Mrs Super Efficient
Today I decided to copy everyone else out there in blogland and I bought these…
to organise my projects with. Nice eh? As I may have told you before, my office and sewing space is the size of a pocket handkerchief. A small pocket handkerchief at that.
No, honestly, I really truly do spend my life in something that approximates to a cupboard!!! It’s cosy, but it would be an understatement to say that space is at a premium. So anything I can do to keep it tidy and efficient is really worth doing.
These boxes are improvement on what there was before (a big pile of stuff that kept falling off the chair onto the floor and a couple of elderly plastic bags. It wasn’t very nice, but don’t tell anyone). Now everything is in its right place, not dancing with the dust bunnies and the boxes fit nicely under my desk at the back on top of the scraps basket. Brilliant.
It is clearly the start of spring. I only do things like this in the spring.
I’ve also been cleaning windows.
I really hate cleaning windows. I am just so bad at it. What I would give for a good English windowcleaner…I did enquire here, but I’d have to take a mortgage out to pay for someone else to clean the windows, so it’s back to me….
I’m a sucker for every magic product on the market – I have them all: sprays, special cloths, squeegee things. I’ve even tried vinegar and old newspapers. And whatever I do, the windows always look smeary. Today the sun was shining in and they looked really bad – read smeary with a layer of dirt from the winter storms. Yuck. And as we finally have some nice weather, I really wanted the sun to actually be able to shine in. I wanted that very badly indeed.
So I consulted my dear friend Ursi, who is good at these things, as every Swiss should be. Ursi told me the secret and I have now cleaned 4 large windows with one drop of a special magic cleaning liquid in a big bucket of water, giving everything a good scrub with a normal kitchen cloth and then finishing off with a window T bar. I’m still slightly in shock – despite the fact that my son immediately pounced on the one or two spots that aren’t perfect, it’s really very good. Certainly better than anything I’ve ever done before.
Now I think I need to sit down and have a cup of tea to get over all the excitement.
Helen
March 9th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
So, what is this magic cleaning liquid? If there was only one thing I could have brought back from Germany, (other than my Pfaff) it would have been the windows. I loved how they would swing open like a door which made it painless to clean. The downside was only being able to open them at the top. In the US, we have tilt-in windows. They make life a little easier but you can only get as close to the frame as the height (breadth?) of the window. Also it never fails that as soon as I clean a window, there are cat nose prints on it.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:52 pm
When I clean my windows, I use a few drops of Woolite in cold water. Works great. No streaking.
March 9th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
We really need to know what the magic cleaner is!
When I lived in Germany my landlady showed me how to wash my windows every Saturday. “Every Saturday,” I asked her? “Jah,” she replied.
She gave me a small red bucket, a plastic bottle of some very potent, clear liquid with a skull and crossbones on the side (not kidding), and a chamois sort of leathery cloth. She showed me how to drop one or two drops of the liquid into the hot water in the bucket, dip the chamois in, wring it out well, and then quickly wipe down the windows. It was literally like magic. Almost unbelievable. Instant clean – no streaks. When I returned to the States I could never find anything like it.
Will you tell? 😀
March 9th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
OK dear lady, tell all, spill the beans, fess up. What is the magic? I love that you have little cactus in your space. I have a yard full but none in the house. Jan, from the desert in Arizona.
March 10th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
My windows are always smeary too. I find baby wipes are pretty good but they bring me out in a rash! But worth it for a shiny window!