A Helpful Tip from a Customer's Home...Shower Doors

Shower doors...UGH! Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Well, I suppose you'd live but it might make showering awkward and sloppy:) It seems that even in the newest of new homes that we clean, shower doors all have soap scum, hard water spots, rusty/moldy caulking, etc. We admit, they are difficult to get clean!

So, we have a suggestion for those of you with showers that have doors as opposed to curtains. In one of the beautiful homes that we clean, the owner of the home hung a shower rod and curtain on the INSIDE of the shower door. That prevents the water from coming in contact with the door and it also looks really nice. The customer chose a pretty gold-colored curtain, so it gives a nice golden glow to the shower! Hey, it's worth the try, right? Another very helpful hint for showers is a daily shower spray. The only non-toxic type that comes to mind immediatly is Method's Daily shower spray in the scent of ylang ylang. Yum. Or you could be crafty and mix up your own with some H2O, white vinegar, a little lemon juice and maybe a few drops of tea tree oil.

And, just a side note on major shower cleaning issues: cut a lemon in half and rub it on hard water stains. Let it sit and then scrub like crazy! Lemon works wonders on hard water stains.

If anyone else has any tips (such as the shower-curtain-on-the-inside thing) you can leave them in the comments or email them to us at purelymaid@yahoo.com! You may get to see your tip in print!

Lincoln Grocery Stores

I'm sure you've all seen them in stores...they are THE REUSABLE SHOPPING BAG and they are (hopefully) taking over the world.

I just googled "plastic bags in the U.S." and was bombarded with information, slightly scary information about these little white grocery store ghosts.

Did you know

-approximately 380 billion plastic shopping bags are used in the U.S. annually

-between 1 and 4 percent of these bags are recycled

-plastic bags are a hazard to aquatic life, they cause suffocation and are easily ingested and cannot pass through the animals system, causing the animal to starve

-the type of plastic used in the bags is not readily biodegradable

-it takes 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags

On the positive side, I also learned

-San Francisco, CA has banned plastic shopping bags in grocery stores and large pharmacies

-Los Angeles will follow suit in the year 2010

-Starting in 2009, Seattle WA will charge a 20 cent "green fee" to plastic bag users

-Home furnishing store IKEA already charges a nickel for each plastic bag customers use

Since we Lincoln-ites aren't lucky enough to live on the coast (or have an IKEA for that matter), maybe we can reduce the number of plastic bags we are using by purchasing REUSABLE shopping bags and throw them in our backseats for our trips to the grocery stores. These bags can be purchased literally everywhere and sometimes for less than a dollar a piece!

The following grocery stores in Lincoln are giving a $0.05 discount per reusable bag you bring:

Russ's

HyVee

Leon's

Open Harvest has a punch card for reusable bag fans. Fill your punch card and you get $5 off your next visit!

SunMart, SuperSaver, WalMart and Target all said, "Not yet, but that's something we are looking into"

So stock up on a few reusable bags, save some change, and use your old plastic bags as liners for all your little trash cans!