home maintenance Archives

CLUG: An Easy, Elegant Way To Store Bikes

May 21, 2014/0 Comments/in FITNESS, Fitness & Health, HOME, Organizing, View All Fitness Stories, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Designed in Vancouver, the CLUG is an easy and elegant way to store bikes.

INEXPENSIVE & AWESOME | If this isn’t a fabulous idea, I don’t know what is: a practically invisible clip that you can attach to almost any surface to store your bike in a space-saving position. Use the stylish CLUG—it’s a blend of the words clip and hug—“to keep your place tidy and display your ride without damaging it or your walls,” say the trio of industrial designers (with a Fuseproject connection) at Vancouver-based Hurdler Studios. They are currently crowd-funding on Kickstarter in an effort to speed their clever product to market. Read more

The Best Way To Care For Bed Pillows

September 5, 2013/2 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Most of us are fastidious about changing bed linens, but pillows often fall by the wayside. Here’s how to keep them fresh.

HOME SCHOOL | Is there anything more ewww inspiring than a big perspiration stain on your bed pillow? Or knowing that in the time it took for the stain to materialize, entire nations of allergy-inducing dust mites have taken up residence inside the cushion where you lay your sweet head every night?

While most of us are fastidious about keeping sheets and pillowcases clean, pillows often fall by the wayside. Here’s what we know about keeping bed pillows fresh and in tiptop shape. Read more

How To Remove Oil Stains From Clothes

July 23, 2013/0 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, Styling Tips, View All Fashion Stories, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Here is a dead easy way to remove any cooking oil stain from clothing.

THIS STUFF WORKS | Quick, which home cleaning product has grease-cutting properties as a big part of its raison d’être? Anyone who has ever watched daytime television even once knows the answer is dishwashing liquid. What I didn’t know until this past weekend is that the grease-cutting effectiveness of liquid detergent on pots and pans can also be applied to clothing. I learned this the hard way, of course, when I dropped a big glob of salad dressing containing olive oil on my A&F Bermuda shorts. Read more

Yes, You Can Get Your Kids To Pick Up Their Dirty Towels

July 15, 2013/0 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, HOW-TO KNOW-HOW, SAVE EFFORT, SAVE ENERGY, View All Home Stories, View All How-To Stories /by Editor

How to get your messy kids to stop leaving soggy bath towels in a pile in their room.

NAG LESS| Have you ever experienced Disappearing Towel Phenomenon? This occurrence is not to be confused with Disappearing Object Phenomenon, a documented paranormal event where random objects mysteriously disappear and then inexplicably turn up later. In the case of Disappearing Towel Phenomenon, the objects are neither random nor their whereabouts unknown. Parents of teenagers know precisely where to look for their vanished bath towels: in multiple, soggy piles on the floor in their offspring’s bedrooms. Read more

Finally, Attractive Microfiber Dishtowels

June 21, 2013/3 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, FOOD, HOME, Home & Garden, Tools & Techniques, View All Food Stories, View All Home Stories /by Editor

These microfiber dishtowels look stylish in the way that linen ones do—and function superbly, too.

GET THIS | I can’t help but think that if for some mysterious reason Fog Linen Work, a Japanese company that produces an exquisite line of linen products coveted by design devotees everywhere, were to suddenly go rogue and use microfiber rather than Lithuanian linen to make their kitchen towels, they might make a waffle-weave product like the one pictured here from the American company Eurow & O’Reilly. “Yes, aren’t these towels awesome,” my designer friend Margo concurred when I enthused about how attractive and effective hers were as we stood hand-drying dishes after dinner at her place awhile back. Read more

Pusher Broom Love: Meet The Schmutz

March 27, 2013/0 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, GARDEN, HOME, Home & Garden, Tools & Shortcuts, View All Garden Stories, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Swept away by a funny looking broom with the funny sounding name Schmutz Haken. (VIDEO)

BUY RIGHT | When it comes to sweeping indoors, I prefer an angled broom with a dirt-catching split-fibre tip that can wiggle into corners (Vileda makes a good one). Outdoors, I want a broad brush that can cover more ground and sweep away heavy debris so I always go for a pusher, though I had no idea how inefficient most push brooms are until I tried a Schmutz Haken, the silly looking sweeper pictured here. Read more

Sink Clogged? Try The Drain-o Volcano

March 13, 2013/0 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, View All Home Stories /by Editor

Here’s how to clear clogged drains without commercial drain cleaners. It’s simple science, really.

CREATIVE SOLUTION | Try as I might, I can’t seem to keep hair out of the bathroom drain, where it diabolically wraps itself around greasy soap residue to form stubborn, icky clogs. Since I dislike using harsh (and expensive) drain cleaners, I tackle drains first with a simple kettle full of boiling water,* hoping to dissolve the hairy sludge. But when hot water doesn’t dislodge the muck, I revisit my seventh grade science project—The Erupting Volcano.

Here’s How To Get Rid Of Evil Clothes Moths

February 20, 2013/1,021 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, Goods & Services, HOME, View All Home Stories /by Editor

How one Frugalbits warrior waged a holey war against an empire of evil casemaking clothes moths.

THE FIX | There are many beautiful species of moth in the world (like the Io moth pictured here), but the villainous casemaking clothes moth is not one of them (CLICK HERE if you want to have a look).

As someone who has battled clothes moths, and hopefully won my holey war, let me predict this: if you leave your windows open a lot in the summer and have lovely 100 percent natural fibre garments (regular wool or cashmere; silk; fine cotton—whatever) evil brown casemaking clothes moths will find them, they will lay eggs, and their damn little label-savvy larvae will feast on your Hugo Boss, Mackage and Missoni.

Here’s how I retaliated when moths went to war with me. Read more

Get Rid Of Stinky Washer Once & For All

January 28, 2013/17 Comments/in Cleaning & Maintenance, HOME, Home & Garden, View All Home Stories /by Editor

What you need to know about eliminating the disgusting smell in your front-load washing machine.

THE FIX | Stink happens. If you have one of those pricey front-load washing machines and do not micromanage its maintenance, the chances are great that the tub will develop a foul odour and your freshly washed clothes will eventually take on the sickly sweet smell of pond scum. Read more

Can House Cleaning Make You Happier?

June 11, 2012/2 Comments/in Fitness & Health, HEALTH, View All Health Stories, Well Being /by Editor

Get out the squeegee, Margie—doing housework may well be the way to improve your state of mind.

HAPPY TALK | We don’t need social scientists or surveys to confirm that having a clean house is a natural mood booster. But did you know that actually doing the cleaning may improve your mood as much as having a house that’s clean? In her new book, The First 20 Minutes: Surprising science reveals how we can exercise better, train smarter, live longer, author Gretchen Reynolds reports that a recent large-scale survey done in Europe found an “inverse association between housework and distress.”

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