Home Improve-mint

Quick! Name something minty!

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What did you come up with?

Toothpaste?

Candy?

Gum?

Mouthwash?

Breath mints (of course!)?

The above are all things that everyone considers minty, but have you ever wondered why? Why is it that so many personal hygiene products smell minty—especially ones we’re supposed to put in our mouths?

It’s because mint is clean. Mint is fresh. Mint lifts the spirits. Oh, and did I mention mind is clean? :)

It is for this reason that if someone asked me to name something minty, I would probably answer “my house.”

I discovered a few years ago, that although unconventional, the scent of mint is a wonderful addition to any home. As I described above, it just makes everything seem cleaner. Think of it as giving a breath mint to your house!

When using mint, I tend to rely most heavily on regular old McCormick mint flavoring, found right next to the vanilla in the spice section of the grocery store. I also like to use spearmint essential oil that I buy from www.sweetcakes.com. Because mint is a fairly easy oil to extract, you can buy a huge bottle of it inexpensively. I’m sure places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats also carry it, but I’m not sure about their pricing. When buying the oil, I like to get spearmint rather than peppermint, but that’s purely a personal preference. Try both—you might find you like peppermint more.

Anyway, below are some of my favorite ways to incorporate a minty freshness into my house:

--Pour about a tablespoon of flavoring into my bottle of homemade vinegar cleaner.

--Place a couple of drops of oil on my vacuum filter before vacuuming the house.

--Make my own scented scouring powder by adding a little oil to equal parts of kosher salt and baking soda (your tub has never been so fresh!).

--Buy a Yankee “Fresh Mint” candle. The way they have scented this is uncanny. It smells exactly like a mint patch growing out in the yard. They have perfectly captured not only the mint, but also the subtle earthiness and bitter-sweetness of real, fresh mint. Have a look at www.yankeecandle.com. It is well worth the $23—I promise!

--If you’ll be leaving home for a few days, pour a few drops of the flavoring down each drain and in the bowl of your commode. It will eliminate that stale smell that develops when stagnant water has been in the pipes for too long.

--Dab a few drops of oil on the cardboard tube inside your rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. You’ll have freshness with each spin!

--And don’t forget about using mint for personal care products as well: a lid-full of essential oil poured into a full bottle of vanilla body wash is incredibly delicious (my favorite is St. Ives Swiss Vanilla—about $3 at the drugstore or Wal-Mart).

Once your house—and you—are sweet and minty, you’ll wonder why you never thought to use it before!

Emergency Cleaning

Maybe you've just had a baby. Maybe you've been depressed. Maybe you've just been plain lazy and really don't have an excuse at all. Maybe the entire family has just gotten over the stomach flu. Either way, your home is a mess. Not just a little untidy, not just a little sticky in spots, but a giant, bona-fide mess. So messy, in fact, that you don't even know where to start to remedy it. Your spirits are low, your children and husband are antsy, and you are still sitting in your pajamas, staring bewilderdly at your living room wondering how you'll ever get the energy and motivation to fix this giant mess.

With that in mind, I have come up with a plan for an "emergency" cleaning plan designed to give you a little push to get things whipped in to shape. This is not designed as a long-term solution, but rather a nudge in the right direction. Any die-hard flybabies (http://flylady.com) probably shouldn't read this at all; you'll be far to busy cringing to even get through it!

I've designed it in a number of steps, since I am a chronic list maker and I think things are easier to accomplish if they are laid out in a simple format. So, are you ready to take your home back? Good! Here we go!

1. Pick one room in your house that you would like clean. I usually like to start with either the kitchen, because it's always the messiest, or the bedroom because I use it as my sanctuary, and love having it clean.

2. Turn on the radio or your CD player. Or your MP-3 player if you are technologically advanced and have one of those things. Pick something up-beat and very rock & roll to listen to. Something that will pep you up!

3. Divide the room and any clutter in to quarters. Simply walk down the middle of the room, pushing things to one side and the other with your feet. Then walk across the room, doing the same. You should end up with four clearly-defined areas.

4. Give yourself three songs to work within each quadrant. Work as quickly as you can, and if you finish one step before the song is over, move on to the next.

a) SONG ONE:
Pick up anything that doesn't belong in the room. Is there anything
that needs to go into the laundry? Anything that needs to go in the
dishwasher? Anything that belongs in the bedroom? Any
"miscellaneous?" If you don't know where it goes, simply put it in
a plastic grocery bag and hang it on a door handle in another room
(hey, I said this wasn't a long-term solution, didn't I? lol...)

B) SONG TWO:
Time to actually clean. Give any furniture in the area a quick dust,
vacuum, wipe down anything sticky that has mysteriously become
glued to anything. Throw away any garbage. Organize what you can;
re-stack the books on the shelf, straighten the cushions on the
couch, put all the mail you need to deal with in a little box.

