A few months ago, after being inundated with credit and loan offers, I decided it was time for me to learn how to get rid of junk mail. Unlike unsolicited emails - or spam - junk mail comes with the onus of disposal, and I have enough trouble recycling the rubbish I intentionally bring into my home. Through my quest to liberate my mailbox, I learned that this hassle was relatively innocuous compared to other aspects of the invasive business. First of all, your personal information is being tossed around like poker chips at a table full of drunks. Businesses large and small are buying, selling, renting, and trading your information without your permission, and they get their grubby hands on it in countless ways. Because of this, the business of junk mail exposes you to identity theft . What’s more, 100 million trees are cut down annually to produce junk mail - the majority of which ends up in landfills. Read my latest article on how to get rid of junk mail to keep your information safe, the planet less disgusting, and your sanity intact.
It seems like every place I’ve ever lived in as an adult has had at least one nasty rust stain somewhere, usually a reddish column running from the overflow drain into the basin of the bathroom sink or tub. You may think this reveals something negative about the general level of cleanliness in my home, but actually I’m kind of neurotic about cleaning. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time scrubbing at those rust stains, and several times I’ve even committed, in desperation, what I now know is the cardinal sin of rust removal: I tried using chlorine bleach. So it wasn’t a lack of fastidiousness that doomed me to years of rust-stained bathrooms; it was a lack of knowledge. Now I know. And what I know is that cleaning rust isn’t so hard after all. Since I’m not the kind of girl who keeps things to herself, I wrote an article about how to clean rust. So now you know.
Barking Mad, a self-described mommy blogger, recently posted a write-up of How to Get Rid of Things, How to Clean Things and some of our smaller projects. This woman should be writing for the Washington Post. She’s good. Maybe I’m just biased because the article focuses a lot on me, Captain Important. Anyway, go check out her article and then make your way through the rest of her site. She’s becoming quite the accomplished photographer and an incredibly dedicated member of the blogosphere.
Thanks, Aud!
As I have written in my article, the term mildew is actually plant mold, but popular usage of the term now refers to mold growing in moisture-prone areas of the home like bathrooms and basements. In my place, it was the bathroom. The mildew was present in the shower the day we bought the house, but other projects always seemed more dire. As I tried to get clean in the mornings, I would always wonder how I was going to clean the mildew. One such morning, the rubber lining around my shower fell onto my shoulders like a dead boa constrictor. That was my Pearl Harbor; war was finally declared. I turned to the tried and true staples in my green cleaning arsenal, and now I wonder why I just didn’t clean the mildew sooner. Well, it has excited my gag reflex for the last time. Read my latest article on how to clean mildew without resorting to products containing depleted uranium, as well as how to prevent mildew and deal with other mildew-related issues.