How to Clean Your Oven After a Cooking Frenzy

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Whether it is after a big holiday or a party that you have decided to host at home, tackling the aftermath for your oven is never fun. Cooking that chicken and meat might leave plates and oven interior alike in a greasy mess. At the end of the day, oven cleaning is the only way to get the appliance back in decent shape.

There is some merit to resorting to professional oven cleaning services. There are some alternatives as well, which may still get you the clean oven you require. If you are not quite sure how to proceed, you will do well to read the following methods and pick the one that best works for you:

Baking soda – this is a well-proven eco-friendly method for oven cleaning, which will help you for sure. The idea is to mix baking soda and water paste to coat the interior of the oven. By letting the solution sit overnight, it will soften the accumulated grease and spoils, making them super easy to remove. The upside is that you do not need any specialised solution from the market and you will be spared the chemicals often present in such products. After trying this method out, you will want to use it again in the future.

Self-cleaning function – one of the most trouble-free methods for cleaning your oven is to use its self-cleaning function. In essence, during a self-cleaning cycle, the oven heats up immensely and turns all of the accumulated spoils inside it to ash. You will still need to do some wiping after that, but at least it will be easy enough to clean. Be very careful, as the oven will heat up to extremely high temperatures.

Cleaning with ammonia – ammonia is a potent cleaner, as long as you are careful with it. What you can do is soak a towel in ammonia and put it in the oven. Let it sit there overnight and then clean the oven with water and dish soap. Use gloves when handling the towel and make sure you thoroughly wipe the interior. Ammonia can cause any amount of gunk effortless to clean, so it is an option.

Newspaper – it is understandable if you are not willing to invest time in fancy cleaning methods, but instead wish to go for a more direct approach that works. What you can do is use crumpled newspaper to scrub away at the accumulated gunk. While it is true that this will get rid of the most spoils, you will still need to do some extra wiping.
Boiling water – one way to make the oven easier to clean is to boil water inside. Just pour hot water in a bowl and turn up the heat. The steam from the water will surely affect the stuck on food bits and make everything easier to clean.

As you can see, there are quite a few oven cleaning methods that you can try out. It is up to you to select the one that works best for your case.

Adding Buyer Appeal to Your Home – Luxury Bathrooms

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If you are a home owner who’s looking to add a little bit of pizzazz to your home before putting it on the market then you might want to look no further than your home’s bathroom. Many home owners spend some time either renovating or “freshening” their home with paint in neutral colors to add to their home’s appeal and help it sell easier. Since a luxury, or spa-style, bathroom can be a huge draw to prospective buyers it is a good choice if you’re looking to invest some money on making your house.

Take a look at how much money that you are willing to invest in renovating your bathroom before you choose what your project is going to entail. Look at your bathroom with a critical eye; is there anything that desperately needs to be fixed or updated?

A good rule of thumb is to replace or cover over anything that is really outdated or damaged; ugly vinyl flooring, damaged or outdated countertops, chipped sinks, or fixtures from the 70s will all qualify as elements that should be remedied. Some of these items will be much more expensive to replace than others, so plan for the most expensive upgrades first and then plan out the rest of your project.

Next, decide which less expensive options that you can use to fill out the luxuriousness of the room and give it that great spa-feeling that home buyers will want for themselves. Install a stylish light fixture and a dimmer switch in the room so that you can adjust the lighting according to your mood. Ideally, you should have more than one type of fixture in the room so that you can have it bright if you need it or dim if you’re looking to relax.

Another relatively inexpensive item that you might want to install in your bathroom is a heated towel bar for warming your towels; they can be freestanding or wall mounted and adds a really nice luxury touch to your bathroom. Towel warmers can also help keep your bathroom a little warmer which can help with moisture problems.

To add to the spa-like atmosphere in your bathroom, paint it a neutral, complimentary color to the fixtures that are already in the room. Add some lush, thick bath towels and mats to the room to make it feel welcoming. You may even want to hang a few thick plush robes on the back of the bathroom door like they do in a high-end hotel to invite prospective buyers to feel like your home is a vacation destination.

Remember that residents spend a good portion of each day in the bathroom, both in the morning and in the evening. For many people it is THE place in the room where they like to relax; help them feel relaxed by renovating it into the perfect atmosphere.

Five Benefits Of Growing An Alternative Garden

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There are many benefits in growing an alternative garden. Here in this article I will go through what they are.

1 – Controlling Pest Management

The way that an alternative garden is created, will allow you to control the pest without you having to do anything. Pest looks for a particular plant either by its sense of smell of sight. If you could imaging how difficult it would be to see the plant that you want, when it is around a bunch of green materials. It also would be quite difficult to smell your plant that you are after, when there is so many other smells going on.

