Thursday, December 27, 2012

Two Pintests In One! Chemical-Free Cleaning

The other day I saw a lemon bar recipe I really wanted to try. After spending an entire day feeling awful I decided I would make some lemon bars for my husband and myself. My lemons were about ready to be thrown away but the zest still looked viable - or viable enough.
After standing in the kitchen for an indeterminate amount of time zesting lemons my husband told me he didn't like lemon bars. He'd eat a few - but isn't a lemon bar fan. Completely uninterested in wasting lemons, possibly overloading the worms I'm planning to use in composting with citrus, or being left to eat all of the lemon bars myself - I remembered a couple of pins I felt would be useful.

The first pin provides some info on how to whiten your whites that have become dingy.

The second felt like a good plan about what to do about my lemon rinds.

I cut off all of my lemon rinds and placed them in a Mason jar for later.

Meanwhile I cut up my lemons. Placed them in a large pot.

Filled it with water and dropped in about half of the lemons I now had.

Once the water began to boil I put some of my husbands dingy shirts into the water. It appeared I'd been too cautious about water displacement and ended up needing to add more very hot water to the mix.

I let the water come back up to a boil. Turned off the heat. Put a lid on my pot and let it sit for an hour.
After that first "load" I decided to do another containing minky inserts for my little lamb's cloth diapers.

I didn't have any clean Mason lids so I had to clean some. Once they were ready to go I filled the Mason jar containing the lemon rinds with vinegar.
If you  noticed in my first photo I have the lemons on one of my UnPaper towels. I chose to cut them on that because I didn't feel like doing any dishes or getting out my cutting board. Cutting the lemons this way left me with a nice lemon cloth that I used to scrub my kitchen sink!
When I finally finished boiling whites I strained the lemons to be composted later.

The instructions for your new vinegar cleaner is to let your jar sit for 10 days. So . . . . I guess I'll be concluding this in around 10 days?

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