Desperate Housewives of ILX

boiling water & furious scrubbing with steel wool if you've got the patience.

would steel wool scratch? i have scouring pads

steel wool dude, it won't harm any. scouring pads would work too but less effectively. maybe a little baking soda

Or Bon Ami maybe.

We have a porcelain kitchen sink that the gloss has worn off from, and food stains had kind of taken it over. I've scrubbed it with hot water and dish soap many times, and I reassured myself that I knew it was clean, it was just that color permanently.

My mom took one look at it and got out the bathroom bleach cleanser and my sink is now rawther blindingly white.

Another food stains remover for mugs and porcelain sinks: denture cleaner. But my summer of bussing dishes have given me a love of bleach.

bleach is some intense shit

Full-on scrubbing the kitchen floor today armed with a brush, pile of microfiber rags, basins of water, cucumber smelling cleaner. It's completely filthy and now I've started I can't not finish. Ugh.

This thread always makes me feel like such a Filth Wizard.

u should get a roomba trayce. they are quite amazing

Nothin' would save the carpet at mine. It needs a major steam clean. Also how do you shot stairs w/roombas?

well stairs are a conundrum

The day will never come when my house is clean. But there are days now and then when it is noticeably cleaner than when I woke up. This contents me. Attempting the impossible just leaves me disgruntled.

I would take a picture of the contrast between the cleaned and uncleaned section of the floor, but I am seriously mortified and scandalized by how totally filthy it got without me really noticing.

I am suspicious of people with spotless kitchens. I suspect they do not cook, ever.

Some yuck on the floor of a kitchen a) never hurt anyone and b) is merely the aftereffect of deliciousness.

That said, I was a bit of a desperate housewife today: took out the three (small) area rugs to beat/air/vacuum, got the sand out of the bed (sand in bed is awful! Awful!), swept floors a little bit, cleaned the stainless appliances (all the while making the spouse promise me we would never, ever put stainless in our own home), watered some plants, topped off the pool, folded laundry. Need to do some serious Windexing, but am taking a pina colada break.

damn that sounds amazing

my new bathroom secret is disinfectant wipes

i'm late to the party i'm sure

i tried for years to get our horrible vinyl floor in our kitchen clean & shiny. eventually I accepted it's inherent grunginess. it's clean, and that's about as much as I can do. horrible stuff. vinyl flooring is the worst. i have never hated a floor more than my kitchen floor.

Dumb question but is vinyl the same as linoleum, or are these different beasts?

They're different compositions, and I think linoleum might actually be a trademarked name? Vinyl is like...kind of...a tiny bit spongy. Barely perceptibly, but it doesn't have that hard glossy surface unless it's been waxed and waxed...linoleum may have been created to mimic waxed vinyl floors?

When we win the lottery (that we don't yet play, hmm) and redo our kitchen, I'm pretty damn sure that I'm going to go with prefinished hardwood. Stuff wears like iron and doesn't have the GROUT DOWNFALL, which I loathe with my current tile floors and OMG TWO INCH TILE COUNTERTOPS. Tile countertops! What were they thinking?

Silestoe or Zodiac composite will be my choice for countertops, as I dislike working on marble and granite. Subway tile with BLACK grout for backslash!

um backsplash, not backslash

Linoleum is older than vinyl - it's made from linseed oil and a bunch of other stuff. The lino in our kitchen is the original - laid down in 1940! Still has structural integrity but will never be shiny.

Hell yes

We have light-colored textured vinyl or lino or whatever, so the dirt can't just be wiped with a mop, it has to be scrubbed, and because I cook a lot and am not tidy, it looks dirty within half a day of cleaning

Did I mention that the two inch tiles on my countertop are dark blue and the grout is white? I mean that would be hell as just a blacksplash, but as the actual countertop all I can do is smdh.

Also, Regina is a v. good name for a vacuum!

Surm, I use disinfectant wipes in the bathroom as well

Hmm, that sounds... anyway, on BATHROOM SURFACES

linoleum is natural, vinyl is synthetic. some vinyl flooring is ok, but our vinyl floor is cheap as shit - has a 'no wax' sheen to it that just makes it look hella dirty all the time.

xpost ugh quincie that sounds like my kitchen. pale grey 1/4 inch grout and blue square tile. it's impossible to keep it clean, I have to basically bleach it every couple of months.

omg I never understood the tiled countertops in the US.
Ha, ljub, my dad used those wipes thinking they were MOIST WIPES

O_O

And then told you, and potentially others?!

My mum told me with much glee... She was probably the one who noticed all the Flash wipes were disappearing!

i was just talking to a friend about how sometimes if u want to clean a kitchen you just have to get a new one o_O

^^^ might be one reason why I've moved so often...

i might move into a new place this summer with a recently renovated galley kitchen

kind of flippin out about it

! exciting!

:-) i think the counter is actually a material and not plastic

ooh.

i dream about concrete or soapstone countertops.

omg. i saw a soapstone countertop recently. it was insane. deep green with white streaks.

for me, it would just be nice to be able to put something down without having to move something else

yeah soapstone is gorgeous. realistically it's probably not meant for a kitchen-godzilla/clutz like me, since it's soft and I'm sure I would ding the hell out of them over time.

ditto

maybe something in safety-yellow industrial rubber, lol

i am definitely the glass-breaker of the household

yep me too

Yeah thats one prob with hard counters like stone or marble. Say hello to the breaking of everything you own! (I had a ceramic sink, once. Ugh)

i love marble. we have this one strip of marble at the entrance of our bathroom, on the floor. seems to be some kind of a brooklyn apartment feature that i've noticed in other places as well. you get a room for $1500, but you get a strip of marble.

This is why the counter of my dreams is Silestone of Zodiac. Stainless and butcher block are great to work on, too, but too difficult to maintain (well stainless easy to maintain, but will look like shit all the time).

My experience with concrete, marble, and granite have been TOO HARD.

Also: in three weeks in a furnished rental, I have broken three wine glasses, one wine bottle (red, of course), and a large serving platter (owner's, not mine). Given that we are supposed to be here for at least three more months, the body count is not looking good for our security deposit.

uhh the fact that there is even anything called Silestone of Zodiac kind of just made my night

well technically that should read Silestone *or* Zodiac, but I'm with you on this one!