Grout Renew

Hello Friends, and Hello Friday!!
We have only 5 days left until the end of school and we are all looking forward to summer fun over here. I have several things on the agenda to share with you, so check back often!

Today I'm sharing how I updated our kitchen tile's grout. Our home has a pinkish tile throughout the kitchen floors, with a very dark grout. Since completely replacing the tile is not in the game plan right now, I thought I'd give this a try and I have been very pleased.

First off, because it was a large area, it took me about 2 weeks to finish. I would work for about 45 minutes most nights after the kids had gone to bed. I used a tiny little craft brush and just painted this stuff over the old grout lines.

I had to go slowly (not easy for me) and it was also tough on my back. That being said, the bottle cost me $12.50 and I used right at half the bottle for the kitchen, which is a pretty good size. It has been 8 months since I did this and it has held up great. I haven't noticed it chipping much or anything, but when I feel like any areas may need to be touched up, I still have plenty of it to do just that.

Before:

After:

If replacing your tile is just not an option, but you want to brighten or clean up your grout, give this a try! I only found this brand at The Home Depot and nothing really similar at Lowe's.

Here are links to the brand and color I used. There are several choices out there:
Polyblend Grout Renew - The Home Depot - $12.47
Polyblend Grout Renew - Amazon - $33.64

And links to some others who have done this as well:
Snapguide
Young House Love

Have a wonderful weekend!

Plastic Bags

Plastic bags (also usually referred to here as "Wal Mart bags", haha) are something I used to struggle with. I would love to be good and take reusable bags to the grocery store, and maybe one day I'll get me act together and start doing that, but I don't right now. I get 417 plastic bags every time I go to the store and then I want to keep them, but I don't want plastic bags all over my house! I finally figured out something that has been working for us for a while.
I like for our spaces to be pretty, yet functional. The picture below is in our laundry room. The nice basket was a gift from my mother-in-law when I graduated high school {almost 14 years ago! My husband and I had just started dating..}. That's where I keep our plastic bags now. They are easy for adults to reach, but not children. They are in plain sight, but, at the same time, you can't actually see them. It makes me happy.

This is what the bags look like all shoved down in the basket.

My mom used to always fold her bags like this, so I guess that's why I do it now. They take up less room than just shoving them down, and I believe they are not nearly as dangerous for little ones when folded like this. It would take a special child to undo a bag and put it over his head if it was tied this way.

You basically just make a slip knot.

I still have the issue of having far too many bags to fit into my nice basket, but I don't want to just throw them out. I have tried to put them in our recycling bin and they don't accept these bags - seriously!? So, here is what I do with extra bags that I don't want all over our house:

• I keep several bags in the trunk of my car. Wet clothes, dirty diapers, just gathering trash on a road trip...it seems like I am in need of a plastic bag fairly often while in my car. I do shop at Aldi occasionally and since they do not have free bags, I carry some in with me then as well.
• I drop some bags off at the recycling area in my grocery store. There are usually specified areas to recycle these plastic bags.
• I put these bags in our small garbage cans in the bathrooms and the kids' rooms.
• On a daily basis, I usually have a bag hanging from a doorknob both upstairs and downstairs. I use it as a trash bag and between diapers, junk mail, and dryer lint, I usually fill two of these up each day. I take them outside to the trash can when they get full and hang another up. This keeps stinky stuff out of our house and it also keeps me from buying big trash bags nearly as often. It also seems like these smaller bags fit better in the large outside can, so it doesn't fill up before trash day as often. It's my personal form of recycling and it works quite well for us!

(Like you don't know what a plastic bag hanging from a doorknob looks like! I took a picture anyway... :)

 

Here are some other neat ideas for storing those plastic bags:

Soho Sonnet: DIY plastic bag storage box

Embroidery Hoop and Pillow

Plastic Grocery Bag Folding

 





Cleaning a chalkboard

Who doesn't love a good chalkboard these days?! I love small ones, gigantic ones, walls painted with chalkboard paint. I've done them all. BUT, when it's time to really clean them, this is what has worked for me.

First of all, I read that you are supposed to "season" a chalkboard. That means you take a piece of chalk, turn it sideways and completely cover the chalkboard. Then, you wipe it off with a paper towel or eraser. If you don't do this, it is likely that whatever you draw onto the board the first time will be very hard to remove. Read here all about How to Prep + Season a Chalkboard.

This is generic Windex. It is indeed called "L.A.'s Totally Awesome Window Clean". I buy it at Dollar Tree and it works as well or better than Windex.

