99p worth of home

Every Expat knows that there are little things from back home that you really miss. Those things that you took for granted, but now can't find.

I'm talking to you Target Long & Lean Tank Tops*.

my favourite layering piece

There are alternatives, sure, but the known item that fits/works just how you like it isn't available. 

Well- Hark, Expats, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy. One of those can't-get-them-here items can come off your list.

What am I talking about?

My favourite cleaning product

Well, not exactly. After years of trying various imposters (I'm looking at you Doktor Power Magic Eraser) that were found severely lacking and asking my mom to bring some when she visits, I stumbled upon this little item at the grocery store last week.

Can it be?!

My breath caught. Could it really be? It looked promising. I bought my single eraser for 99p (a fine price, but it was market 1/2 off and 1.99 seems a bit steep) and rushed home to try it. And, Hallelujah! This is it! 99p worth of home to clean my bathroom and kitchen!

What little things do you miss from back home?

Have you found any acceptable substitutes for your favorites?

*Let's be honest, I pretty much miss everything about Target. Y'all know I'm slightly obsessed.

Cheerful Sunday

This week's Reason to Be Cheerful is a glimpse into some more of my crazy.

This morning, as I folded laundry, I made this face.

Oh so clean...

I explained to Ross, who was looking at me like I was crazy. That I love the way freshly laundered and tumble-dried men's shirts smell. Specifically undershirts. They smell manly and wonderful and I buried my nose in Ross' about 5 times before finally folding it. 

Fun fact: Despite the fact that we use completely different laundry detergent, Ross' shirts smell exactly the same as my dad's do.

Push Presents

Are you familiar with the concept of Push Presents?
They've become increasingly popular in the last few years and seem to be a somewhat polarizing topic.  There are those that expect some expensive blingy something and then those that find the idea distasteful, claiming that the baby is the only present needed.

I "get" both responses.  Linus is the ultimate present.  He is amazing and I can't imagine my life without him.  It's incomprehensible to me that he's only been in the world for 11 days!  It feels like he's always been here.  I certainly didn't need anything to reward me for bringing him into this world.  The sentimental side of me, however, thinks that having some small something to commemorate the birth of a child is nice.  It doesn't have to be something expensive or fancy...

Ross and I had talked about push presents before I gave birth, but nothing specific.  I knew he was aware of the concept and that he knew my thoughts on them.  A few days after we got back home from the hospital, my push present was delivered.  Ross had warned me that he'd gone with a practical one and that he may have taken "push" literally.  I was intrigued.

The items that arrived may have been offensive to some women, but I was SO excited.  It wasn't exactly a sentimental piece of art or jewellery like I might have imagined (but there's always Mother's Day for that... hint hint), but... it was totally awesome!

Behold:

I've hated (HATED!) our vacuum cleaner ever since I moved here.  It's clunky and the canister is difficult and messy to empty.  I'd put this Dyson Digital Slim on my Amazon UK wishlist a while ago, without any intention of actually getting it, just because I thought it was cool.  Let me tell you- this thing is AWESOME! (AWESOME!!)  It is cordless and light and handles great and does a great job.  The filter canister empties easily and the attachments all store neatly.  I love it.  Whenever I've used it, Ross smiles at me and makes a joke about pushing the vacuum cleaner.

The other item is the Vax Home Master.  I haven't gotten it out of the box yet, but I am super duper excited to try it.  According to the internet reviews, this thing can clean anything- from carpets to the oven.  In keeping with our efforts to eliminate as many chemicals as possible from our home (especially now that Linus is on the scene), it doesn't use any thing besides steam to get the job done!  No cleaning solutions or products required.  We already have a little handheld steam cleaner thing that I've used in the kitchen, but this is going to take it to a whole new level!  I'm pretty sure Ross is nearly as excited to play with this thing as I am.

I decided, before Linus was born, that marking the birth of a child isn't something just for mommum.  I decided that Ross needed something special to mark his becoming a dad.  I thought for a long while about what I could get him that would be sweet and appropriate to him.  I found just the thing!

They say "Simply the Best Daddy"

Now, you may be thinking- "Socks?  Seriously?  That was your big idea?"  If that's what you're thinking, then you don't know that my husband loves socks.  He doesn't have a sock drawer- he has an entire dresser full of them.  He says that his ultimate luxury would be to have new socks ever day.  I presented them to Ross when we brought Linus home.  He gave a very sweet smile and put them in a special place to "save" them for a special occasion.

