09:58 – More work on the biology kits today. One of the things I need to find out is what size box we’ll need. I’m hoping the kits will fit in a USPS Priority Mail Regional-Rate large box, but we may have to go to the slightly larger USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate large box. The flat-rate box costs about $15 to ship to anywhere in the 50 states, while the regional-rate box averages a few dollars less, typically $8 to $14, depending on destination. Since we sell the kits for the same price regardless of destination, the price of the kits will be about $4 higher if we have to go with the flat-rate boxes.
One of the interesting things about the Well-Trained Minds forums is that the members talk about a lot of stuff that’s not related to home schooling. There’s a current thread about washing machine odors, which apparently are a very common problem with front-loaders. We have a top-loader, but we’ve recently noticed a musty odor. Running loads with lots of bleach hasn’t helped, nor has leaving the lid open so that the machine can dry out. I told Barbara a couple weeks ago that there’s apparently mold growing in inaccessible areas of the machine, and I’d planned to take the back off and see what’s going on in there.
But someone mentioned an easier solution on the WTM forums. Apparently, there’s a product called “Smelly Washer” or something like that. It’s “all-natural”, so I have no interest in using it. I prefer products that are all-artificial, such as good old sodium hypochlorite, AKA chlorine bleach. Apparently, the trick is to overfill the tub, so that lots of water gets splashed around and slurps over the inner tub to reach the mold growth areas on the outer tub. So, after I finish doing our actual laundry today, I’m going to run a large load without clothes using hot water and adding a few gallons of hot water manually to the tub after it’s filled to the regular large level. I’ll add half a liter or so of chlorine beach to that load, and hope it’ll slurp over and get the mold or whatever is causing the odor.
14:31 – Ruh-roh. Barbara just stuck her head in my office door and asked me if it was okay if she moved some of my clothes from our bedroom closet to other closets in the house. My mouth said, “Sure,” but my mind was screaming, “No! No! A thousand times, no!”
The problem is, I (and those clothes, no doubt) am afraid that this is just a way to gently ease them into the trash or Goodwill pile. I have yet to meet a woman who really understands that most guys (including me) form deep and abiding relationships with our clothes. They’re kind of like our dogs, except that they live longer. Women are ruthless and utterly emotionless about clothes. Something has a small hole in it, throw it out! Something has an indelible stain, throw it out! Something doesn’t fit quite as well as it used to, throw it out! Something is out of style, throw it out! Geez. Women have no loyalty whatsoever to clothes. I mean, throwing out an old friend just because it’s a little worn is like shooting a dog because it lost a leg.
Of course, I freely admit that men’s and women’s definitions differ somewhat. What a woman calls “a little worn” a guy calls “almost new”. What a woman calls “worn out” a guy calls “broken in”. And what a guy calls “a little worn” a woman calls “disgraceful”.
Front loaders have many attributes, and one major negative, and the moldy smell is it. Been there, done that, got the moldy smelling T-shirt.
Luckily, there is an insanely easy solution to prevent the mold in the first place.
Once you have it cleaned up, and the rubber gasket around the door is suspect #1 BTW, merely prop the door open and leave it open between loads. Normal airflow will allow any lingering moisture to dry naturally, and with no smell. Guys are really good at not closing doors, so this was a great solution for my home.
I now leave a cloth handy so I can wipe down the door gasket after a wash, and it’s a surprising amount of water that can get trapped in the convolutions of the door gasket. The smell hasn’t returned in the past three years, so I’m calling it a successful fix.
“Guys are really good at not closing doors…”
Just the opposite here; I am always closing doors and the fempod is always leaving them open, whether cupboards, interior or exterior, doesn’t matter. A few years ago in our previous house they would leave the sliding glass door in the dining room open to the deck so that I would come home from work and find a snow drift in there. Also doors on the vehicles. They also rush frantically to shut off a light if I leave a chair for ten seconds to refill a beverage or hit the bathroom, but will routinely leave other lights on all over the house, upstairs and downstairs. For hours, and sometimes overnight. But they will shut off the light to the back door and steps, which I leave on after dark so nobody breaks their neck out there on ice or frost. And then leave the light on in the basement long after anyone has been down there.
