First, I just want to tell you that the way my plates are lined up in rainbow order is purely a coincidence. I am not that weird.

A few months ago we replaced a really old dishwasher with a new modern one, and while I was mostly satisfied with it (It’s so quiet!), it sometimes seemed to be lacking in its ability to fully clean the dishes. I’d have to rewash or rinse them by hand, defeating the whole purpose in having a dishwasher.

I was almost to the point of having to accept that they don’t make things like they used to, and I was going to be spending even more time at the kitchen sink. I don’t mind washing dishes by hand actually, but there are a lot of them.

Fortunately I found the solution to my dishwasher dilemma, and it was an easy one to fix.

 Make your dishwasher more effective with these quick tips:

1. Check the sprayer arm. When I opened the dishwasher door during a wash cycle, I learned that some of my utensils are too tall, and they blocked the sprayer arm from rotating. Problem solved! Also look at the holes on the sprayer arm to make sure they are not clogged. Use a toothpick if you need to dislodge anything.

2. Check the drain. Look inside the bottom of the dishwasher and remove any food or objects from the filter. Run the garbage disposal to clear it out before turning on the dishwasher since they share the same drain.

3. Don’t overuse detergent. It’s a mistake to assume you should always fill up the detergent cup. Check the manual and your detergent. On mine, filling it to the first line (about a third) is enough. Too much detergent can leave residue and etch your glasses.

4. Check your water temperature. If it takes a long time for the hot water to reach your kitchen sink, that means the dishwasher isn’t getting enough hot water at the beginning either, and that makes it harder to wash away the food particles and grease. If you need to, turn on the dishwasher after you’ve used hot water at the kitchen sink.

5. Clean the inside of your dishwasher. Grease, detergent residue, and calcium deposits build up inside your dishwasher. You can use vinegar to wash them away. On a regular basis (every few months or so), run a wash cycle while your dishwasher is empty. Don’t use detergent, but turn on the dishwasher and let it run for a few minutes until water starts to fill up the bottom. Then add one or two cups of white vinegar to the water and let it finish the cycle.

Sometimes using a dishwasher is an experiment in finding the right combination for hard or soft water, the detergent, and a rinse aid.

See the comments for this post: 5 Tips to Improve Your Dishwasher

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If you want to make some real changes in your home, every Monday we’re going to take action on a trouble spot. It won’t be hard, but it will make a big impact. Are you with us?

Are you ready to make some changes? I sure am. The place we’re going to start is the pile of clothes in the bedroom, the one that’s beside your bed or on your chair.

Why start there? Because I know you usually clean your bedroom last.

We’re going to put away the clothes you took off before you collapsed into bed.

You probably wore them once and thought you might wear them again. They weren’t dirty enough to throw in the laundry, but since they’ve been sitting in a pile, you don’t know if they’re dirty or clean.

How to decide if clothes are dirty or clean:

1. Do a visual check for any dirt or stains.

2. Sniff your clothes to see if they smell clean. (Don’t check socks and underclothes! Always assume those are dirty.)

If your clothes look and smell clean, then they ARE clean, even if you’ve worn them. Hang them back up in your closet or stack them in your drawer with the rest of your clean clothes.

If you have lots of clothes in your pile, you can put them all in the laundry and give yourself a fresh start.

See the comments for this post: Clear the Clutter: The Pile of Clothes in Your Bedroom

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A dust mop can clean 1000 square feet of hardwood floors in less than five minutes.

I wanted to find one that was extra wide and good quality, so I bought it at a janitor-supply shop. It has a machine-washable cotton head (air dry). It works without cords, without electricity, without motors, without noise, and without attachments. It’s just a dust mop, but it really works.

Because it’s so wide (24 inches, though it can be longer) the cleaning goes fast. As you push it, it glides across the floor and the head swivels to make the turns without your picking up the mop. I don’t use any sprays or treatments on it; the cotton fibers do a good job holding the dust. Then you shake it out, and wash the mop head once every few weeks.

I highly recommend it for caring for your hardwood floors, along with a good door mat.

