Cleaning and corsets :-)

Thanks for all your lovely comments on my last blog post, sorry I can't reply to you all individually, time just seems to be so limited lately :-(  Not sure why but the time just speeds past - ggggrrr how dare life get in the way of my blog love :-)

Now this is a bit of a random blog post.  During last year I started in earnest to try and get rid of chemicals in my house that I use for cleaning etc, this is something that I want to do more of this year.  What with more articles in the press about links with certain cleaning products to things like breast cancer and also seeing the reaction that things have on my little sweetpeas skin it makes me think before I buy.  We also had a scare when middle Sweetpea was little and I caught her munching on a toilet gel thing that hangs over the toilet bowl - that was the first and last time I bought any chemical scenting products :-o

I thought I would share with you some of the things I have found out whilst doing this.

Below is a picture of my yukky sink, we get quite a lot of soap build up on the bathroom sink due to buying bars of soap rather than pump soap.  We don't use pump soap due to it causing our hands to get really dry, middle Sweetpeas hands used to bleed they were so dry then we changed to more natural brands of bar soap and the problem went away within a week or so.  We also live in a hard water area so have real problems with limescale build up.   

I have been using soda crystals and vinegar with a drop of tea tree oil to clean our sinks and bath.  Tea tree oil is meant to be a good natural disinfectant.  Just pour some soda crystals in the sink and add a little vinegar and the tea tree and scrub as usual.  If you have limescale around the taps then soak some toilet roll in vinegar and the wrap it round the tap (as in top photo) - leave for about 20 mins and wash away.

It really cleans the sink well and the limescale completely disappears when treated with vinegar a few times.  This is due to limescale being alkaline and vinegar is acid which breaks down the alkaline.

Vinegar can also be put down the toilet (I won't expose you to a picky of my toilet :-)).  We had some limescale down the toilet pan and I tried the coca cola idea but that didn't work.  I then poured vinegar down the pan and left it overnight and voila it was gone in the morning.

Vinegar is also a good fabric softener - pop some in your conditioner draw and it softens the water for you.

For washing up I have been using ECover washing up liquid which is fab and I also use their surface cleaner for the kitchen sides.  Method also make some lovely natural cleaning products but are quite expensive so I wait for special offers on them.

I would really like to get rid of all our chemicals eventually so any tips or recipes for home cleaning products or shampoos etc would be fantastic!

Photo from BBC Website

Now on to corsets, see I told you this post would be random :-)

I watched the new Lark Rise to Candelford last night on BBC1, oh how I wish we still wore such beautiful dresses.  I love this programme not only as it is really well made but the lighting of the whole programme is just lovely, almost sepia sometimes and the clothes - well they are just exquisite!  The way the dresses nipped in at the waste and then flow out, so feminine.  Those lovely collars and puffy shoulders ....  and then there is the gorgeous fabric used to make them .....  I can dream but think I may look a bit odd walking to school in one of those gorgeous dresses :-)