Domestic Goddess.

I know, I know, Domestic Goddess is one of the last words you would use to describe me.  Until today, my friends!

For my first trick of domestic wizardry...you've seen the chair below.  It's a remnant from my single days, taupe, and microfiber, and so plush and nice.  But then I had kids.  Now it's covered with stains of every shape, from varying types of toddler secretion.  It's pretty hideous.

I read a trick online about how to clean even the worst microfiber messes.  Considering that the next stop for the chair was going to be a Craigslist curb alert, I figured I'd give it a try.  Fill a spray bottle with rubbing alcohol and saturate the entire chair.  Then rub (hard) with a white cloth or sponge, replacing as it picks up dirt and not rinsing, just using another clean one.  When it dries, you can use a bristle brush to fluff up the fibers if you want.

HOLY AMAZEBALLS!  It worked!  The chair looks brand flippin' new.  A word to the wise--I recommend you try this on a spring day.  The middle of winter is not the time to let 16 ounces of rubbing alcohol loose in your house, unless you were the kid that used to sniff the rubber cement, in which case you'll like the smell.  I was that kid, so I didn't mind. 

Feeling high from my achievement with the chair, I set out to continue with my wifey-ness.  "We have some old bananas" I thought, as I looked on my tablet for a banana bread recipe.  I should mention that I don't really bake.  Unless there is a box, and I add eggs and minor ingredients.  Not from scratch, ever.  Sooooo,  I didn't have quite enough butter or bananas, but made up the difference with some extra brown sugar and margarine.  And I added pistachios.  And vanilla extract.  All mixed up and in the oven, I begin to put the ingredients away, and I see it.  The baking soda.  That I forgot to add.  Big Man laughs.  "It's only been in the oven for 5 minutes," I tell him, "we can add it now".  Big Man laughs.  So, I pulled the pan out of the oven, dumped the baking soda on top and mixed it in.  It's still baking but I'm sure it's going to rock.  It will certainly be the best banana bread I've ever made.

And, if you were here with me right now, you'd probably be looking at me a bit funny.  Sniffing a little bit, trying to figure out why my clothes smell like I was in a house fire.  "Is she a volunteer firefighter," you'd think to yourself, too polite to ask.  No, it was the dryer.  Last week, it smelled a little bit burny, and we thought that it just got a bit too hot for a pair of Tommy's feety pajamas (they came out with a melty spot) and it made the clothes smoky stinky.  Undeterred, I did laundry on Friday night, and with the last load Saturday morning, the dryer decided to show us it wasn't playing.  It smelled like smoky badness, like burning rubber, and now my clothes do too.  We've replaced nearly every appliance in our house in the last 12 months.  Literally the only thing left was the dryer.  After the horrific Home Depot washing machine experiment there was no way I was going back to a big box store.  So I went to the local place that many friends recommended after I bitched about the Depot on facebook, L&M Appliances.  Got the dryer that matches my washer (not that I would have cared, but it was in stock and on sale) at a price that was lower than the Depot and which included everything else (installation and removal, extra footage of dryer vent tube, etc.), and they are delivering it tomorrow, one business day after I bought it.  Hoo-ray.  Nothing sucks more than having to drop $500 on appliances for a house we want to sell, but it was a valuable lesson in remembering to support local business, better service and comparable (or better) price.