Les Bonnes Choses

Warning: if you are sensitive about the environment, you should plug your ears right about now, because I am about to admit to things that will offend you. No, scratch that, this is a blog, and plugging your ears won't do anything. Poke yourself in the eyes instead.

I just set the record today for gittinerdun. Normally around here I take Saturday as cleaning, though this is customarily limited to general tidying of the kitchen, washing the dishes that have been "soaking" for the previous 4 days, and washing the floor as I listen to Quirks and Quarks on CBC. However, as we are having some painters come on Monday to turn our house taupe, starting in the kitchen, I felt obligated to give the room an extra thorough cleaning, which involved pulling out appliances. Though it wouldn't affect the painting of the room, I also chose to use the self-clean option on our oven.

Quick question: the self-clean on our oven has a 2-hour and a 3-hour option, I believe with 3 hours as the default. Assuming I don't want to run it longer than needed, how do I know which one to use? 2 hours seems like plenty - is the 3 hour option for people running a small-scale crematorium on the side?

Despite having a self-clean oven, I also have some Easy-Off oven cleaner under the sink, and it can be darn useful. Take, for example, my bathtub cleaning problem. Our tub has a no-slip textured bottom, which makes it really good at trapping grime over a long period of time. I have tried scrubbing the heck out of the tub before with soap and baking soda. I've tried bleach. Today, I even tried trisodium phosphate, which, if you don't know, can also be used to remove oil spots from your driveway. None of this worked, even with a considerable amount of elbow grease. A google search later, I found that a 20 minute oven-cleaner treatment works wonders. Unfortunately for my hands, our only pair of rubber gloves disintegrated recently. I did try to wear latex gloves when scrubbing the tub, but TSP managed to get into them. Some diluted oven cleaner also probably made its way down my wrist and into my glove when I was washing out the tub afterwards. So right now, my hands are itchy, dry and look something like the Bonneville Salt Flats.