Nellie has inherited an old chest from her grandmother and it is charged with moth ball smells. How to get rid of that smell since Nellie doesn't have any more woollens that need protecting?The answer is bicarbonate of soda, and lots of it.This common power actually changes the pH of different o...
Isn't it frustrating to clean brass over and over again, it just turns dark so quickly. Well a long time ago an Asian friend taught me that it goes black because of oxygen that gets to the surface. Spray it with lacquer right after it is cleaned, and it will stay bright for years.Spray lacquer ...
Ania removed a pedestal sink that had been kept stable with a cedar shim and now she wants to know how to get rid of the stain the cedar has left on her linoleum floor.The bad news is that, if it is really linoleum and not vinyl, linoleum is more porous than vinyl and stains can go deeper. The u...
Michael, a retired high-rise window washer, wrote in: "When acid rain gets baked onto your windows from the sun without regular cleaning, it can be impossible to get off with regular window cleaner. So I suggest using oven cleaner on your grimy old windows and they'll come out looking sparkling ...
Putting harsh drain chemicals or bleaches into a garborator is not a good idea because of all the metal, rubber and plastic parts. You might damage something. If it is really smelly it probably has some food stuff stuck in corners that just don't flush out.Here is where enzyme cleaners come to ...
While testing a number of carpet stain cleaning products on grape juice stains, everything had trouble with an old dried stain, soda water did pretty well on a fresh stain but the surprise technique was to totally cover the stain with table salt and let it dry. Vacuum off the dry salt. Then clea...
Janice from Clarenville, Newfoundland has a toilet that has a mind of its own. Setting aside the possibility that it is not a toilet at all but rather one of those strange European bidets, my best guess on this one is a partial blockage that is interfering with one of the jets of water that serv...
Not all gas fireplaces develop a greyish haze on the glass window and sometimes a bit all over the inside of gas fireplaces, but many do. Most manufacturers that we contacted didn't know what the haze was but they assumed it had to do with breaking in the heated parts of the fireplace, and gener...
Jim from Shelburne, Nova Scotia sent in this tip. After cleaning your paint brushes, and admitting that you never get them perfectly clean, when you hang them up with the bristles hanging down, a bit of the stiff stuff flows down to the tips of the bristles. The first photo shows two brushes c...
Car polish and powerMary from Sauble Beach, Ontario sent in the tip of cleaning off a heavy build-up of soap scum from her glass shower door with automobile polish and a power buffer. So we tried it.It didn't seem to get down to perfectly clean, but it certainly did remove a lot. Mary just has ...
