I know this isn’t a food, but it has all the components of your typical dish and it actually works crazy good. (Usually, I’m a stickler for good grammar, but “crazy well” didn’t sound very…good. Just crazy.) In case you didn’t know, my family adopted a puppy back in December, and although we adopted him as a family, he is my responsibility. That means I was in charge of vaccinations, his neutering appointment, and, of course, everyone’s favorite caretaker’s perk: house training.
Here’s another thing you probably didn’t know about me: I am the youngest child in my immediate family. That means that everyone tells me what to do and that’s also the case for school. If I’m in a classroom with just the students in my grade, chances are I’m the youngest since I’m a May baby. So basically, the only family members I can tell what to do are our dogs (and even then, they don’t listen). Because I was never trained to be an authoritative figure, I can’t yell at anybody. I try to base my lines on what I’ve constantly heard my mom say: which syllables to accentuate, how loud, how high-pitched, even body language. Still. I can never seem to get it right–not enough to actually make an impact.
Basically.
I’m also a very lazy person, as you could probably tell because I spend all my time at home and it took me one year after college graduation to figure out that I actually wanted to go into cooking. This translates into puppy caretaker as having the inability to clean up pee and poop immediately, even when they miss the diaper pad. I’m used to the stench in my room, which became a problem because my mom is constantly yelling at me to clean it up ASAP.
So I decided to finally do something about it. Actually, I decided around the third time I got yelled at, but always forgot. Until today…half a year later. I looked up what concoctions I could put together based on the simplest household ingredients. I read a few blog articles about what really works and what doesn’t. One solution caught my eye and it seemed easy to make and the reviews were outstanding.
You just put together some white distilled vinegar, warm water, and baking soda and you’ve got yourself a strong stain remover! I tried it on dried urine in the carpet. (Yeah. Dried. I’m seriously that bad.) You’re supposed to keep a dish towel (I used a paper towel) on the dirty area after spraying it and keep something heavy on it so it really gets the complete stain. Once I picked it up, it was all yellow and, according to the article, the little stain particles detach from the carpet fibers and the towel just…picks it up?
And it really does work, even on dry stains! At least I hope so. My carpet was pretty dirty already, so I’m not sure if the mixture cleaned it up or made it dirtier. Either way, the urine stains are no more.
It works on the wall too! My puppy tends to get poop on the wall (he uses it for support or something) and I tried getting it off with just water, but the paint started to fade. I looked up how to get it off the wall without ruining the paint and listed were the exact same components of the carpet cleaner. So after making sure that it was safe to use on the wall, I managed to wipe off the little skid mark. (Not sure how I’m going to find the exact paint shade to fix the fade, but hopefully everyone will forget. See? Lazy.)
It however doesn’t seem to work on the white baseboard (I may have looked that up). I tried scrubbing it, repeatedly spraying…nothing worked, so I figured maybe it’s coated with some kind of powerful finish. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
But it really does work on the carpet and painted walls at least!
Yeah, I told you it wasn’t food-related, but it does involve a recipe with simple ingredients commonly used in cooking!
Oh well, the more you know!
Here’s the link.
Chef's Delight 