. To keep rarely-used garlic fresh, peel it and store it in a jar in the freezer. Use salt in your wash-water to help remove stains. To rid old books of odors, dust the pages with talcum powder, and let them sit for a day. Brush out the powder. To make cake rise higher, add a half-teaspoon of white vinegar to the batter. Use old-fashioned wooden clothespins to close bread and chip-bags. They’re cute, easier to manipulate than twist-ties, and are cheaper than chip-clips. To remove red and burgundy wines from tablecloths after dinner parties, wash them immediately afterwards in the machine, with the laundry detergent of your choice, in hot water with the addition of a half-cup of white vinegar and perhaps some table salt. This routine has always worked for me. Conserving Candle Wax I have noticed a jump in candle-prices. Many candles are unusable before their wax disappears. Then, you may have a considerable amount of unused candle wax which could go to waste. I save old candle wax, scented or plain, and when I have enough of it, I melt it in an old pan and pour it into a container into which I have put a standing wick. Then I have a new candle. The wicks can be purchased at crafts stores.
Cut Cable Costs
Additionally, you can purchase classic movies for a few dollars apiece and create a movie library. Considering what is actually available on premium cable television, and the abundance of things you would never watch but are paying for nonetheless, it is worth cutting it from your budget. Easter Cupcakes
copyright M-J de Mesterton 2008
Cover an old, unwanted cookie sheet with beautiful wrapping paper when you bring cupcakes to someone.
I did this with my old aluminum baking pan for transporting these cakes to a friend's house. M-J's MICROFIBER MOP INSTRUCTIONS
Because Swiffer-type cloths are expensive, and not re-usable after a certain point, I now use large microfiber cloths for dusting furniture and floors. They pick up just as much dust and hair as the aforementioned product. Large microfiber cloths are available in bulk at Sam's Club, in blue, yellow, chartreuse and orange. At our last purchase, they were 15 USD for 25 of them. They're soft and washable. Here is what I devised today for dusting floors and cars--it leaves those disposable electrostatic gadgets in the dust:
M-J's Home-Made Microfiber Dust-Mop
Take three large microfiber cloths and lay them on top of each other, at varying angles. Center your stack of cloths over the end of an old broom/mop stick, and then, a couple of inches from the end of stick, strap them on with a tightly-pulled, heavy-duty plastic cinch (available at Sam's and office-supply stores). Invert this and run it around your floor, under furniture, or over your car. Clean the mop by shaking it outdoors. You could even use a lint-brush on it. When it gets too dirty to be useful, the cinch can be cut off and the cloths released for machine-washing. Repeat construction process after they are dry, using a fresh cinch (I use multipurpose ties/cinchos by Thomas Betts). Attach the Cloths to the Broomstick; Invert and Use Dust-Mop
Keep defunct candles in a plastic bag until you have enough to melt. A plain metal pot is best, and I recommend melting wax together from similarly colored candles. Shown are stubs from beeswax tapers and a yellow pillar candle. Old wicks and metal anchors for them are not a problem; just use a metal ladle to transfer hot wax, omitting the debris. Caution: don't melt used candles in a microwave oven--there will likely be a metal wick or anchor in it.
Bathtub Safety
After our traditional bath-mat by a famous rubber-product company let us down--or, rather, practically threw us against the shower wall in a fatal fall, we've thrown it away and done some shopping. We found a reliable, technologically advanced bath-mat at Wal-Mart. It is a thing of beauty, and holds fast to the bottom of the bath-tub. A weak bath-mat can send you flying to an early fate. This was a shocking revelation, and we consider ourselves lucky to be alive, having dodged a dangerous accident.
Here is the product offered on Wal-Mart.com. An analogous mat can be found inside Wal-Mart stores, called "Heavy Duty Bath Mat", Commercial Grade Vinyl
Here is the product offered on Wal-Mart.com. An analogous mat can be found inside Wal-Mart stores, called "Heavy Duty Bath Mat", Commercial Grade Vinyl
A Versatile Tool: the Baby Wipe
We keep a good stock of White Cloud Baby Wipes, both unscented and lightly scented, in our home. There are many applications for them, and we've never had children! In our opinion, the wipes offered by top national brands are
just not as good. White Cloud Baby Wipes are very soft, and extremely strong. They also have a delicate, lovely scent. The unscented ones just smell like aloe. There are uses for both.
France's Microfibre Specialist
Elegant Survival Mugs
Click on images to enlarge...
