Mr. Clean, Boiled Eggs, Vacuum Cleaner, and Celery (Retirement Is Not All Fun and Games)

The month of April 2015 lay out in front of us.  There was nothing planned for the whole month.  The calendar was mocking us as there were no appointments, no reservations, nothing...  So we decided that we should be able to accomplish a lot around the house this month.  It was just a week ago that I had all my cleaning supplies out and was determined to go after every speck of dust in our house.  Then, of course, the opportunity to go fishing presented itself and I accepted.

Towards the end of the week I did clean bathrooms and bedrooms.  But for the first week that was it.

Yesterday Bubba and I worked together (rainy day) and rearranged the back porch and cleaned it good.  Yea!  We were finished by noon and did nothing the rest of the day.  But we did meet one of my goals.  

Today I pulled out all my cleaning supplies and set as my goal to clean down the hall, the living room, dining room, and kitchen.  What a lofty goal I set!  Bubba went outside to work in the heat and humidity to trim the shrubbery and I went to work inside.  By noon we were both exhausted and we have quit for the day.  That's okay.  We can do that, we're retired.  I fixed a salad for our lunch which in my opinion is more trouble than cooking a full meal.

Did you know that if you wrap your celery in foil when you bring it home from the store, it will stay crisp?  Bubba saw that somewhere and it works!

Yes, this is all I accomplished working all morning, but I can assure you that there is nary a speck of dust in this area.









While I was working, I began to think of some of my favorite practical things that I've recently discovered and decided I would share with my one or two readers.

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is nothing new, but I've just recently found some things it can do that surprised me.

It will clean the grease spatters off an oven door.  I recently needed the repairman to come so I decided that my oven needed to be clean.  I tried a couple of cleaners on the oven door glass and then decided to try the Magic Eraser.  It worked and without a lot of elbow grease.

While cleaning on the back porch, I used the Magic Eraser to clean the ceramic tile in the area where Bubba fries fish.  It worked!  

It will also remove gunk from the floor when you're mopping.

I love my Bissell Zing Vacuum Cleaner.  I can carry it while I vacuum and it doesn't break my back.  The suction it has is amazing.  It was only $50 and I bought it from Amazon.











Bubba and I enjoy boiled eggs on our salads and as a mid-morning snack.  They are so hard too peel sometimes.  I've tried a lot of tips on how to peel them and adding baking soda to the water, but this is the best tip I've tried.  It will work on eggs that are really fresh which are usually the hardest ones to peel.

 Put the egg in a jar with a lid and about half full of water.  Then shake, shake, shake.

The egg comes out all cracked up like this.Occasionally on eggs that aren't as fresh, the peel slips off in the jar.  

In other news, I'm enjoying my iPhone 6 more that I thought possible.  All these pictures were taken with my phone and I think the quality is better than pictures I've taken with our camera.  I've heard from Amy more and when I sent my new phone number out, I actually got a call from a friend I had not talked to in a long time.

Amelia texts me while she is waiting for her food in a restaurant.  The first one from her said, "Hi Nana, what are you doing?"  I responded and asked what she was doing. "Texting", she said.