Eco Friendly Drain Opener Alternatives

Hey there Perfect Shine readers 🙂 We hope your Friday is off to a good start. In the past we’ve shared a pretty common DIY recipe for naturally unclogging your drains… but not everybody feels like making their own cleaning products. So today we wanted to share some safe, natural, and environmentally friendly product alternatives to traditional drain openers.

Earth Enzymes – this product uses naturally occurring enzymes to “digest” solids clogging up your drains, helping to clear and maintain household drains (like those in your tub, toilet, and kitchen sink). You can pickup 2lbs of enzymes for just $9.79 online.

Earth Enzymes – $9.79 for 2lbs

Biokleen Bac- Out Drain Care – this new product from one of our favorite brands, Biokleen utilizes enzymes and live cultures to clear clogged or slow drains. You can order a bottle for just $7.49 from Vitacost!

Biokleen Bac-Out Drain Care = $7.49 from Vitacost

What are your favorite products for keeping your drains flowing quickly?

 

DIY Grease Busting Spray

Cleaning Supplies for Spring Cleaning (Photo credit: Chiot’s Run)

 

Happy Friday everybody! Does your range need a pick me up after cooking dinner all week? Use this simple recipe to remove grease from any appliance surface. It’s affordable, effective, and safer for your family and the environment than conventional store-bought cleaners! What’s not to love, and an added bonus is it smells amazing!

 

Supplies:

 

• 1 empty spray bottle
• 2 cups distilled water (using distilled water prevents the spray from going bad before you use it all)
• 1/4 cup oil-based soap (like this one by Murphy)
• 10 drops of either rosemary, lavender, or citrus essential oil, or a combination of them

 

Directions:

 

1. Combine all the ingredients into your empty spray bottle, and shake well each time you use it.
2. Spray a generous amount on your appliance surface and wipe it clean with a damp sponge or cloth.
3. Dry with a clean cloth or towel!

 

And there you have it, a simple, affordable, and fragrant way to degrease your kitchen!

 

 

 

 

 

Clean While You Sleep: Your Electric Kettle

Contemporary Coffee Makers And Tea Kettles design by Other Metro Macy’s

Happy Tuesday everybody. Today we’ve got another addition to our Clean While You Sleep Series! This time it’s a small kitchen appliance—your electric kettle (or a non-electric kettle for that matter). It’s an appliance whose inner workings often go neglected when it comes time to give the kitchen a scrub down. But calcium and lime deposits and dirt can build up quickly! Fear not though, we have a simple solution. Behold the simplest recipe & instructions

Ingredients:

• Vinegar
• Water

Directions

1. Fill your teakettle with equal parts vinegar and water.
2. Turn it on (for electric kettles) to bring it to a boil. If you are cleaning a stove top teakettle go to step 3, otherwise head to bed and wake up to step 4.
3. Once it starts boiling just turn off the heat (for stove top kettles) and go to bed!
4. When you wake up, the lime and calcium deposits and dirt should be gone. Just pour out the residue and rinse out the kettle.

How awesome is that? Just one more thing that you can clean while you sleep!

 

Clean While You Sleep: The Oven

Image from Best Buy.

Continuing with the series we started last week… we’ve got another way to help you get your house in perfect shine condition while you sleep. Today the dreaded oven mess! We’ve posted a recipe for cleaning the oven in the past but this one has slightly different ingredients and should only involve about 10-15 minutes of actual work time. Adapted from the handy little book, Naturally Clean Home, here is your recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water divided (1/4 cup, 1/4 cup, & 1/2 cup)
• 10 drops of sweet orange, lemon, or rosemary essential oil. We are partial to lemon!
• 1/2 cup salt divided in half(Morton works well here)
• 1 1/4 cup baking soda (1/2 cup & 3/4 cup)
• 2 tsp liquid castile soap. The citrus scent of Dr. Bronner’s works great!
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1 empty spray bottle

Directions:

