Gather ‘round kids: I had a coworker mention to me this morning that it’s impossible to get grease stains out of fabric. As a former chemistry minor who worked two years under the table doing housekeeping and who generally tends to be a fucking disaster, I am here to tell everyone that it absolutely is not impossible, in case this is a widespread belief. Here are a few of my favorite cleaning stain removers that I always have at home.
Here are some options:
A Tide™ pen.
I’m a generic kinda lady. I hate promoting brands 99% of the time. BUT if you catch absolutely any kind of stain before it gets ground in, you can get most of it out with one of these babies. I’ve tested it on blood, chocolate, coffee, guacamole, pizza sauce, red wine on, on that one time i accidentally slopped some oil I was supposed to be using on antiques onto a fancy rug (also an antique but not the one I was gunning for). If you’re washing something delicate, pump it onto your finger a couple of times and gently rub it in. I’m not sure what they put in these things but I’m pretty sure it’s an arcane secret.
Dish soap
Granted, this is a little trickier for upholstery/carpet, but it can still be done using a rag, some water, and some patience. But for clothing, just pour some soap on the stain and rub it in under cold running water.
Absolutely any clear alcohol is your new best friend
You know the old “white wine to clean red” trick? Well, this is its updated sister I like to call “you, too, can use coconut rum to get red jello shot out of your nice white dress”. It’s a nice party trick. Straight vodka works even better. For every day situations involving any kind of alcohol-related spills (including markers)–and especially work situations–rubbing alcohol is ideal. To quote another adage, this one from every chemistry teacher you will ever meet, “like dissolves like.”
Hydrogen Peroxide
It can get blood out of absolutely anything, including your mattress. It reacts with the iron in hemoglobin, which breaks down the molecule, causing it to lose its red color. So make sure you’re not using a cast iron skillet to wash your period underwear in.
Vinegar
This will dissolve lime buildup overnight. Fill a bag, tie it around your showerhead, and presto. You can also use it to scrub the area around your sink and to break up any buildup in pipes. (Limeaway™ is for rich people.)
Baking soda
This is great if you have a pet or child who peed on the carpet. Just cover the area, wait until it dries, and vacuum it up. The longer you leave it, the better it will do at removing the smell. It’s also good removing mild odors from a small space, like a fridge or a laundry hamper.
Charcoal
This is your heavy duty odor killer. A little goes a long way. In chemistry, activated charcoal is used as a purifier in reactions, and in medicine, it can be used to treat mild poisoning/overdoses. In your car that smells like someone died because you forgot you had potatoes in the trunk for six months? All you need are regular old charcoal briquettes. Stick a couple handfuls in a flat box and the smell will be gone overnight. Guaranteed. For larger areas, just use more charcoal.
Baking soda is also good for stuff stuck on pots pans and your stove top. Add a little bit of water and elbow grease and it’s like magic
Baby shampoo will get oil stains out of clothing even if it’s been washed and dried several times. Shampoo is formulated to remove oil from organic stuff.
This is kind of a big deal, guys. Click the link for full access to ALL the medieval manuscripts. What you’ve seen on this Tumlblr has only been a small taste!
You’ll be hearing more about this over the course of this week, but we are thrilled to announce that all the digitized manuscripts for the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis project (the digitized medieval manuscripts of Philadelphia – over 350 now and 475 or so when the project is done) are now online in a beautiful interface:
For those of you that like everything neatly organised, here’s links to EVERY ONE of my first 150how to THINK when you draw TUTORIALS, in ALPHABETICAL ORDER for#SkillUpSunday!Enjoy, link, pin, share! Cheers!
I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.
(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)
But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.
There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:
Novice
Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:
w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)
Intermediate
Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:
If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.
Programming problems
Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems
If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial – it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.
I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.
If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:
If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.
If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.
The modern Mandalorian helmet is a technological marvel, one that allows a well-trained Watcher to see in all directions, communicate easily, and fight more effectively than a dozen common soldiers.
The helmet’s viewplate automatically augments vision in low-light conditions and protects it from peaks in intensity, preventing a Watcher from being blinded by explosions or luma-weaponns. The viewplate’s macrobinocular lenses interface with the rangefinger, selecting as many as 10 targets for tracking via the heads-up display, controlled either by voice command or eye movement and blinking. A pineal sensor and microcameras let the wearer see behind him. An encrypted internal comlink allows communications with other Watchers, while a broadband antenna is included for longer-range transmissions. The helmet has a two-hour reserve air tank and an environmental filter to eliminate contaminants.
The Bounty Hunter Code: From The Files of Boba Fett by Daniel Wallace, Ryder Windham and Jason Fry
For any of you who are writing ‘across the pond’-here is a little guide I put together of some common differences between British and American English!
DAILY FIND: Sometimes the Internet is a crappy place full of crap. But today I’m reminded that it’s an amazing trove of free and good information from reliable sources: The University of Illinois Extension has created a searchable index of every stain known to manand stain removal solutions for each. The tool will even tell you what your window of stain-treatment time is to achieve optimal results.
This is nerd GOLD, people. Use it in good health. -ts
UFYH, have you seen this?
So I keep saying that I don’t have a degree from stain college, but apparently the University of Illinois Extension is, in fact, stain college, so you should check this database out.
“Many of the artists in the database were self-taught, barred from seeking formal training or studying anatomy on account of their gender. They could not hope to make a living from their talents when women were forbidden from issuing invoices.”
wrennette 