I want to be the kind of person who uses home remedies, but most of the time I'm not. And obviously, if I've made it 30 years without (most of) them, then the chances are high I am not going to dive in anytime soon. But I do have one that I use religiously, and since I used it today I'm going to tell you about it now.
Baking soda can remove any smell from any fabric. I don't mean hide it for a while, I mean completely remove it. When we were getting ready to move to Nashville, we steam cleaned our rugs. They dried in the sun for a few days before we rolled them up and loaded them onto the moving van, but obviously the inner pad had not dried, because when we unrolled them in Nashville, they had mildewed. I was so sad about it, and assumed we would be throwing away several hundred dollars worth of rugs, when someone told me to try baking soda on them first. Totally worked. The rugs have never mildewed again, which means it really was completely removed, because goodness knows we spill water in this house all the time (tonight I gave Asher a bath on the living room floor, but that's another story).
So this morning, when faced with the stench of hypoallergenic formula vomit plus stain removing chemicals, I emptied a box of baking soda on the couch. Know what? No more ghastly smell. Praise Jesus.
Your turn. Do you know any good home remedies?
10 comments:
Do you have an aloe plant? My MIL gave us a few. Sam tells me as kids whenever they were burned and cut, etc.(which as a household with four + kids at any moment and living next door to a stained glass studio I'm guessing an injury occured approximately every 2 to 4 hours) they would be sent out to the aloe plant to break off a piece and rub the open end on the wound. It's a wonder they still had any aloe plants...
I'm totally going to use this! I just figured that our carpet was forever ruined by all the spit-up smelly stains. The stain remover stuff takes the stain out, but the smell is harder. Thanks!!
WOW ....I remember my dad using baking soda in the dry cleaning/laundry business to remove odors from stuff...
Glad you posted this ...
My home remedy: tough love.
Michelle, my grandmother was a big believer in aloe plants, too. When I had chicken pox, I stayed at her house, and she would break open aloe leaves (or whatever they are called) for the sores.
A little bit of ground black pepper in a cotton ball and then balled up can be put in a childs ear to ease ear aches. The pepper heats up in the cotton ball and soothes the ear. We've done it for Baby Bean before.
Vinegar is a lifesaver. If you ever have clothes that you leave in the washer too long and they get stinky, rewash them and put a cup of vinegar in the water. The vinegar smell goes away when the clothes are dry and it takes the sour smell out.
Also, you can use vinegar + baking soda to unclog drains without using all those yucky chemicals. I usually clean out as much of the hair and gunk as I can beforehand. Then I pour some baking soda down the drain, pour some vinegar in, and close the stopper. Let it sit for awhile and then check on it. Repeat if necessary.
GReat post. hum. I don't have any suggestions because I would have said BS and Vinegar but I DO have a show to suggest you tune in to. "How Clean is Your House" on the BBC channel. It is all natural "home remedy" cleaning for the TOUGHEST most disgusting places!
We did a fair amount of aloe'ing as kids also for burns. Here's a one that I can think of:
scrubbing the grill-if you don't have a brush or it doesn't work that well use a piece of balled up aluminum foil it forms better to the grates and scrapes the tougher stuff off
People have also said for years that if you dip your finger in whiskey and give it to a fussy baby that they will calm down. Since I have two I just gave them the bottle and all it really did was make them surly and prone to smoke in the house. I'm not so sure about the validity of this one!
I so did not know that about baking soda...noted,thanks!!
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