1. Block the vents in the floor of the oven with aluminum foil. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F for 15 minutes. The turn the oven off and leave the door open.
2. While the oven is preheating, mix 1/4 cup water with the essential oil in a spray bottle and shake well. Spray this mixture onto the oven floor.
3. Combine 1/4 cup salt and 1/2 cup baking soda. Sprinkle the mixture on the oven floor. Be generous with the mixture on areas covered with spilled food.
4. Mix 1/4 cup water, 3/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup salt, and castile soap. Mix well in a glass bowl and spread the mixture on the oven walls.
5. Carefully remove the aluminum foil from the vents and let this mixture sit overnight. Go to bed happy you aren’t scrubbing!
6. Wake up refreshed, knowing that your home is not full of harsh cleaning chemicals! Combine 1/2 cup water with the vinegar in an empty spray bottle. Generously spray the oven walls and floor with this mixture. Wipe the walls and floors of your oven well (use fine steel wool on stubborn spots).
7. Rinse your oven several times (with a damp rag) to remove all the residue.

So there you have it, another way to get your home a little cleaner mostly while you sleep! How do you usually clean your ovens?

The Clean Fridge Routine

Image from the Container Store.

Perhaps staying on top of cleaning is part of your New Years Resolution? We’ve got plenty of advice and tips for accomplishing that goal! But we recommend taking on any new challenge is small measurable goals. So rather than say I will keep my house spotless why not set aside a month or week to focus on a cleaning routine for each part of your house. Or for a part of your messiest rooms?

The kitchen comes to our mind when we think of rooms that we spend a lot of time in and might need to the most attention. It is the heart of the home, where you cook (and usually eat) meals, where you sit and catch up over coffee, where you heal after a fight. So the kitchen seems like a logical place to start tackling. We’ve already covered how to organize your cabinets (see our tips here), speed clean your kitchen in 15 minutes (read the post here), how to clean your oven (read here)… and your small appliances (read here). So today we wanted to share some tips for cleaning and organizing your refrigerator!

When it comes to cleaning out your fridge we’ve got some general tips:

• Clean your fridge at least once a month, maybe give it a light bi-weekly clean as well.
• When you do clean up your fridge do it right before a big grocery trip when it is closer to empty.
• Pull out everything and check all the dates. Be sure to compost all truly expired or bad food.
• Make a list of goods that started to go bad before you ate or came close to finishing them. Take this list with you to the store as a reminder not to over buy!
• Pull out as many drawers and shelves as you can and wash them in your sink rather than trying to wash them in your fridge.
• Save energy while cleaning your fridge out and turn it off!
• Pick an organizational system that works for you. These posts by Goodbye House Hello Home and Organizing Homelife are amazing inspiration! Organizing Homelife’s tutorial even includes free printable labels! The Container Store and Bed Bath & Beyond have great organizational systems!

But we’ve also got a cleaning routine to get you started:

1. Pull out everything from the fridge, all the food, condiments, shelves, and drawers. Turn off the fridge to save energy.
2. Use an all-purpose cleaner to mist the inside surfaces. Close the door and let it sit for a few minutes.
3. Start a sink (or heck use your bathtub) of warm soapy water and soak the shelves and drawers in it. Or if you don’t have a bathtub or a large sink fill the drawers with soapy warm water and mist the shelves with all-purpose spray. Let it sit while you sort food.
4. Using a trash bag, recycling bin, and composting bin sort your food. Food that is expired or bad gets composted. Containers that are recyclable go in the recycling bin, and all else gets trashed (hopefully this is little).
5. For condiments you are keeping wipe off sticky residue with a damp sponge or towel.
6. After sorting take a soft sponge or cleaning cloth and wipe out the inside of your fridge. If you need a little more elbow grease you could use a sponge with a mild scrubbing side or make a paste of baking soda and water to scrub out hardened food (yuck!).
7. Take a damp cloth and give the inside of the fridge another pass over removing excess cleaner and food. Then take a dry cloth and dry off the inside.
8. Wash the soaking shelves and drawers of the fridge. Dry off the shelves and drawers and place back inside the fridge.
9. If you are using some organizational bins fill those with their proper contents before putting them away in the fridge. Group items in an orderly way as you put them back in your refrigerator. Check out these tips for storing food logically!
10. Wipe down the exterior of the fridge, paying special attention to the handle.
11. Relax and enjoy a sparkling clean fridge! We recommend doing this cleaning once every month or two, and maybe just spot clean weekly or bi-weekly!