So that's how we did push presents at our house.
What do you think of push presents?

What about doing them in a non-traditional way?

Cheerful Sunday

Nesting makes me feel cheerful!
I just finished washing all of our sons clothes.  Now I just need a dresser to put them in!

Soap Nuts

alternate title:  You Wash Your Clothes with What?

In our quest to expose our child to as few chemicals as possible, I started looking into gentle detergents that weren't full of harsh ingredients.  Here in the UK, there are two major types of detergent "Bio" and "Non-Bio".  I don't really understand the difference.  I've asked a few people and none of them have been able to tell me either.  Just that "Non-bio" is less harsh, so should be used for babies.  (Here's a link from a leading detergent company explaining the difference.)

At any rate, I combed the aisle of the grocery store for the gentle, baby-safe options and was surprised that there doesn't seem to be a brand that market directly to that population.  I then broadened my search to onlines.  I found something that was very intriguing.  Ross has introduced me to plenty of natural alternatives for cleaning over the years, but he'd never heard of this one either.  We aren't hippies really, but we're all for using natural alternatives to chemical products if they work.  We thought this one was worth checking out, so we ordered our very own Soap Nuts for £5 (including shipping) from eBay.

A few days later, this muslin bag arrived in the mail.

It contained a plastic bag full of soap nuts and 2 small muslin drawstring bags.

The nuts themselves are about the size of  marbles and are slightly sticky.  Sorry for the flash in this picture, but it was the only way to capture the sheen on the nuts.  They have a little bit of an odor, but it's not really a bad smell... just sort of... nutty...

To use the soap nuts for laundry, you put 4-6 in one of the small muslin bags.

And then soak the bag in a cup of warm water for about 3 minutes.

This helps release the suds in the nuts a bit.  You can see some foamy bubbles around the edge of the cup in this picture.

Then you just toss the little bag in the washing machine on top of your clothes.  The same bag can be used for about 3 washes before the nuts are spent.  They take on a dried out shell look when that happens.  The shells can then be composted.  We don't have a composting facility, so into the trash they go.

I've used the soap nuts for the last several weeks and have been really pleased with how they clean our clothes.  They come out of the wash soft and clean smelling (though not perfumed... if you want to, you can apparently add essential oils to the washer, but I don't mind a lack of "smell").  I haven't washed anything that was super-duper dirty (just our regular washing) yet, but the soap nuts have done a good job.  I'll have to update y'all once I've tried this method with some dirty baby stuff and especially on cloth diapers.  I do still add bicarbonate of soda to our white loads to help make them nice and bright.  At our current rate of use (I probably do about 6 loads of laundry a week), I imagine the bag we bought for £5 will last for at least 4 months, probably more.  That seems like pretty good value to me!  

You can use soap nuts for other methods, as outlined on the website http://www.soapnuts.co.uk/

We tried to use them in the dishwasher and weren't very impressed, so for now we're sticking with chemicals to clean the dishes.  Perhaps if we made soap nuts liquid and used that we'd see better results, but that seemed like a lot of work.  

All in all, I'd give Soap Nuts a tentative, but strong thumbs up!  If you're looking for a method to clean without chemicals they're worth a shot.  

(Note:  We bought these little nuts on our own and no one paid or asked me to review them... just a little public service.)

What cleaning methods do you use?

Are you traditional or willing to try weird, natural stuff like us?

The State of The Nursery

Yesterday I made a start on clearing out the spare room.  The spare room that will become our son's nursery.  It is tiny and impossible to photograph.

Seriously, my walk-in closet in my apartment in Dallas was bigger than this room.  It's not unusual here in the UK for bedrooms to be small.  Real estate listings describe bedrooms as "single" and "double" indicating the size of bed they will fit.  Queen and king-sized beds are a rarity.

This room is plenty big for a twin-sized bed and other essentials, but it isn't the size of room that Americans are used to.  You can see in the picture the industrial shelving unit that Ross and I made into an improvised wardrobe.  There's a third half-shelf unit farther to the right that you can't see.  All that clothing needs to find a new home.  Yikes!

The beige thing piled with stuff in the middle is a twin-sized bed.  It needs to go away.  We've been talking about getting a hide-a-bed for the living room (our couches are dying a slow death anyway) so that we can still have guests.

