Cleaning Pinterest Style

As embarrassing it is to show you pictures of how dirty things around the Green house can get, it's research. Our microwave is something I feel like we don't use a whole lot so I'm not sure how it can get so dirty in a short amount of time. Maybe my husband uses it a lot more than I think? After opening the door it's the factor that pushed me over the edge to look up some cleaning ideas supposed to make life easier. First up, vinegar and water microwaved for five minutes. It's suppose to just make everything that might be caked on fall right off, here's the results:

Hmm...didn't really clean and to make matters worse after being in the microwave the vinegar smelled up my entire house. I went straight to work with my normal spray with bleach...

Much better! I give this pinterest experiment a HUGE FAIL! After talking with my best friend she suggested her way...juicing a lemon in a cup and cutting up the peel placing everything in a cup with a little water and tiny bit of vinegar and heating for five minutes.

To get rid of the smell I places a pot with water, a little apple juice, cinnamon, and a chopped apple (core included!) on the stovetop and quickly made the vinegar smell disappear! 

Next up....TOWELS!
After using your towels for a certain amount of time they tend to sour...pinterest recommended washing all the towels in laundry detergent and one cup of vinegar on the hottest setting and then washing again in a half a cup of baking soda.

This took a really long time, but if you're already spending the day cleaning why not....it really worked and I would 100% do this again. I would suggest fabric softener that goes in the dryer but since we have the kind that goes in the washer I didn't add it so now our towels have no smell.

This was actually a product suggested by the salesman when we bought our stove...it's suppose to remove all deep stains on a flat top stove and also on stainless items...I was not pleased with this for our stove but on the stainless items it's great! I've been told to look into something called Barkeeps Friend...

Lots of cleaning was done this day as you can tell but the next I spent a LOT of time on....my cookie sheet. All pans get a little brown on them but our cookie sheet has battle wounds from all the fail attempts at cookie from mine and my husband's early years. There are a million pins about mixing 1/2 cup of baking soda with hydrogen peroxide and gently rubbing with your fingers or a sponge to get rid of ALL stains...I rubbed until my fingers were raw....my sponge was starting to fall apart. I even waited fifteen minutes and then rubbed...nothing. Now there is a similar mixture that is suppose to remove coloring from grout that I tried and it did take a few layers off but I ran out of vinegar with all my testing...it's the same mixture from above but add vinegar to the mix.  I would give it another try.
Next a quick cleaning of our coffee pot! Did you know you're suppose to run a mixture of vinegar and water in your coffee pot once a month or so? I didn't. After running it I noticed how much extra coffee was coming out and it really needed it. After running your coffee, you need to rinse with water a few times.

Lastly was my dish washer. There are two pins floating around, one about lemon koolaid and another about vinegar and water and bleach....I didn't have an extra pack of koolaid so I went with vinegar and bleach. One cup of vinegar and water mix in a cup sitting upright on the top layer and another cup of bleach and water on the bottom.

This worked beautifully! It wasn't really that dirty to begin with but it really made a difference when we unloaded the first load of dishes.

If you have any pinterest pins that you were curious about please let me know I love testing things! I'll be back tomorrow with some fashion in the mean time please check out my guest blog on an adorable Anthropologie dress on Danielle's page while she's on vacation! Happy Hump Day!