Pretty simple right? Well once it becomes part of your routine it will be. Fridges are so hard to clean because often we let an entire year go by without wiping them down. Periodic cleanings will reduce your time spent on your fridge in the long run! What is your New Year’s resolution?

Give Your Appliances A Scrub! DIY Appliance Cleaner

Breville Appliances. From left to right: Emporia BKE400, Aroma Style Electronic BCM600, Ikon SK500, Emporia Toaster CT25B. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The holidays are such a busy time—putting up decorations, shopping for gifts, baking deserts, attending parties, and keeping your house tidy all take up quite a bit of time. Fear not, we’ve got plenty of tips to help you with the last part, and if you don’t have time to DIY it, you can always call us or your favorite local housekeeping service to help you out! Today we’ve got a recipe that will help get your appliances looking like new in no time flat!

DIY Appliance Cleaner

Ingredients:

• 1 cup vinegar
• 1 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Mix together the ingredients in a spray bottle or a bucket (if you are making more).
2. Apply the spray directly to stains and let the mixture sit for a few minutes (at least 10)
3. Then scrub off the dirt with a sponge. Be sure to unplug your small appliances though before cleaning them!

That’s all there is to it! If you have need more kitchen cleaning tips check out our other posts for recipes and steps to get your house shining! If you use this recipe let us know what you think!

Speed Cleaning Your Bathroom

How To Naturally Clean Your Washing Machine

Tidy Up Your Kitchen In 15 Minutes

3 Tips To Make Thanksgiving Day Cleanup A Breeze!

English: Saying grace before carving the turkey at Thanksgiving dinner in the home of Earle Landis in Neffsville, Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Thanksgiving is only 2 days away! It’s such a fantastic time of year—full of family and friends, family traditions, and FEASTING! All this holiday gathering requires a lot of prep work, and is often accompanied with a lot of cleanup. Today we have 3 tips that will make cleaning up on Thanksgiving a breeze—well almost a breeze ;).

 

• Clean the kitchen as you go. The day of the big feast don’t let the kitchen get out of control. Keep your prep space clean, and clean up small messes as they happen. This will prevent you from having to undertake a long cleanup when you are full of turkey and very sleepy!
• Soak the turkey pan. Don’t let those delicious turkey drippings sit on your pan. In fact for all your dishes that aren’t being used to serve try this trick. After the turkey, etc. are removed from the pan, put hot water and about 1 cup baking soda and a small amount of dish detergent in the pan and fill it to the top. Let it soak while you are eating. Washing dishes after Thanksgiving was never so easy!
• Let your guests help you clear the table. This isn’t rude, in fact many guests offer to help their hosts with preparing food and cleanup. Let them help! Have everyone clear and rinse their plates/silverware/cups. Assign someone to putting food into storage containers to be refrigerated. Let someone collect cloth napkins and tablecloths and load them into the washing machine. With all those hands cleanup should take no more than 10 minutes. Then everyone can relax and enjoy a slice of pie!

 

What tips do you have for making cleanup a breeze after a big family gathering?

 

Coconut Oil To Protect Bamboo Utensils & Cast Iron Cookware

So you have made the investment in quality cast iron cookware (or been fortunate enough to receive a family heirloom), how do you protect that investment? Well we’ve got some tips for keeping cast iron AND wooden kitchen utensils in top shape! There is no need for harsh chemicals or lubricants… coconut oil can be used for both cast iron seasoning and protecting bamboo utensils or cutting boards. Coconut oil is an excellent moisturizer with antifungal/antibacterial properties—meaning it won’t go rancid in your cookware!

