It Works! Cleaning Stained China

It really works! A while back I wrote about a remedy I had found online at How to Clean Stuff for cleaning those brown stains so often found on old china pieces. I have passed up so many pretty dishes because of the unsightly stains, assuming there was no way to correct the problem.

Wrong. There is a way. I tried it and it worked beautifully.

I posted a little about it a couple months ago, when I decided to try the solution on a lovely blue and white English porcelain casserole dish I'd found in an auction lot. The dish was perfect, no chips or cracks--but the glaze had crackled (crazed) and the inside of the dish had several brown stains. I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to fix it.

Here is the dish before when I was experimenting with different ways to clean it. First I tried a baking soda paste (top of the photo), but that did nothing to correct the problem. Then I tried toothpaste (in the bottom part of the photo); again, no luck. The website said to use high strength (3%) hydrogen peroxide that can be bought at hair salon supply companies. I am miles from any place like that, but I did have a jug of Clorox 2, and I knew that it contained a high percentage of peroxide, so I decided to try that. I put a wad of paper towels in the bottom of the dish, then filled the dish with Clorox 2. I left it like that for a month.

The result:

This lovely dish is ready to sell!

Linking today to Housewife How-To's. Be sure to visit there for lots of great ideas!


Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

A Frugal Life and Toothpaste

I never really think about the fact that we live a frugal life. It has been a lifelong habit, looking for savings, comparing prices, buying at thrift stores and cooking from scratch. I suppose it's not surprising since I grew up in a large family where nothing was wasted because money was always tight. But for me, it's nor need necessarily that makes me look for bargains. It's the hunt, the score, and the satisfaction sometimes of putting something once useful back into service.

Which leads me to toothpaste. Not that I make my own; I don't. But I have found that toothpaste is one useful cleaning tool for things besides teeth. For example, you can use toothpaste to smooth out the scratches on a DVD or CD. Simply rub the toothpaste in small circles over the disc, rinse it clean, dry with a soft cotton rag (t-shirts or old hankies work great), and that's it. If you have a DVD that sticks (it happens a lot with movies we check out from the library) this may well cure the problem.

Toothpaste is also great for cleaning white leather tennis shoes. Scrub it in with a brush, rinse and dry. Then use whatever product you like to condition the leather again. It's awesome around the soles; I keep an old toothbrush to scrub the creases and seams.

I use toothpaste to remove stains on cloth too; it's my desperation measure and it sometimes works. I wet the item rub in the toothpaste and scrub gently. Then wash as normal. It also works on stains on glass and china items.

I bet there are uses for toothpaste that I have yet to discover. Do you know any?

Copyright 2012 Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Quick Fix: Renewed Divider

Ugly, right? This the before picture of the old screen I've had for about 5 years. The other side is a very old hand-painted canvas that while not perfect is still beautiful in my eyes--but the back side, oh woe! It was a mess. I know that under this horribleness there is canvas, and I have tried to peal away the old wallpaper to see it, but I have not been able to see much at all except a pale blue stripe. I think it would take a professional restorer to do that.

So I decided to cover it with more wallpaper but instead of pasting it on, I used hot glue on the sides only so that should someone ever want to restore the canvas, it might be less of a headache. I left the wood trim in its current chipped-paint look.

Here is the end result:

It took me about 30 minutes to do. Why did I wait so long to take care of this? I can only blame that old friend, procrastination. I bought the paper 2 years ago, for goodness sake. Still it's done now and I love its new look:

Now I can fold the screen either way, and still love the way it looks.

Quick Fix--If You Have Snow, That Is

A good snow means a good opportunity to clean rugs. I do not remember where I learned this trick but it certainly works for giving rugs a quick scrub in the winter. This time Larry did the honors.

It's as simple as carrying your rugs outside, dumping snow on them and then scrubbing them with a broom. It is amazing how much dirt is removed in the process. I use this for rugs that can't go in the washing machine and the results are very similar to using a rug cleaner.


There's not been much snow here this winter, and the 3 inches this weekend was the most we've had at one time, so it was a good opportunity to get the rugs done. No snow ice cream this time, though--I just forgot to make it. So let's hope for more snow so we can enjoy that simple treat.

Quick Fix: Homemade Mayonnaise

It's one of those days when you seem to be out of everything you need. Like mayo. Chances are, though, that you have everything you need to make it right in your cabinet. When I was a new housewife, lo those many years ago (about 40 or so, to be more precise) I found the recipe for mayonnaise on the side of a can of dry mustard. I tried it and it was so easy that I made my own for several years. We moved, time passed and I just forgot all about it. Then recently I was looking for a recipe and there was my mayonnaise recipe, stained and wrinkled.

I pulled it out, and gave it a try. The process was just as easy as I remember. Now, note that my recipe uses raw eggs. Websites today recommend using pasteurized eggs. I have no idea where to find pasteurized eggs, but if you worry about raw eggs, then I'd recommend looking at this recipe with instructions on how you can pasteurize eggs at home.

Ingredients:
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 cup cooking oil, maybe a little more (that's what my recipe says!)

To make:
Beat the first four ingredients with a wire whisk (I used the whisk on my Kitchenaid mixer, using speed 4) until completely blended.

Add the oil in a slow steady stream as you continue whisking the mixture. The mayonnaise will thicken slowly, but the entire process of making it takes about 5 minutes.

That's all there is to it! There are several other ways to make mayonnaise, as this article from the UK's Guardian shows.

The finished product is thick, slightly yellow (my chicken's eggs have dark yolks, and that affects the color), with a nice tangy flavor.

It's just delicious and so much better than what is in the jars at the store.

I use this just as I would use store-bought mayonnaise. I store it in the coldest part of my fridge and make sure I use it up in two weeks.

It can be mixed with sour cream, parsley, dill (if you have it) and green onions plus a little milk or buttermilk to make an excellent ranch dressing, too, if you have some ranch dressing addicts at your house. Just grind up the herbs, garlic (or garlic powder), green onion (or use onion powder) and garlic in the blender, add the sour cream, and mayo, and add milk until it's the consistency you like.

Quick Fix: Dried Orange Peel

I keep dried orange peel in my cabinet for those times when I don't have oranges on hand but need the flavor in my cooking or for a recipe that calls for orange peel. There's nothing easier to make, either.

Whenever I eat an orange, I grate the peel off of it first. Then I simply spread the grated peel in a pan or a dish and put it in a warm dry place to dry. The top of my stove is perfect, or in the oven with the pilot light. It you don't have a stove with pilots, a spot by your heat vents or near your wood stove--or even under a lamp--would work well.

It doesn't take long for the peels to dry, usually 24 hours or less. Put them in a jar and into the cabinet (keep the light off of them to retain their bright color) and you've got a handy supply ready for use. You can reconstitute them with a little water if you need them to be soft for your recipe, but for most baking or cooking the dried peels will soak up moisture in the cooking process.

Add the dried peel to cranberries, to muffins, cookies, quick breads, pork recipes, herbal or black teas--there are so many possibilities. And if you need orange juice in a recipe and have none, soak a teaspoon of your dried rind in lemon juice  and add a little sugar for a substitute. It won't be quite the same but it's better than water as a replacement for the juice.

I'm off to writer's group and the recording studio today. I have written about 2000 more words on the story I mentioned last week (the one about the people who show up claiming to be relatives). It's coming along, a slow unwinding of a story set in rural Virginia (echoes of my childhood in a small Virginia town) in the early 1960's. In the studio, we'll be editing the family stories CD I recorded two weeks ago, and I may add one more story to it, a bit about what it was like to grow up in a family of 13 children.

I hope you all have a great Tuesday!