You guys, this gigantic chalkboard makes me so happy. It is beautiful. And I did not have to make it. Or pay for it! I highly suggest you get yourself a talented, beautiful, generous, crafty sister-in-law (or 4 or 5 like me) and let them make pretty things for you. I LOVE THIS THING. One of my many sisters-in-law (AKA my best friends) made this for me just because she is sweet as pie. I believe my buddy used this tutorial here: How To Make Your Own Chalkboard.

 

I made sure to season this guy before I started writing on it. Then I used a chalkboard pen. And it still did not want to wipe off easily, so I panicked and then started trying to clean it off with all the stuff in our cabinet. The Totally Awesome (haha) window cleaner is the only thing that really worked. I used a dry washcloth and started wiping it all over from top to bottom. 

Here she is all dry. You cannot see where I originally wrote "This has all been wonderful." and it makes me feel wonderful. 

And now I can use it as part of a baby shower decorations, or whatever I feel like and the window cleaner does a good job cleaning it off. Hip Hip Hooray!

Chalkboards belong in multiple locations in every room, wouldn't you agree??

The Case of the Missing Socks

Where are those missing socks????

I really don't have words of wisdom for not losing socks. I do have a few theories.

 

1. My husband washes his clothes. A lot. He never seems to misplace his socks. He is a great husband and some sort of wizard. Obviously. 

2. I blame the kids. They must steal my socks or shove them under couches or take them to a friend's house. They do the same thing with their own.

3. Maybe the dogs sneak them somewhere. I don't know. Homemade chew toys that they end up actually consuming? They just like to mess with me??

 

 What really happens is someone takes their socks off in the car and one falls out into the garage and stays there for weeks until I clean the garage out and I find a random sock that I throw in the wash with the next load. Or one ends up behind the laundry basket. And sometimes it really is our youngest who likes to hide things, specifically in the garbage can.

 

I have heard of people safety pinning socks together before they go into the wash. I don't care about socks THAT much. There are very few things I will go to that much effort for, and socks certainly don't fall into that category. Anyway, this is how I keep track of socks for my family.

 

Honestly, I don't have too much of an issue with losing socks. One here or there may go missing, but it's not a perpetual thing. I keep a cute little canvas bag hanging in our laundry room.

I love this bag!! My brother brought it back for me when he spent a year in Japan when I was a freshman in college. The front side is so funny. It says: "Do You Buy It? Elephant U.S. $2.00-!"
What on earth?
Well I love the bag, but it has a $2.00 elephant on it, so I just flip it around to hang and chuckle to myself when I take it down.

When I pull laundry out of the dryer and there is a sock with no mate, I toss it into this bag. Usually, once a week, at least every two weeks, I get completely caught up in laundry. That means everything is washed, dried and put away. It lasts about 11 seconds before someone gets yogurt all over their shirt or a diaper incident happens, but that's when I pull down my sock bag.

Most of the time, the mates are all in there together, so I fold/roll them up and put them where they belong. I bet they start singing "..so happy togeeetherr". Maybe not. Sometimes there are socks somewhere else (the garage floor..) and there are a few left in the bag without a mate. I hang the bag back up until next time I am caught up again on laundry. Typically, if the match for those same socks has not been found, I get rid of the single sock. I have NO REGRETS, PEOPLE! I use them to dust or sometimes put them in the craft area for sock puppets, but I don't keep single socks for long. Sorry, suckas!

I have come across a match for a sock months later that I knew I already threw out. Guess what? BuhBye.

Remember, we don't really lose socks that much, so throwing a few stragglers out feels just fine. We have some very nice socks that I would certainly investigate further to retrieve before I just started trashing those. I would let them hang out in the elephant bag for a while longer. Most of the nice socks are my husbands, though, and he's a wizard that knows how to keep his socks together. 

Y'all know by now I like to give you links to other options, so here ya go:

It Socks to Be Lonely – FREE Laundry Room Art

Hide Loose Items

A Mom’s Solution to ‘The Missing Sock’ Dilemma

Creative Laundry Room Storage + Free Labels

Have a great day!

Gross Armrests

Slobber, snot, Papa John's garlic sauce, apple juice..all of it's gross on the armrest of your couch. I love our kids so much. They are messy. I am clumsy and also drop things (including food) a lot. We love our house and we LIVE in our house. So we make messes in our house, and sometimes on the furniture. We typically eat at the table, but food is certainly allowed in the living room, so it gets dirty. If you keep your furniture spotless I am seriously so proud of you. It is just not the case here. The cushion covers of our couch and love seat zip off and I wash them in the washing machine about once a month. The arm rests are a different story. 

Gross.