Photos Copyright M-J de Mesterton 2007
Sure, they're about five dollars US each at Amazon.com, but Wal*Mart has these Anchor Hocking 16-ounce glass coffee mugs for $2.50. I love them for coffee or tea. Anchor Hocking's "café" style coffee mugs are made of sturdy glass, and have received good reviews on Amazon.com.
In Elegant Survival's Household Management Tips (farther down this post), I wrote about the safety-measure of always using glass containers to reheat food and drinks in the microwave, and mentioned my own glass coffee mug. It was colour-coated green glass, made in Germany by Leonardo. After four years of use, I chucked it yesterday. I had originally purchased several of them, together with their expensive "swing" glasses, believing that they were truly made of coloured glass. The coating was wearing off, and had been whitened by detergent. With my new Anchor Hocking Café Style Coffee Mugs, there will be no such problem, because the glass is really green, not just coated. These mugs by Anchor Hocking are superior to the Leonardo ones, and cost only one-fourth as much. Trust them for safely re-heating your coffee or tea. I like to call them The Elegant Survival Mugs.
Postscript: if you'd like to spend more on glass mugs, I've found these elegant ones from an American company.
My favorite Elegant Survival Mugs: Brown
Click to enlarge image: photo copyright M-J de Mesterton, April 2008
Elegant Survival Bath Towels
There's nothing more luxurious in the salle de bains than a high stack of neatly folded white, line-dried bath towels. Forget about fussy velour towels in "designer" colours, those things that take hours and lots of energy to dry, sometimes even encouraging the growth of mildew. At spas, you will find the 100% cotton, white terry cloth bath towels that are allowed to dry naturally on a clothesline, and with which you can give yourself an invigorating rubdown because of their rougher texture. Using fabric-softener is anathema, as it will render your towels unabsorbent and too soft for the desired skin-exfoliation. If you have the luxury of a private, sunny courtyard, sun-dried towels are easily attainable. In the desert, a bath-towel may dry outdoors in less than an hour. One can usually find bundles of cotton terry cloth towels at discount and club stores for a very low price--as little as two dollars apiece. Another advantage of their being all-cotton and white is that these cotton terry cloth towels can be bleached--just add a half-cup of bleach to your soapy, hot wash-water for a large load; a quarter cup for a small one. Always dilute it before adding it to your wash.
These plain white towels can be embroidered--that's the purpose of the little non-terry strip toward the end of the towel--it serves as a cross-stitching or embroidery platform. And remember, that the lighter and thinner the composition of the towel, the more quickly it dries. The lighter the towel, the more energy you save.
~~Copyright M-J de Mesterton, April 2008
Elegant Survival's Household Management Tips
New Additions, November 29th, 2007:
Microwave Safety
Always cook with glass dishes when using a microwave oven. Even if your crockery was made after the lead-poisoning alert, it could still be produced by a manufacturer whose products have slipped past the inspections/standards process. I have one glass mug in which I reheat my coffee. Anchor Hocking glass mugs are microwave-safe, as are inexpensive glass dishes and cups made by Pyrex, Corningware, and Arcoroc of France.
Speaking of Coffee...
I've found that Douwe Egberts is my favourite brand of coffee in Europe, and I am also very fond of their Senseo pods which are used in the eponymous brewing system. I liked it so well that I bought them for two of my friends. However, the pods can be punitively expensive if one wants to have five or six cups a day of Senseo coffee. In my Utopian vision of a perfect world, that is what I would do. But, I'm loath to be so self-indulgent, and only use the Senseo brewer when I have guests. For daily coffee in the U.S., I recommend Yuban. You can purchase a two-and-a quarter pound can of Yuban Original Colombian Coffee for about $5.00 US. It smells heavenly--even more so than Chock-Full-O'Nuts in New York claims to do. I like to percolate it in a stainless steel coffee pot. It tastes wonderful, for those who don't like their coffee beans blackened beyond recognition Starbucks-style. Speaking of coffees available in the U.S.A., I subscribed to Gevalia Swedish coffees for twelve years until I sensed that their quality had gone down--that was just before I discovered the Senseo system. If you use powdered, non-dairy creamers, avoid Coffee-Mate. It contains aluminum (see my health section). Brands that don't are offered at Sam's and Wal*Mart; anywhere else, you only have to read the ingredients and see that your choice doesn't include aluminates (popular flow-agents) of any kind.