See the comments for this post: Quick Clean Hardwood Floors

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Our kitchen is in progress right now. We have a couple of new things so far, but no backsplash, curtains, or art on the walls yet. I’m just showing peeks of the kitchen until it’s finished, hopefully, soon. (It looked like this previously.)

I’m no stranger to the way that smaller things can cost more than bigger things. The small houses in the historic district cost much more than the massive houses on the edge of town. One good writing pen costs more than the cheap pack of six. And you can’t just buy one battery, you have to buy the entire package and find a place in your apartment to store the rest you don’t need. Travel-size and apartment-size, while practical, often carry a premium price for their small design.

So it came as no surprise when I looked for a smaller counter-depth refrigerator that they cost significantly more than what I would consider to be a normal fridge according to American standards.

I looked for weeks, reading reviews and studying dimensions of cubic feet, but I saw no clear winner. The dozens of refrigerator models aren’t very different, after all; they’re made by the three or four companies who own the variety of brands. It’s hard to be impressed when an expensive appliance’s life expectancy is just 7 to 10 years according to the salesperson. What happened to quality? We used to expect better. But I digress.

IKEA had a model at a reasonable price that was a true counter-depth of 24 inches, but it was out of stock for months. We couldn’t wait for it. We needed a fridge for the house we just bought, and though our kitchen is a large size, a regular-sized refrigerator unit would have blocked the window.

We had our sights set on having a fridge that was smaller. That was one of the changes we decided to bring back with us from Italy. In Florence we became so accustomed to our dorm-size refrigerator with just barely enough room to store our fresh food that we didn’t want to go back to a deep fridge with enough food stored inside to rival a corner market.

A dorm-size fridge might really be too small, but a counter-depth fridge seemed just right. We liked how they look as well.

One fortuitous day we browsed through the aisles of yet another appliance store, studying the models that all looked the same, and we came across one lone fridge with a big yellow sign. It was a scratch-and-dent markdown with a steep discount that put it squarely in our price range, thanks to a burned-out light bulb and a small dent above the handle. We became excited when the dimensions fit the space we had for it perfectly.

The dent makes me happy every time I look at it.

So that’s how we now have a pretty little counter-depth fridge in our kitchen, but still it’s only half-full. We keep our fresh food for the week in it, and when it’s time to go to the grocery store at the beginning of the week, our fridge usually looks like this:

Clean and almost empty, ready to fill with fresh, new groceries.

I have so enjoyed having a smaller fridge that I can easily assess what’s in it, reach everything, and not let food go to waste. I find that an enormous fridge full of food can be overwhelming, and I can’t seem to remember what’s in it. Most of our food goes in the pantry, anyway. We use up what we have, and we don’t throw out as much.

Everything is fresh, and I never need to clean it out.

Cleaning the stainless steel:

When I titled this post about how the fridge cleans itself, I was referring to the inside, but the stainless steel on the outside of the fridge is easy to clean too. I spray it with H2, which is an all-purpose cleaning concentrate that I use for most everything, and then I wipe it in the direction of the grain with a microfiber cloth. It’s almost perfectly streak-free, but no one is looking closely enough to inspect my fridge. (If you’ve used polishes or other oil-based cleaners such as Pledge on the stainless steel already, then this method may not work as well on the residue those leave behind.)

See the comments for this post: The Fridge That Cleans Itself

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It’s a beater to clean your rugs, but mostly it’s a way to relieve some pent up frustration while you clean your rugs.

Hard day? Whap.

Bothered and annoyed? Whap.

Don’t hold back now.

Whap.

Whap.

Whap.

There now. Don’t you feel better?

See the comments for this post: They Say House Cleaning is Good Therapy

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Today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite things: clotheslines.

Clotheslines? Oh yes. We’re really getting crazy now.

They’re such a normal part of life in other countries, but since they’re less common in the states, we’ll share tips and advice for people who may just be getting started with line drying their laundry.

I love hanging clothes out to dry even though it takes a few minutes longer than tossing them in the dryer. Hanging clothes is a peaceful and calming ritual.

