How to clean shower

This is a step by step directional guide for the cleaning of a shower

1. Wait until it is dirty enough to see the difference. There is nothing feels more pointless then cleaning something that appears clean. Far more satisfying to see the gunge wipe away to reveal the original white. Waiting till somebody suggests cleaning it is slightly too long, so it is a tricky balance.
2. Put on enjoyable music loud enough to sing along too. Bathrooms have good acoustics for singing but maybe do all this when nobody else is around. 
3. Because you do not feel like you are cleaning anything if a spray of some sort is not involved, dig through the cupboard till you find a shower cleaner (or approximation of that). If you are lucky it will be eco friendly. If none produces water with a bit of soap for bubbles works fine.
4. Once the spray is found, spray a little about (if it is a bleach, your bathroom will smell like an indoor pool for a week, also your clothes may turn interesting colours) 
5. Wipe between the tiles and enjoy watching the cleaning process take effect, a brush is also satisfying with a bit of soap because then you rinse it away leaving it lovely and clean. Wipe the glass door and wall and enjoy watching all the soap, shampoo and conditioner marks come off. Again this only requires water and a sponge. If you can't get the soap off with water and a sponge you have really odd soap. (a good way to do this is while you are having a shower yourself, that way your clothes don't get wet and you get to stay in the shower longer)
6. Now that you have cleaned the tiles and glass of visible and easily removed scum, you will notice that there is rough, cloudy, white, droplet-shaped marks on the glass door and wall. The way to get rid of this (and it seems to work) is to sprinkle Bi-carbonate of Soda and White vinegar and allow to soak before rinsing off. Some people advocated for scrubbing with a brush (plastic) some thought just vinegar left on overnight. (Here now comes a problem. How do you sprinkle white powder onto a smooth and vertical surface? None of the posts seemed to think this a problem, I did, so I will now share how to do it. Vinegar is easy, it goes in a squirty bottle)
7. Firstly squirt the glass with vinegar so that the soda sticks, then pour some soda into your hand and rub onto the vinegar. Pour some vinegar into the stiff paste now formed in your hand and, while fizzing, smear over the glass. This is a fairly entertaining pass time, also a messy one. Vinegar, soda, vinegar, soda, until bored. By now the glass should be smeared over with a revolting white paste.
8. Allowing it to dry did not seem to do any harm and adding more vinegar occasionally and watching it fizz was entertaining.
9. Have a shower with hot water (cold is unpleasant) and use your brush to rinse and remove the vinegar/soda solution as well as any softened or dissolved calcium/lime (whichever it is) 
10. Clean up the massive mess of soda and vinegar before your flatmate comes home, probably mopping the floor is a good plan at this point. 
11. Satisfied with a job well done, have a rest with a book :)  

I did this today and, while not all of the white marks were gone, the glass was noticeably clearer. I will do it again next time I have a free morning this week.

washing lines

 My pet hate with washing lines is that I seem to be taller then them. Not by much, but you don't need much to be garroted by the lines, get your hair tangled in the pegs and dong your head on the bar. 

This washing line belongs to a friend of mine and, since I have passionately disliked several washing lines in past jobs, I thought I might show you this absolutely genius one. First good point, it is under cover to prevent rain and dew issues. Second good point, it does NOT bump your head or tangle you hair because it is height adjustable. 

This clever little handle winds the ropes up so the clothes line goes up or down when desired

The other genius thing about this clothes line is that when you have hung out the washing you can wind it all the way to the roof so it is out of the way and the dog can't pull things off the line. 

 The only slightly annoying thing is that it swings about a bit while you are trying to hang out the clothes. Also the ropes have been known to fray through.

Messy Corners

It is interesting that even if a house is mostly tidy, personal mess in corners undoes much of the effect, like having a spotless bedroom and an unmade bed. The corners containing shoes, clothing, toys, important paperwork and treasure are harder to deal with but if I leave them and don't bother cleaning them up then it sort of sets the standard for the non corners. It is ok then to leave things on the floor, table, benches etc as it creeps out from the messy corners.

My housework strategy, such as it is, is to try to generally not leave mess and then when it gets too much, tidy and vacuum everything. It is then very satisfying to see the difference and makes me want to try harder to keep it that way... until it slips through laziness and then the massive clean up.

Cleaning Windows

One day, towards the end of my stay in QLD, the children had the choice of going to town and going to the movies with grandparent or staying at home with me to clean windows. Three of the four children opted that staying and cleaning would be the more enjoyable option. We divvied up the jobs, one child cleaned all the flyscreens (and had a really good time) one squidjeed the outside of the glass and one did the inside and both squidjiers cleaned out the window runners with me. Here is a before shot of a window track,

And here is an after shot. Who knew they were meant to be cream coloured.

It was quite enjoyable, we had music, and water, and job satisfaction, and after working so hard for at least 3 hours, we decided we deserved to go out for lunch.

YUCK

Sorry if you just ate lunch or similar. These gorgeous pictures at the built up slime and hair from the pipes under the bathroom sink.

Pride

The other day, and older lady said to me "come here and I will show you how to clean a toilet" She then proceeded to show me a very sensible way to easily remove dried on muck from the bowl by resting a bit of toilet paper over it and half in the water. The water soaks up and the next flush removes it. I said thankyou very politely.

Yesterday I was cleaning the loo and noticed that there was an opportunity to try this method out, however because of the perceived sanctimonious delivery of the message and the indication that I was unable to clean toilets properly, I chose not to use it. I was using the brush to scrub, like you do, and I considered that this was a weird kind of pride that had me scrubbing a loo in defiance.

Interestingly I kept going and did not feel remotely silly (though I do slightly now)

Laundry Detergent

The laundry detergent we are using at the moment is really irritating. It does the job as well as can be expected considering red dirt doesn't EVER wash out. The problem is when you are tipping the last few drops into the machine, before rinsing it out into the next load.

When you tip the bottle upside down, the liquid detergent, instead of following the usual laws of gravity, falls sideways. This is very noticeable because the only thing it falls sideways onto is the tippers shirt which they had intended to wear all day. Usually the washing is done in the morning which means that the shirt has only been worn for an hour or two before it needs to be changed.

Ironing tv

We have pay tv here, the point of which I can't tell, and the remote control thing I can't drive. When I first got here I tried to use that pay tv thingy to watch while ironing, but I found I spent half my time trying to find a show I wanted to watch.

I soon gave up and began trying dvd's, this was heaps better but I found that if I had not seen it before or if it was an interesting one I would cease my work and stare at it.

Then I discovered musicals, these are best because you can sing along without needing to actually watch it, you can skip to the good bits and songs you like if there is not much washing, and if you miss a bit you can skip back.

My favourite and most watched musicals at the moment are Oliver, Annie and embarrassingly enough, High School Musical. I have watched Annie countless times but couldn't tell you the plot, and same with HSM. Oliver I saw when I was little so I know the story.

Puppies and mops

We have a new puppy where I live, she is about 14 weeks old now and a is Chocolate Labrador. Because of the almost constant rain, the mud comes into the house, and especially the laundry, with a constancy that is irritating. I decided to quickly mop out the muddy dog and people prints from the laundry where is shows up on the white tiles and Friday the puppy joined in. As I mopped back and forth, Friday raced about trying to catch the mop as it swooshed past trying to mop up the never ending puppy prints being created as I mopped and she chased.