Wonky and Woot-tastic Wednesday

It Wednesday!!! Let's get to it!

Wonky

    - Living with a man isn't bad or awful but there are some down falls. Sharing a bathroom with a man is gross. Since he's tall and I'm short sometimes he puts things out of my reach and I have to climb on things to get them down, on the plus side when something is on a high shelf at the grocery store, I don't have to climb shelves to get it. The most recent down fall I've discovered is when he closes things. Jars or bottles suddenly become impossible to open because he closed them so only a man with super human strength could open them again. It's not all bad, but those 3 things, so far, are the worst.
    - I agreed over a month ago to hedgehog sit for a lady while she went on her honeymoon, which is fine. No big deal. Then mom and dad had to take an emergency trip to Mississippi, which means I also have their dog, Martin, and mom's hedgehog, Crowley. We currently have 7 animals in this apartment. Seven. It's a very full house over here.

Mabel, the honeymoon hog.

Rebel, Jixer and Martin helping me with business stuff

Crowley, Mom's hedgie

Ivy, my hog

Prim, my hog 

    - I'm really glad we got all that rain and everything but is anyone else totally over the bugs? I get eaten alive just taking the dogs out (granted it takes forever since now I'm taking out three dogs but still). ENOUGH WITH THE BUGS!

    - My mom has been gone for over three weeks. I kinda miss her a lot :(

    - Almost every day I come home for lunch. It's not usually a very eventful or interesting trip, except for today. When I walked up to my door there was a car seat sitting there. It was gone when I came back home from work but I found it very puzzling.

Woot-tastic

    - My best friend has been very exciting lately! She is now a stay at home mom AND she got a puppy! His name is Hendrick and I want him. He's very floppy and puppy-like. Sorry the photo is blurry. He was trying to play.

    - A while back a friend of ours gave us a wine fridge. The top part was over heating. Well one of the perks to living with a man, or at least my man, is he can fix things! So, now I have a working wine fridge. It's currently housing two bottles of wine and some vodka. I need to stock up. Any suggestions?

    - I've started back to making my own laundry soap again. Ryan had bought this giant thing of laundry soap from Costco and it FINALLY ran out (after like  a year) so I made my soap. I had forgotten how much I love the smell.

    - I love cooking. I don't love cooking as much after a very long, busy day at work. Unfortunately, my husband still demands food and I'm not so much fun when I'm hungry either. So, I prep EVERYTHING the night before. Everything that can be prepped gets prepped. The sides get seasoned if I can season them ahead of time, the meat gets put together, veggies get chopped and diced. It makes it much easier for me to come home on my lunch break and shove something in the crock pot or to throw it on the stove or in the oven when I get home. Easy peasy. Also, we eat A LOT of chicken. 

Sorry this week isn't a very interesting or eventful post. I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th Of July! Don't do anything too stupid!

Just Add Vinegar

Ok, you know how duct tape can fix anything? Well, vinegar can CLEAN anything. I mean ANYTHING. It's cheap, it's easy, and it WORKS!

When you think "domestic, cleaning goddess" you may think of many names, but my name is not one of them, nor do I think it ever will be. I love to cook and I do clean, but I wouldn't say I'm "good" at it (although I really don't know how one is "good" at cleaning. Clean is clean, right?). So, it probably won't surprise you to know that I had NO IDEA how many uses vinegar had to it. I knew it was used in cooking, although I was never really sure for what specifically, and I did know you could clean with it, but seriously people, you can clean everything with this stuff! I use it on counters, bathtubs, appliances, floors, my face(!!) and my new favorite.... laundry!

I actually got the idea from my hedgehog forum to use it in my laundry. People were trying to figure out how to get the urine and poop smell out of their hedgies fleece bedding and a lot of breeders suggested using vinegar. Since I already use vinegar to clean her cage and wheel I figured, why not give it a try on her bedding too! So, today I shook out her fleece blankets, put them in the washer, added my Homemade Laundry Detergent, and added some vinegar. No, I didn't measure it. I just splashed some in there and hoped I wouldn't ruin anything in the process (not a domestic goddess, remember?). I would estimate that I used somewhere between half a cup and a full cup, maybe a little more. When I got her blankets out of the dryer they smelled SO CLEAN! They didn't even smell like vinegar! I was AMAZED! I am now waiting for some towels to finish drying so I can smell them (well, that's a sentence you don't hear very often).

I also use regular distilled vinegar to clean counters, appliances, bathrooms, floors etc. I have never used it on mirrors or glass and haven't researched that either, so if you have used it for that let me know how it worked! I got a Rubbermaid spray bottle from Target, but it was expensive so I suggest going to the Dollar Store or something and I mix 1 parts vinegar to 3 parts water. I started out with a 1:1 ratio but the vinegar smell was SO intense that I could barely stand to clean with it so I watered it down a little more. I used the 1:1 ratio on our stainless steel refrigerator. The water dispenser had created gross white streaks down the front of the fridge, along with having crusted in the little drip pan thingy (technical lingo, I know, try to keep up). I had tried EVERYTHING to get it off but nothing even dented it, until I used the vinegar. I had to scrub a little bit but it DID work!

Another crazy use for vinegar is using it on your face! I've read to use apple cider vinegar after you wash your face to balance out the pH. Wearing make up and washing your face can either lower the acidity or increase the acidity (making it oily or dry) and the ACV helps balance everything out. I use 1 teaspoon of ACV and 3 teaspoons of water after I scrub my face with baking soda and water (great for removing black heads by the way). If you use straight ACV, without watering it down, it burns like the dickins and will probably make your face all red, so make sure you water it down. I've also read that ACV helps even out your complexion over time and reduce dark spots!

Here's a picture of my sweet little Prim that I took today. We were waiting for her bedding to finish drying!

Well that's it for this Southern Soapbox! What do y'all clean with your vinegar? Comment below!