You methodically hang your clothes up to dry, and nature takes care of it. It’s quiet too; there is no loud appliance. It doesn’t seem right to me to heat up the inside of your house with a dryer and then cool it down again with the air conditioner when it’s already hot enough to dry your clothes in a couple of hours outside during the summer.

In Venice some people would hang their clothes on lines over the canals. I don’t know how they didn’t lose all their clothes. I regularly dropped something from the clothesline once a week, and my neighbors below had to give it back to me.

This drying rack above is what we used in Venice, and it’s by far my favorite style. Drying racks are perfect for when you don’t want the neighbors to see you have polka dot undies. It holds a lot even though it folds up flat like an ironing board and is lightweight. It doesn’t tip over from the slightest knock.

With drying racks you can quickly drape your clothes over the rods without taking time to pin them. You can move them around and out of your way, or inside when it rains.

We didn’t have a drying rack in our apartment in Florence, so during winter I hung clothes over the radiator and the bed rails, and they would usually dry by the next morning.

If you get tired of hanging your clothes around your apartment, you can point a fan at your clothes to simulate a breeze and speed up the process.

I planned ahead and did laundry by the weather. When I didn’t know what the weather would be that day, I could look across the garden to my neighbors’ apartments. If they were hanging out their laundry that morning, I could count on the day being nice.

I don’t do more ironing with line drying than when I use the dryer, but my family wears a lot of knits. Smooth clothes as you hang them to minimize wrinkles. If you hang shirts upside down and pin them by the hem, you won’t find a hard crease in the noticeable middle or shoulders of your shirt.

I like the convenience of leaving clothes on the rack until I have time to put them away, and they won’t get wrinkled, as opposed to when you leave a load of clothes in the dryer for too long.

Some people think that line-dryed clothes are too stiff, but I don’t find that to be an issue. They might be a little stiff when you put them on in the beginning, but they soften up after you wear them for a minute or two. I skip fabric softener because I’m particular about not wanting fragrance or residue on my clothes, but one alternative is to use vinegar as a softener in the rinse cycle.

Optionally, you can let clothes tumble in the dryer for a few minutes before you hang them, or just give them a good shake as you remove them from the line.

With line drying you never have to worry about the heat setting a stain in your clothes, causing crunchy elastic, or shrinking your new cotton blouse.

The sun makes your whites whiter. To avoid fading, hang your colored clothes in the shade or turn them inside out.

Lint can be a problem, so try to identify which of your garments are likely to shed lint and wash them separately, or use a lint brush.

Using a line can save you some money. Do you know how much it costs to run your dryer? I wrote about how to figure out the cost of electricity for your dryer, your computer, and other appliances. It costs me about sixty cents to run a load in the dryer.

In a previous Texas apartment we had enough space to hang a clothesline on our patio. We used a simple pulley, and you can see how we installed it here.

I have a small drying rack that is just right for hanging a load of diapers. When you put baby clothes and diapers in the sun to dry, you don’t need to use as much stain remover product. The sun makes baby poo stains disappear. It works like magic.

Sometimes drying racks can be more expensive than you think they should be. If it’s hard to find a drying rack in your area, try Amazon. The drying racks at IKEA have received favorable reviews. I want to get one of these clip hangers for little things.

See the comments for this post: Dry Your Laundry Like You’re in Italy: How to Use Drying Racks and Clotheslines

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For today’s docket:

1. Find place to live.

2. Create new business plan.

3. Teach child to read.

Or:

4. Look at House & Garden magazine from May 1986.

A welcome distraction, care to join me? Let’s see what style lessons we can glean from twenty-five years ago.

Lesson #1: When you must move a pillow to sit down on your couch, that’s 28 pillows too many.

Lesson #2: Even though something might be called “classic” that doesn’t make it so.

Lesson #3: Carpet in the bathroom: not a good idea then, it still isn’t.

Lesson #4: Nature always looks good.

And now for a word from our sponsor: The new Fiat Panda has more muscle. (I am so thankful the body-building trend is over.)

Lesson #5: It’s nicer not to seat your guests so close to fire.

