Thursday, February 20, 2014

Helpful household hints

1. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is good for degriming shower tiles

Based on the colour, the grime seemed to be related to my hair conditioner, and normal cleaning products plus elbow grease wouldn't budge it.  But the Mr. Clean Magic eraser wiped it right off with only slightly more than the absolute minimum of effort humanly possible.

2. How to declog a paper shredder

The problem: the shredder wouldn't "grab" the paper, not even when set on "Forward" (i.e. run regardless of whether you think there's paper poised to be shredded.)

 First I ran the shredder forward and backwards like the instruction manual said, but that didn't work.

After switching it off and unplugging it, I tried manually removing the bits of paper I could see stuck between the blades, but I couldn't get at all of them.  I then tried blowing at it with compressed air (i.e. this sort of thing), but that didn't get rid of all the bits.

The ultimate solution: take the long, skinny straw-like thing on the compressed air can, and stick it down the slot of the paper shredder where I could see the bits of paper still stuck in there.  (Making sure the shredder was still turned off and unplugged, of course!)  It's skinny enough to get into the slot, flexible enough to get in between the blades without damaging them, and inconsequential enough that it didn't matter if I damaged it in the blades (which I didn't).  And it got all the cloggy bits of paper out of the way, and now the shredder works more enthusiastically than ever.

3. How do get rid of bird poo without touching it (and without a hose)

The problem: bird poo on the outside of the glass outer wall of my balcony (i.e. the bit under the railing.)  I can see its ugliness, but I'm too vertiginous to reach over the railing to clean it off (and would be too squeamish to touch it even indirectly with paper towels and rubber gloves even if I could reach it).

The solution: first, wait for a rainy day when the rain is beating rather heavily against the surface to be washed.

Spray some OxiClean Spray on the surface, above the bird poo.  It will drip down, cover the poo, and the enzymes will get rid of a lot of it.

Next, after the OxiClean has either all dripped down below the mess or the rain has washed it away, squirt a dab of dish soap (the hand-washing kind, not the dishwasher kind) above the poo.  It will drip down and cover the poo, and the rain will make it into a lather, which will wash the rest away. 

The last step is to take some Windex, and spray a generous amount over as much of the area as possible, focusing on the top so it can drip down.  This will clean off the build-up left by the Oxi-Clean and dish soap, so once everything is dry you won't even be able to tell anything happened there.

If you have a bird poo problem somewhere where you have access to a hose, you obviously don't have to wait for it to rain.  But the approach I've described here works in cases where a hose isn't possible.  As an added bonus, if you're very careful to spray the stuff only directly on the wall, it won't land on any passers-by who might be walking below.

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