To season your cast iron skillets:

• Coat it with coconut oil and place it in a 300° oven for three hours. While it is heating, remove it at least three times to wipe it clean and re-grease it. Seasoning gives the cookware a natural nonstick coating and will prevent rusting.
• Never use soap on a seasoned cast iron pan! Wipe it out with a nonabrasive sponge or washcloth, or use salt as an abrasive if extra cleaning is needed.

To condition and clean your bamboo utensils or cutting boards:

• Never soak them in water or place them in dishwashers!
• Instead wash with warm soapy water and rinse well with a dry lint free tea towel.  Once air dried, rub your bamboo cutting board or utensils with coconut oil (usually once a week) to keep the bamboo from drying out and cracking.

So there you have it, coconut oil seasons cast iron, conditions wooden utensils, and is wonderful for cooking. You can find organic coconut oil at most grocery stores! How do you season your cast iron?

3 Organization Resources To Jumpstart The Holiday Season!

With the holiday’s fast approaching, the chores and household duties just keep piling on. At Perfect Shine Housekeeping we are all about making your life easier and home more enjoyable with our green cleaning services. But we also love being a go to resource for your cleaning and organizational needs. So today we’ve got three great resources from around the web to help you with organizing & simplifying your life & home.

99 Ways To Simplify Life With Kids – We love a lot of the ideas in this neat little list, so rather than try to come up with our own redundant list we’d rather share this one with you! Oh and The Complete Guide To Imperfect Homemaking is a handy little blog, so check out this great post.

 

Kitchen Organization Tour – IHeart Organizing is an amazing and inspirational blog. We really love this tour of kitchen organization ideas, which even includes ideas for the fridge.

Kitchen Organization Tour by IHeart Organizing

Free Printables To Organize Your Home – Apartment Therapy collected some free home organization printables from around the web that we just love!

Free Printables To Organize Your Home by Apartment Therapy

We think these resources will help you bring some calm and order to your life as the holiday’s approach, but we want to know what you think! Do you like these organizational resources?

 

Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets Part II: The Products

A while back we shared some tips for taking control of kitchen cabinet clutter. Today we wanted to share some products and tutorials for all you DIYers to organize and optimize kitchen cabinet space.

DIY Tutorial for Making Pull Out Kitchen Cabinet Shelves

This tutorial by Ron Hazelton shows you step by step how to make your own pull out cabinet shelves to help you optimize precious cabinet space!

Bamboo Expandable Shelf

Lipper International Bamboo Expandable Step Shelf Organizer – $23.33 from Amazon

Great bamboo option for organizing upper cabinets or shelves!

Rubbermaid Vertical Slide Out Lid & Pan Organizer

Rubbermaid Vertical Lid & Pan Organizer – $29.96 at Amazon

This organizer is pretty reasonably priced on Amazon, normally $56, you can pick one up for around $30!

Copco Bakeware Organizer

Copco Adjustable Bakeware Organizer – $13.37 at Amazon

Get all your bakeware in order with this affordable organization option1

Cabinet Door Lid Rack 

Cabinet Door Lid Rack – $13.95 from Amazon

Great for optimizing wasted space in cabinets. Just make sure to measure so you can close your doors before ordering and installing one!

Simplehuman Wide Pullout Cabinet Organizer

This organizer is a little pricier, but Simplehuman makes quality goods!

White Elfa Mesh Easy Glider Drawer

White elfa Mesh Easy Glider – $29.99 to $37.99 at The Container Store

A more affordable option, you can get the elfa organizers in a variety of sizes to fit your kitchen’s unique needs!

Bamboo Roll-Out Cabinet Drawers

Bamboo Roll-Out Cabinet Drawers – $54-$69 at The Container Store

Bamboo is very durable, and can be more sustainably harvested than other woods. A great eco-friendly option!

Simplehuman Bamboo Cabinet Organizer

Simplehuman 13″ Bamboo Cabinet Organizer – $79.95 from Amazon

Another great bamboo option, but a little pricier!

What are your favorite kitchen organization products?