C) SONG THREE:
This is your catch-up time. Is there anything you didn't get done
the first two songs? Get it done now. If you have finished, good
for you! Go have a glass of water and catch your breath.

5. Complete the three-song method for the other three quadrants.

6. Now, look around the room? What still needs to be done? If you are finished and the room looks fairly good, congratulations! You get to skip the next step!

7. If there is still some work to be done, give yourself one or two more songs to get done what you can.

8. Time for a break, and time to get out of the house! Everyone feels better when they get a little sunlight and fresh air, so bundle up the kiddies and get in the car. Drive to the grocery store or to Wal-Mart, where you will purchase the following: something for the house, something for you, and a treat. Oh, and something for the kids if they've been good! Don't feel like you have to spend a whole bunch of money, either. All three things can be purchased for under five dollars if you're careful! My favorite combination would be, however: a small scented candle (for the house), a cherry lip-smackers lip gloss (for me) and a candy bar (a treat).

9. Go back home, and enjoy your new treats in your nice clean room. Doesn't that feel better? And now that you see how nice one room can look in under about 30 minutes, maybe you'll feel motivated to do it again in another room. And now that you've been out and about, maybe you'll find that you have just a teeny bit more energy than before.

Remember, do your best, try to keep it up, and don't forget that we all have those periods in our lives where nothing seems to go right, and our home keeping suffers. Don't feel bad about it, just fix it and move on when you think you can.

The Fragrance of Home

Have you ever been in someones house who maybe wasn't the best housekeeper? How did you know? I'm willing to bet the first thing that tipped you off was the smell of the home. Too often people neglect the all-important sense of smell when home keeping, and it always shows. The must of dirty laundry, an unclean litter box, dirty dishes in the sink, a lingering "moist" odor...all are smells that must be avoided at all costs.

On the other hand, there are those who devote themselves fully to their home keeping efforts, and that also shows! I think of my neighbor back in California. Her house was always clean and tidy, and the smell was heavenly! It was so subtle I almost couldn't put my finger on it--clean laundry and craft stores was all I could come up with to describe it!

With that in mind, I'd like to list a few of my favorite ways to add scent to my home. Please remember, however, that you can not cover up uncleanliness with perfume. Before you start, it is essential to have a clean home with the dishes done, the floor vacuumed, the garbage emptied, etc. All the air freshener in the world will not fool others into thinking you have been cleaning all day!

1. Beautifully scent your closets.

There are many ways to do this but my favorite is so simple--store your scented candles (with lids off) in the shelves among your sheets and towels. A subtle fragrance will permeate your linens and bring a little bit of joy into your life as you perform the most mundane tasks. Even small things like changing the sheets or drying off after your shower will become far more pleasant.

2. Beautifully scent your sheets.

As you fold your sheets, sprinkle a little bit of scented dusting powder on each layer. Not only will this keep your sheets fresh while they're being stored, but it feels so cool and silky to slip into powdered sheets at bed time. When you make your bed in the morning, again sprinkle a little powder between the sheets. If you're like most and only change your sheets once a week, this will also help them to stay fresher-smelling until laundry day. **Look for my own special homemade dusting powder recipe soon!**

3. Don't forget about extracts.

So many books and articles mention using essential oil around your home to add a wonderful fragrance. Unfortunately, lots of these oils are expensive and only available at health food stores. A less-expensive alternative is right in your kitchen cupboard. A simple bottle of vanilla extract can be used in many different ways to scent your home. Try adding a splash to the rinse water when you're mopping, soaking a cotton ball and placing it in an out-of-the-way corner of the fridge, using it in your own homemade cleaners, or even in your bathwater! I also love to place just a few drops on my vacuum filter or directly on the bag to fill the house with fragrance as I vacuum. Don't think that vanilla is your only option either; I have successfully used other scents like mint, lemon, orange, almond, and coconut. For a real treat, you can combine the extracts into cocktails--try cinnamon, butter, and vanilla for a "cinnamon bun" fragrance!

4. Candles!

I absolutely adore candles! I have one burning almost every day--in fact, it's a safe bet that if you drop by at anytime between 9am and 9pm I will have at least one candle burning. I love Yankee candles the most--the jars last almost forever and the scents are fantastic and realistic. But I don't overlook the less expensive ones either. Glade has some wonderful candles that can be bought in any grocery or discount store for only about three dollars. I love to make "cocktails" with my candles too; a sugar cookie one downstairs and a lemon one upstairs somehow mingle and end up smelling like lemon cookies somewhere in the middle! It's such a mood brightener!

5. Cooking

Cooking will scent your house for hours as well as give you something else to enjoy. Bake brownies or cookies, pop popcorn, make some lovely yeasty rolls for dinner. Bake some cinnamon apples, even start a barbecue if that is what you enjoy! **Look for my crock pot apple butter recipe soon--it takes several hours to cook and smells good the entire time**



I'd love to hear what others do to scent their home, so please share any tips if you have them!