Scrubber!

Greetings Lockdown Lovelies! How have you been finding way to fill your time? I had planned to spend yesterday sewing, but woke up in a massively grumpy mood. Poor old Mr Robot has got tennis elbow – his ‘working from home’ setup isn’t exactly ergonomically ideal – and that gives him trouble sleeping, which means he wakes me up. And unlike him, I’m unable to nap during the daytime as it doesn’t refresh me, it makes me feel worse. So: grumpy Mim!

I find when I’m in that sort of mood, the best thing to do isn’t to firce myself to be creative. Grumpy sewing is bad sewing. No, the only thing to do is address the cause of the grumpiness or, if that’s not possible, sort out other irritants. I’ve had my eye on our kitchen for a while; a winter of cooking soups and stews and other slow dishes had left it feeling a bit greasy. I saw it in bright sunlight a couple of week back and was appalled; it needed a deep clean. So yesterday, while Mr Robot rested his arm, I grabbed the bicarb and got cleaning.

Bicarb? You may well already know this, but if you don’t, bicarbonate of soda is the best degreaser. The stuff you use for baking. Just mix a heap to a thickish paste with water, rub it over the greasy surface – you may need to use a fair bit for really greasy surfaces like cupboard tops, which none of is clean THAT regularly – and leave it for 60 seconds or so. There’s a chemical reaction and the fat bonds with the soda and it all turns into a putty-like substance that can be rolled or scraped into balls and thrown in the bin. Wipe the surface with a wet cloth or sponge, and that’s the job done. It’s non-toxic, doesn’t give off any nasty fumes, and doesn’t damage work surfaces.

So I hauled everything off all the surfaces in the kitchen, cleaned from the tops of the upper cupboards down, wiping fronts, work surfaces and windowsills, then put everything back, cleaning it all as I did. Everything from the cooking oil bottles to the utensil pots (and every utensil in them) to the nutmeg grater was washed. Even the washing up rack itself got washed! And by the end of that four hours I’d got through nearly three tubs of bicarb and my entire grumpy mood. There's nothing like a clean, shiny room to lift the spirits.

Here’s our new kettle. Our old one broke a week into lockdown. The horror. This one’s rather pretty, and fits with the general colour theme and vaguely retro style of the kitchen. The decor’s a bit tired really; the walls need repainting and the units are showing their age. (They’re about 17 years old.) But I do like the room. I plan to paint the scruffy windowsills, and the skirting board behind the cats’ dishes, which has been scrubbed shabby, while on lockdown. Maybe that’s a job for the coming weekend, along with whitening the grout on the tiles.

Stay safe!