The red bookcase is in an awkward little nook in the room.  It's moving to another wall, but actually staying in the nursery.  The books on it, however, need a new home.  And we don't have another bookcase.  I guess we'll be making a trip to IKEA soon.

So what is all that junk, you ask?  It's falls into 3 categories:

1.  Ross' clothing.  He has more clothing than any person (especially a male person) should have.  He loves a good "bargain" so will buy things when they are a good value, regardless of whether that item fills a hole in his wardrobe.  Combine this with his dislike of getting rid of things and you've got a problem.  Well we do.  I've started implementing a new technique where we discuss things "going away" instead of getting rid of things.  For some reason, it doesn't upset him as much.  What can I say?  He's a special man...

2.  Odds and ends from work.  As I mentioned previously, we end up with odds and ends of lines. Ross brings home samples and then they never leave.  I'm working on a system to help with this also.

3.  Family stuff.  Now this is the hardest category.  I've mentioned previously that Ross sister and parents are all deceased.  That means we've got all the family "stuff".  His mom's tea sets (man she had a TON of tea sets), crystal, and knick-knacks.  All of that childhood stuff that is safely stored in your parents basement/attic. Pictures that were framed in his family home.

Giant (like poster-sized) portraits of Ross' great-grandparents

It feels wrong to throw them away, but what do we do with them?!

This third category is the hardest to tackle.  I can only do so much of it without Ross' input.  I don't know what is junk and what is important.  It's tough for him to work on because every box contains potential emotional land mines.  None of it is as simple as it should be.  I've tried to clear things from this category out (obviously keeping important and sentimental things) since we got married.  It's hard to be encouraging about letting go of things that aren't needed or wanted, whilst remaining encouraging and supportive.  The good news is that having the baby as motivation for working on these things seems to make it easier for him.  Which makes sense.  There is a positive reason to be going through these memories.  

Early in the process, I was really wrestling with hopelessness.  I felt like there was just too much stuff and it would be impossible to get rid of/find new places in our home for all of this STUFF.  But once we got going, I started to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Don't get me wrong.  There is still a fair amount of work.  A room like that doesn't get sorted out in one session.  Once we do get it cleared out, we've still got to get a crib and a dresser.  Ross and I both feel strongly about having a nice room for the baby to come home to and that will keep us going.  Let's do this!

Did you have to do a lot of work to prepare your baby's room?
Were there any special challenges you faced in getting rid of stuff?

A table for 2

Remember forever ago, when I teased you with this picture?

Well we finally got around to pulling it out of the warehouse.  The fact that my mom is coming for a visit next week is a good motivator.   So here's what I'm talking about:

Ross' great-aunts gate leg table

Ok, so the table came apart in transit.

The initial plan was for me to refinish the table at the warehouse, but we decided that it would be better to just bring it home.  It needs some TLC, but we can put it to use now and refinish it later when we've got more time.

It's SO much better than our old table.  You can see it in the picture below that's from this post.

Yuck!  It looks like the ones that we used to have in the common areas of my dorm back at Austin College.  And it takes up way too much space, considering that it's usually just the two of us.

So, Ross steam cleaned the whole thing while watching Emmerdale.  (Anyone else over the whole Charity and Whatshisname story line?  I don't get them together.  She's much more interesting with Kane.)  It was pretty grimy from having been buried in the warehouse for a long time (Ross estimates 10 years!).

Then he went to work with another of his all natural cleaning methods.  He used a combination of the miraculous bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and cider vinegar.  I can't believe how well it is working!  The mixture is pulling all of the grime out and too the surface.  We may not even have to refinish the table at all!

Can you see the clean bits and dirty bits?

Gross!!

Stay tuned for how it all shakes out...

A Nice Day for a White Wedding!

In honour of the big wedding I'm going to...

(drum roll)

Tell you how I get my whites so white!
Are you excited?
I thought so :)

I'll tell you the really exciting part now.  It's without bleach!
That's right a no-bleach method for getting your whites nice and bright.
Now you're excited, right?

It's cheap and easy and it just takes one little thing.

Yep, I just sprinkle a few spoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda/baking soda into the machine.  It works like a charm and is way less harsh and chemically.   I'm still surprised by how well it works.  One of the best things about it is not worrying about things that have color.  See that sock in the right side of the drum?  It has little yellow chicks on it, but I don't have to worry about them fading!   It's also cheaper and more natural than oxi-clean and the like.

You're welcome.