Lesson #6: When everything matches perfectly down to the drapes, your room is guaranteed to look outdated.

And lastly: The best way to distract someone from noticing you have too many of something is to put it all in rainbow order.

(The nail polish is Sephora’s “Brunette on the Internet.” It seemed fitting.)

See the comments for this post: House & Garden: Style Lessons from May 1986

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The weather this winter in Italy has been hard to predict, unless I predict “drizzle” and then I’m right sixty percent of the time. I’ve found that the best way to know if the day is going to be nice is to look across to my neighbors and see if they’re hanging out sheets, tablecloths, and more laundry. Then I know we’ll have nice weather at least for a few hours. Otherwise I’ll be drying my laundry inside over the bed rails.

It has been so cold living in this old building. We have radiators (but we don’t control the thermostat), and we have a couple of electric heaters, but we try to be conservative with them. What a difference modern windows and caulk can make! We’ve piled and stacked up our blankets and pillows around the door frames to keep out the cold wind, and that did help. I used to gaze enviously at vintage windows with architectural charm and think how grand they were. With the weather being cold, I now look at our arched windows and all I can think is “drafty.” My life is going to change with the spring. It starts on Sunday, you know that, right? I can’t wait.

I can’t wait to throw open the doors and windows every day without thinking about losing precious heat. I want to air everything out.

This is the vacuum we’ve been using. Just like everything else in our apartment, it has its own personality. The hose is held on by masking tape. It rolls around on wheels like a little robot. It works much better now than it did before since we took it apart and cleaned out the inside. Do you know how to make your vacuum work better? You need to clean it out at least once a year. It makes a huge difference.

Next on my list is to clean some of the buildup in the kitchen of residue from the gas burners on the stove. And maybe clean the windows too.

A few helpful posts related to spring cleaning:

• Cleaning Products: Are you spending more than needed?

• My Top 5 Cleaning “Ah-Ha” Moments

• Easy Home Improvement Projects Anyone Can Do

I know it will be a few more weeks before the weather warms up, but I’m ready for it.

See the comments for this post: Cleaning for Spring (as if that makes it come sooner)

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My favorite place to shop is the grocery store, so when I wanted to put something new and cheery on my mantle, I thought of food. What could be more perfect for apartment renters than decor that doesn’t have to be stored once the holidays are over?

Clementines always make me think of December. I put our bags of coffee on the mantle too.

The popcorn garland was so fun to make. It’s a craft with built-in snacking potential.

A few more ideas:

Gumdrop trees – I remember making these when I was little.

Dough ornaments – You can roll out the dough and cut ornaments with cookie cutters.

Nuts in a bowl.

Coffee beans in a bowl.

Candy canes.

Cinnamon stick ornaments and tassels.

Last year I decorated with cranberries in the advent wreath and orange slices on a garland.

The walnut ornaments we made last year are hanging over the door this year looking quite festive.

See the comments for this post: Holiday Decorations Made with Food

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This week I noticed a disturbing trend in how I pick up my home so it will look nice. For years I’ve been doing it wrong.

Here’s a sample:

1. Wash dishes.

2. Put away clean laundry.

3. Pick up toys in the living room.

4. Help kids pick up their room.

5. Run out of time before I pick up my room.

Day 2:

1. Clean hand prints off windows and mirrors.

2. Dust living room.

3. Vacuum.

4. Run out of time before I pick up my room.

Day 3:

1. Wash dishes.

2. Put away more laundry.

3. Get the art materials off the dining table.

4. Sweep the floors.

5. Run out of time before I pick up my room.

Why do I spend my time picking up every other area in my home except the place that’s mine? No more! My room is going to get first treatment once in a while, more than making the bed.

Right now my desk is topped with papers to go through and remains from the makings of a last-minute tiny Tinkerbell costume. My hope chest supports a basket full of clothes to store away and the half-clean clothes that I left there before I crawled into bed.

I want my room to give rest and beauty, not the projects I haven’t gotten to yet. My bedroom is not a dumping ground.

See the comments for this post: I’ve Been Cleaning My Home All Wrong

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