Life Changing

Okay.

I just spent a ridiculous amount of money at the store today. I’ve had to cut out a few household staples lately, and I fully hoped to temporarily reinstate them today. BUT… no such luck.
This means I came home without mopping solution (I’ve been using vinegar and water, and though it works, my husband pretty much hates the smell).
It also means I came home without cold cereal (we always have a TON of oatmeal on hand, and it works as a healthy [albeit bland and mascot-less] substitution).

Since I’ve instituted my new routine, I’m running out of cleaning supplies left and right. I’m also realizing how much cleaning I wasn’t doing. Still, as I wandered the store aisles, I had to put back the cleaning supplies I had stuffed in my cart.
Really: at the end of the day, I had $30 left to spend and one last stop to make. On that last stop, I had OVER $100 worth of stuff in my cart… MOST of which I needed! I put back what I didn’t absolutely need -and most of what I put back was cleaning supplies.
I sorta winced, but I knew it would all be okay because I have a pinterest account, and this week I discovered something that has given me more joy than Mr. Clean and his radiance ever could.

I won’t wax rhapsodic about vinegar, as I have done in the past. I will rhapsodic about peroxide and baking soda.
Thanks to pinterest, I was guided to a blog that hailed peroxide and baking soda much in the same manner I did vinegar. No, really. She even made references to the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding AND used the same picture I did.
So we’re pretty much twinsies.
You can read her post HERE, and I highly recommend that you do.

When I went shopping today, a HONKING bag of baking soda was almost at the top of my list. At the tip-tip-top (where the Grinch took his bag to dump it) was peroxide.
Mira:

We got home around 10 pm. I put some of the groceries away (the delicate ones that need my now mold-free fridge) (you know you liked that visual. you’re welcome), and then I took my soda and peroxide and made a paste.
It is literally the same consistency as the paste you swear you didn’t eat in Kindergarten.
Using my fingers, I applied the paste to my muffin tin.

Side note (and please stay with me): have you ever met my sewing machine? My husband gave it to me a few years ago for mother’s day. I am a hands-on learner, and that poor machine has taken the beating of a lifetime. It’s slowly giving out, one function at a time. If I were a SMART person, I would watch the DVD and carefully learn how to sew. Given that I’m not smart… I just started hacking away at whatever fabric I could get my hands on.
I jammed that machine so many times.
So very many.
Just thinking about it makes my blood pressure eek up a bit.

Anyway, my poor kitchen pans have been treated thus. I have learned how to cook on them, yes I have. They’re been adorably fastidious about the whole thing -the dears.
Seven years later, despite their fastidiousness, they look a’fright.
A.
Fright.

Most all of my pans are wedding gifts.
I have tried EVERYTHING to get these pans clean. I finally chalked their fate up to doom and chastised them for being so vain about it.
And then.
AND THEN.
I made a pinterest account and read a blog post that made me stand over my sink at 10 pm and scrub paste onto a filthy pan and scrub and scrub and scrub and cackle with joy despite the fact that I’d spent the entire day wrangling children who shout “JESUS!” in the middle of Sam’s Club when I ask them where they got their big muscles AND spending so much money that it made me a little sick.
Serious joy.

Note: It was 10 pm.  This job was pretty half-arsed, and the results are amazing.  Never have I obtained such satisfactory results with half-arsery.

As of now: I’m instating monthly beauty treatments for my pans. Vanity, Ho!
(Also: this mixture has really done a number on all sorts of crud of my kitchen counters. And my husband was SO impressed with the muffin tin when I was done with it that he actually went SO FAR AS TO SAY that it looked 2 years old rather than 7. You should have seen that pan blush.)