So I just decided to try the tip of microwaving a bowl of vinegar to help clean the insides of the microwave oven. I put 50/50 white vinegar & water in a cup and turned the microwave on, then decided to damp dust all the wooden furniture in the living room.

I promptly forgot about the vinegar in the microwave—that is, until after about 2-3 minutes, a loud BANG reminded me of its existence. The door of my microwave flew open with a huge bang.

What happened?! Was it because of the vinegar, the added water, or just that I microwaved it too long? This has never happened with water or anything else before, so I guess the culprit is the vinegar.

It startled me so bad that I kind of haven’t touched the microwave since, ha. :P But I guess it just created so much pressure inside the microwave that the pressure alone just made the door fly open…?

unfuckyourhabitat:

amileupshitcreek:

My room is cleaner than I have ever seen before.
I actually have surfaces!

I also added a broken jewelry box door on my wall so I can put my wallet and keys in it so I don’t freak out looking for them every day. :)

I love the jewelry box idea! I need something similar for my keys.

confessionsofwarcraft:

“It makes me irrationally angry when my auctions are undercut by only 1 copper.”

[ credit ]

What everyone else said + the remote AH on the WoW app for iPhone undercuts by 1c by default. You can change it but I don’t see why it should be changed. Undercutting by a lot more can and in many cases will result to the market price getting an awful lot lower than it was in the beginning, and often much lower than what the item is worth.

chatoyantdream:

Ready, set, UNFUCK!

Totally posted in the wrong blog. OH WELL.

Vinegar!

Backstory… I currently don’t have a laundry machine in my apartment (yet). About once a week, I take my laundry to my grandparents’ place and bring the wet laundry back to my place so I can hang it to dry (Finnish people usually don’t have dryers). This Wednesday I kindasorta forgot to hang the laundry to dry… So the wet laundry sat in a basket.

For three days.

Because I kind of abandoned them as a lost cause after I had forgotten them for a day. I figured they’d need to be washed again anyway because of that musty smell clothes acquire if you leave them sitting around when they’re wet.

Solution… which unfortunately is unlikely to be possible for most people aside from Finns, but anyway.

Today, on Saturday, I decided I’m going to have to either take them to my grandparents’ or try to get rid of the musty smell, but I can’t let them sit in the basket any longer or I’ll soon have mouldy clothes, not just musty smelling clothes.

I had read a lot about vinegar and how it works so well to remove bad smells from things, so I wanted to try it.

I have a sauna (like most Finns do, even the relatively poor ones like myself). I spread all the clothes around the sauna, making sure they’re not too close to the sauna stove so I will continue having a sauna instead of a burned down sauna-like room.

Then I grabbed a small bowl, filled it with vinegar, and turned the sauna on for some 2 hours and let everything sit there for about 4-5 hours total.

And… Tah-da! I almost couldn’t believe it, but three days’ worth of musty smell was GONE. My clothes smell clean and fresh now. 

Clearly I have underestimated the power of the Vinegar, because I didn’t REALLY think it would work. That musty smell is so hard to get rid of without washing the clothes all over again.

I’m afraid I don’t really have any ideas on how to make it work without a sauna though… I’m assuming the heat of the sauna made some of the vinegar evaporate in the air or something like that. Drying musty smelling clothes in the sauna doesn’t rid the clothes of the smell without the vinegar, and I assume that vinegar in a bowl in a normal temperature room isn’t quite enough to get the musty smell out of clothes.

Today’s Before & After and some musings..

Before 

After

I am both proud of myself and slightly alarmed that the “mess” in the Before picture was more than I could take and I couldn’t sit down until I had tidied up everything.

Gone are the days when I didn’t give a crap even though I literally couldn’t see my old apartment’s floor from all the clothes, trash and everything else. When I could sit in front of the computer even though my place looked like a bomb had gone off. When I could never have anyone over without knowing at least a day in advance.

Remember: You can change!

I did, and so can you.

Unfuck Your Habitat: The value of before and after pictures, ⇢

unfuckyourhabitat:

even if you don’t post them.

Taking pictures of your spaces is a valuable tool for unfucking. When you’re in the same space every day, your eyes don’t always register everything that’s going on within that area. When you take a “before” picture, you remove yourself one step from the environment…

Accomplished

Super pleased with myself today! I did my 2 x 20/10s of cleaning, and my 3 x 10/5s and a lot more of Japanese, and just now, despite being super tired, I washed all the dishes (of which there was a lot more than usual because I had two guests for the evening) and unfucked tomorrow morning.

The old me would have left the dishes unwashed and went straight to bed.

I also stoppered the kitchen sinks and put some water and vinegar in them, will let them sit until tomorrow. Hopefully that will remove the coffee stains.

Tomorrow I’ll finally post some pictures! I’ve been taking pictures along the way but I’ve just been a little lazy them. I should probably 20/10 them, ha.

Unfuck Your Habitat: Why is "marathoning" bad? ⇢

unfuckyourhabitat:

Marathoning is bad for a few reasons:

• It’s all or nothing. So, “all” is great, but the vast majority of the time, it’s “nothing.”
• It’s not sustainable. The good thing about cleaning in short, manageable chunks of time is that you can do it every day without it cutting into your life. You can’t…

I am becoming LESS lazy by the day.

It was Father’s Day in Finland yesterday, and visiting family made me pretty tired.  Our ride arrived earlier than we had agreed on previously, and I left the place in a bit of a chaos because I was in a hurry and the baby was being Very Grumpy.

When we got home, I still hadn’t done the two 20/10s that I’ve decided to do every single day. I was feeling really tired and unmotivated, and when the baby went to sleep at 7:15pm I just wanted to stare at the computer screen for the rest of the night.

Instead, I set my timer to 10/20.

I gave myself a 10-minute break BEFORE I started unfucking. I sat in front of the computer for 10 minutes, and when the alarm went off, I did my first 20 minutes of cleaning. Then I had a 10-minute break, and did my second 20 minutes of cleaning. The day’s 20s were done and I could relax for the rest of the evening. :)

I also decided to use a timer for studying Japanese every day. I’m fluent, but still have room to improve. So I’m going to spend 3 x 10/5 every day to study and revise Japanese. I’ve been back in Finland for 4,5 months and already I feel like I’m forgetting a lot of Japanese, so getting 30 minutes of studying and revising in every day should help with that.

For the iPhone-less folks, Mobile Interval Training Timer works pretty well for the PC. You can make your own presets for it, so you don’t have to set up the timer every time.

My presets are as follows:

Cleaning
Work: 20:00
Rest: 10:00
Rounds: 2

Japanese
Work: 10:00
Rest: 05:00
Rounds: 3

Check it out if you need a timer :)