I have used upholstery spray cleaner before and it did a good job. This time I just sprayed stain pre treater on there. This is what we had:

Spray the entire area. It will leave a ring if you just spray a small section.

Use a damp washcloth and work it into the fabric. Scrub extra gross areas a couple of times.

The next morning:

If you have some delicate fabric or your furniture has no pattern, I would be super careful cleaning it. Ours fits neither of those categories, and it cleans our armrests very well. 

A slipcover is also a nice choice!

silly Silly Putty

Silly putty. Fun stuff. Until it's ground deep into your carpet.

Why, yes, we do have two separate spots with two different colors of silly putty embedded into the carpet in our playroom. It happens. Well, it happened to us. But things are looking better now!

Two methods that I found online to clean silly putty off carpet: rubbing alcohol or WD40. I had both, so I tried 'em both.

EXHIBIT A: Bright Orange 

I poured rubbing alcohol over the stain.

I rubbed it in well.

After letting it sit for 10 minutes (as was recommended) things were not looking too great. I used dish soap and water (also recommended) and rubbed for quite a while with no luck.

I tried just spraying regular carpet cleaner on it and scrubbing again.

Boo!

This actually looked worse than when I started, so I just sighed and moved over to

EXHIBIT B: Lime Green

It's been there a while, so it doesn't look quite as fresh. Still, it's green silly putty on the carpet.

This time, I tried the WD40. I am so weird, but I love this stuff. I am always secretly hoping doors around here start creaking so I can spray it around. Anyway. I sprayed it on the stain.

Rubbed it in with a damp washcloth.

Then, scrubbed with dish soap and water. SO MUCH BETTER.

Back on over at EXHIBIT A, I sprayed it with WD40 this time.

Rubbed it in with soap and water and...

SAH-WEET!

After 2 hours, then vacuuming..

Lime green spot:

Orange spot:

Still not perfect, but it is certainly better.

I hope you never find yourself in a (couple of) silly putty situation(s), but if you do, there is still hope! And if you don't have WD40, you can always borrow mine. Just return it quickly before a hinge goes rusty. 

The moral of the story is: don't leave children alone with silly putty.

Grease is the Word

When I was in the sixth grade, I remember some friends talking about their favorite movie: a musical named Grease. I had never heard of this movie, so when they started describing high schoolers on the beach and some of the other scenes, I was thoroughly confused.

You see, the only Grease I had ever heard of was a country. Spelled Greece.
So, I was trying to imagine people in togas at a sleepover, dancing around and singing about cars.

I always think of that when I hear the word grease!

This kind of grease is even more annoying than the movie, which I don't care for.

I am bad to just throw stuff into the washing machine and straight into the dryer and hope for the best. These little oil spots show up and since I've already dried it, I'm in trouble. I would always spray it with stain treater and wash again, but that just never works. 

This stuff has saved grease spots several times. I use this Dawn Simply Clean, or just regular blue Dawn. We wash our pups with this, so I usually have plenty.

Squirt your grease spot, making sure to cover it completely.

Rub it in really well.

This time I let it sit overnight. I threw it in with another load of colors the following day in cold water. I hung it instead of drying it this time.

Completely dry, look how much better it looks!

I will iron it this time since it didn't go through the dryer, but the grease stain appeared to be completely gone. 

Happy de-greasing!

Stinky Laundry

Whether it's gym clothes, damp towels or that bag of wet kids swimsuits you found in the back of your car from 4 days ago, clothes get stinky. This tip came from my mother-in-law and it has worked wonders on our especially smelly laundry!

Add about a cup of white distilled vinegar to your load of laundry.
Yep. That's it.

I do not measure it, I just estimate and pour a little into the washing machine in addition to my regular detergent. In my experience, the clothes do not smell like vinegar at all. In fact, they always smell more fresh than I expect! I have also never had any trouble with it affecting the colors of the clothes at all. {I just googled affect vs. effect to make sure I got it right.}

I keep a gallon of white vinegar in my laundry room by my cleaning products because I use it a lot in cleaning. It can usually be found in the grocery store near the baking supplies; at least that's where they keep it at my Kroger!

I hope this helps keep your clothes smelling so fresh and so clean, clean.

Welcome

Welcome to

Watching Over the Ways!

 

I have started this blog to learn and share how to be a better wife and mother, while having lots of fun along the way!
My name is Laura. I am a 31 year old Christian, southern lady with a handsome, hard-working husband, three beautiful children and two sweet pups. I have the joy and privilege of staying home full time and caring for our home and all who live there. I'm glad you're here!

The title comes from Proverbs 31: 27

She watches over the ways of her household,

And does not eat the bread of idleness.