2 – No need for rotating crops

Dedicated gardeners are the ones, who generally practice the form of crop rotation, for a good reason, it is difficult to do. Every plant, as its own requirements, in particular the type of soil it needs. The reason for this, is that every plant requires a level of minerals. Crops can sometimes be depleted over a period of time, so in turn the plants don’t get the minerals that it needs to grow. Furthermore, some gardeners will let their garden beds rest, and then they will grow green manure crops, to combat this situation. These plants will create a nitrogen atmosphere. This process is called nitrogen fixing. However, when you are using an alternative garden you won’t have to do any of that, because of the way the plants will be arranged. How these plants are arranged will give them the minerals that they need.

3 – The use of composting

Using composting is very important when it comes to your garden. Composting is a great way to build nutrients that will in turn feed your family. When people by food from the shop they tend to use and dump it once it is finished. By doing this you are actually wasting all the good nutrients that you could use in your garden instead.

You should, use your nutrients in your own home in your own alternative garden, so that you can are able to gain from them. When you do this, you won’t have to buy nutrients all the time, as you are re-using the ones that you already have. Using nutrients in composts is a great way for it not to go to waste, as it is doing something useful by giving the plants the nutrients that it needs. This cycle can continue on, for a long time.

4 – No need for a hoe

Ecosystems don’t require a shovel or a hoe, and neither will your alternative garden. When you dig up your soil, you actually end up wasting all the nutrients and minerals that is valuable to help keep the plants on growing. Having an alternative garden will have a plant arrangement, that will cover the surface of the soil, and it will stop the surface from becoming crusty which in turn will cause the nutrient to runoff and deplete. When you develop a good structure that will help with the soil organisms it in turn will do what the soil organism does best. They will turn the organic matter, into something that can be quite valuable to the plants.

5 – No need to self seed
When you are creating an alternative garden, you have to make sure that it will have some sort of future. By having the plants go to seeds, we are able to build up a set of seed stores, in the same way a rainforest does. Just like the rainforest we should have many seeds to create multiple plants.

How to Clean Teak Furniture Using Home Ingredients

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Teak is a wood that can be allowed to weather naturally from the sun or sealed to keep the original golden color. Every few months, teak furniture should be cleaned of dirt build up especially in outdoor pieces.

When buying the furniture, it’s important to decide whether to keep the golden color or allow it to develop a soft gray patina due to sun exposure. Over time, the natural oils of the teak wood will rise to the surface and evaporate. This creates the silver color of the wood. If the golden color is preferable, the furniture should be sealed using a teak furniture sealant. It will need to be sealed repeatedly over the life of the furniture piece. Otherwise, the teak piece will age and weather to a soft silver.

How you clean the teak furniture depends on whether it’s been treated or not.

All Teak Furniture

Materials Needed

Water
Bucket
Laundry detergent
Bleach
Soft-bristled brush

Whether treated or untreated, these first steps are the same. Fill a bucket with warm water adding in a drop of detergent with a splash of bleach. Use the soft brush to clean dirt from the furniture. Outdoor furniture can be caked with mud and dirt along the legs. Use careful strokes repeatedly instead of digging into the wood to remove dirt. Rinse soap suds from the furniture and allow it to dry.

If the furniture is to remain untreated to grow even more silvered with age and direct sunlight, the furniture can be set back outside. Some people like the silvered look so much, they will add sealant at this point to keep the wood protected and keep the soft gray look to the piece. After washing, the furniture can be set outside. If it needs sealant, there are more steps before the piece is finished.

Sealed Teak Furniture

Materials Needed
Soft cloth
Linseed oil
Teak Sealant
Gloves
Mask or ventilated area
Sand paper

The next step involves teak oils and sealant. Silvered furniture can be brought back to its golden color using sand paper and teak oils specially designed to bring out the color of the wood. Sometimes, the gray color isn’t what the owner wants, and the teak oil will help to restore it.

Teak furniture that hasn’t been allowed to gray can be washed, oiled and resealed in the same way without the initial sanding step.

For a natural, do-it-yourself oil, linseed oil is a great choice, but it can darken the wood considerably. It’s important to note that the oil should be applied before any varnish or sealant since oil can dry and build up to a rubbery consistency. Allow the oil to dry completely before finishing with a sealant. Natural linseed oil with no chemicals added to it can take a long time to dry. It can take from 24 to 48 hours for the oil to dry.

Before depositing the furniture back outside, on the patio or back on the porch, take this opportunity to see if any screws need to be tightened. All screws should be snug against the wood. Don’t over-tighten the screws though. It can cause the furniture to crack.