cleaning silver - domestic fail

So my in-laws gave Elliot and me this beautiful silver platter serving dish that I think belonged to one of the grandparents.  I wanted to spiff it up and remove any tarnish, and this lady at an antique store told me about a technique that "easily removes tarnish" - well 2 attempts later (approximately 45 minutes, which mind you is about as long as an episode of Mad Men) I still have a tarnished platter.

Here are specific instructions from a university chemisty deptartment (aka legit) - http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/homeexpts/tarnish.html

They even give the fancy formula (I have no idea what this means, but I like the idea of having equations and such in my blog!

3 Ag2S	+	2 Al		6 Ag	+	Al2S3
silver sulfide		aluminum		silver		aluminum sulfide

So chemistry...why did you not work for me!



Here are pic of the process (although, what is the point of looking, since it did not work!)


{Before}

 {The supplies - thank god it was all free!}

 {Action shot!}

 {Chemistry - bubbles!}

 {Hoping this magic would work}

 {The after pic - which looks the same as the before pic = domestic fail}

So can someone just tell me who I can pay to fix this?

Gaya’s extreme couponing, minus the extreme part

So by now most of us have heard of the hit TV show “Extreme Couponing” (notice the 684 dollar sub-total, and the -676.29 coupons!).  Here are a few highlights of the show, and then my attempt at extreme couponing.

Some general strategies I learned from watching the show

i)     Getting rain checks for items on sale, so once you have a coupon for that item you use the rain check and the coupon together

ii)    Use store sales with store coupons and manufacturers coupons. Some stores double coupons, and even offer overage if the coupon is worth more than the item's price.

iii)   You can donate some of the bounty to others in need, or you can stock pile it in your house (I for one, sure as heck have room for 600 candy bars, 2500 diapers, and a 400 rolls of toilet paper). For tax purposes you can also define your house as a warehouse, and get a tax license.

{pic from show of a stockpile}

v)     You can dumpster dive for coupons. Americans throw away 57 billion dollars in coupons every year, and those dumpsters are ripe for the picking.  It is the most affordable way to use the 500 coupons a week.  I have had friends in Atlanta see people do this at the farmer’s market…awesome

{pic from the show….side note, the lady is wearing a 150 dollar Anthropologie jacket, I am not kidding}

Recently stores (Rite Aid, Kroger, Publix and Target) have been changing their coupon policies to prevent these shenanigans.  They are making it tougher to create that perfect stockpile.  So I wanted to go test my talent at this….

Gaya’s extreme couponing….

So I clipped a bunch of coupons from my parents Sunday newspaper and a lovely co-worker who graciously gave me the coupon section.  Elliot wanted none of this coupon crazy-ness, and was really raining on my coupon parade “Gaya, we don’t need that” “Gaya, I don’t even like cheerios” “Gaya don’t buy that, that looks disgusting” “Congratulations of spending money on crap we don’t need”…..and so on and so on.

Now, I was also buying normal groceries, so not just coupon items.  So my savings are not obvious from the receipt, but I did alright.

Here is a pic of the coupons I did not use (I forgot to take a picture of the ones I did use)

Here is a pic of the receipt. As you see I saved 6.60 from manufacturs coupons, and 7.81 from Kroger in store savings. I also had my husband check out separately and buy another bag of stacy’s pita chips (soooo delicious) which were originally 2 for $7, on sale for 2 for $4, plus a coupon, leaving the grand total to 1.53 after tax…not bad for delicious pita chips indeed.  I also got a box of mini penne pastas for like 50 cents (don’t be jealous!)

But overall, this was not a success, I also ended up with a bunch of crap spilling out of my pantry, that I would never have bought in the first place (dangit, Elliot was right), it also took a while finding those coupons, clip them out, find an envelope to stuff them in to, sort through them at the grocery, and spend extra time in the grocery store.

Summary: Domestic fail

To do: Next time I want to save some cash, go to the stores with good sales that week (for example right now Kroger is having a sale on berries).  I also want to go explore in various supermarkets that might be more affordable (so maybe Aldi (I hear if you are not happy with a product they will give your twice your money back) or IGA foods)

Oven....nightmare

So this won't be exactly the most interesting blog, but I wanted to share a recent experience.  The other week I hosted friends over for dinner, and I kept opening the oven to see if the food was ready and each time I opened the oven in front of my guests I would cringe....oh man, my oven is nasty - it is amazing anyone would eat something coming out of this oven.  Crap was all stuck to the side the bottom like black sludge.



 Something must be done, so I decided to experiment....this was mistake number 1. At first I figured I should just do the self cleaning mode on the oven, but then I remembered it was like 95 degrees and having my oven at 900 degrees for several hours was 1) not environmentally friendly and an energy drain and 2) my house would be hot as hades.

So, I found a website that has recipes to make your very own household cleaning products: http://www.ecocycle.org/hazwaste/recipes.cfm

For oven cleaner they give two recipes:

Mix together: ¼ c. baking soda
2 tbsp. salt
Hot water, as needed to make a paste.
Let paste sit for 5 minutes. Caution: Keep off wires/heating elements.
OR
2 tbsp. liquid soap (castile, peppermint)
2 tsp. borax
1 qt. warm water
Spray on oven and wait 20 minutes, then clean. For tough stains, scrub with very fine steel wool and baking soda

Well since I don't know what borax is, I decided to do option one and mix together baking soda, salt, and water.  Good news- I had all of those supplies - WINNING!

So make the paste:

So put the paste all over the dirty oven:

And the paste starts turning black when you rub it in and I guess you wipe it up (the directions were not ubber detailed)

Let's just say this is nasty, and soon feels like you are covered in crap. No matter how much you clean and wipe up, there is still more

And after that, I wiped down the wire racks and was literally sweating my (fill in the blank) off.  At least I don't need to exercise today!!!  After all that hard work, my oven looked better- but not that great - I still could not really see through the glass viewing window.

So I buckled, and decided to do the auto cleaning oven - and 3 hours later I had a sparkling oven - although my house was super hot!

So moral of the story - clean up spills as soon as they happen, every few months use some elbow grease and clean by hand.  BUT, if you oven is super dirty (aka - has never been cleaned), then just go ahead and lose some environmental karma points and do the self clean feature.

Summary: Domestic fail