I especially love being admonished to rinse my dishes in the sink when I bring them into the kitchen, something I have always done my whole life, and soaking them when needed. Needless to say, they NEVER rinse. But will be sure to bark at me to do so.
Their laundry, clothes and shoes are all over the house, across furniture, on the floors, etc., but whenever there is a sudden mad rush to clean up, because company is coming or whatever, the first corner they hit is mine, to grab my little pile of books and papers and then stow them somewhere else.
Arrrgggghhh!
Tx 4 letting me vent on Blessed Saint Patrick’s Day, a Brit slave who was brought to Rome.
And if you’re in an Irish bar today or tonight, or anytime, don’t ask Dermot or Liam to draw you a Black-and-Tan. Word to the wise, and all that…
Most top loaders have tops that open. Look at it to see if there is a seam and open the lid, grab the edge of the top up front and give a hard jerk. Should hinge at the back and then you can see the outer tub and all.
My experience is the same as OFD’s. Barbara closes nothing. She’s left the door of her car open all night down in the garage. She’s so bad about closing cupboard doors that when we re-did the kitchen I suggested that we just leave all the doors off. When she realized that I was serious, she smacked me.
Thanks for the advice about the toploader. I’ll see what I can do. I’ve already sprayed chlorine bleach solution up under the rim, which may suffice.
And then we have this…more evidence of utter lunacy in Oz, someone alert the authorities right away, please…had Robert and I enough notice we could have sailed our longboats ashore and scattered these buggers with our fearsome helmed presence alone, not to mention the claymores and battle-axes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxEB48jY3F8&feature=share
RBT wrote:
“I’m going to run a large load without clothes…”
We didn’t need to know that. If you’d said that a nubile young woman from down the street was going to run the washing machine in the nude that would have been okay.
Sorry. You’re right. That was ambiguous. What I meant was that I was going to run a load without adding any clothes to the washing machine.
I always do laundry in the nude.
Oops!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/15/german-celebrity-bunny-crushed-death
The only reason the Irish developed that dance was to avoid spilling their drink.
Hmm. Never had a washing machine that smelled–top or front-loader. ALL front-loaders we have had (3) leak down the front from the door. Resorted to Bill’s method to prevent that, but never had a smelly machine. Don’t forget that in all machines, including dishwashers, you do not want the thing to to completely dry out, because if the drain valve gaskets get dry, they will start leaking. However, we did leave the door open on the front-loaders between loads–which were 2 a day with 5 kids and 4 adults.
I have always added either bleach or bar soap with lye in it to our laundry loads (in the US); that may have kept smells at bay. In Germany,–the land of no round doorknobs and all front-loading washers,–they have always added bleach to their laundry detergent, because after starting, you cannot open a front-loader and add bleach at the proper time, like with top-loaders. Therefore, no need to add anything to that mixture, and I suspect the ever-present added bleach killed all smells, as we never had a problem.
Since returning, I have noticed that both laundry and dishwasher detergent, and kitchen dish soap, now sport that they are ‘antibacterial’, and that must be true, because the dish washing cloth never smells nowadays–even though I keep it perpetually wet,–nor do the underarms of my shirts still smell after coming out of the washer, like they used to. No need to cut up bar soap with lye, anymore.
The front loader is the only one I’ve had any smell issues. Now that I know how to avoid them, it is a non-problem.
I can add bleach part way through the cycle, my washer has a pullout tray that I add liquid soap, bleach or fabric softener.
Yeah, they eventually figured that out, but in the beginning, you threw the detergent into the machine. Wish I had access to all my previous posts on this site. A good 10 years ago, I had a link to a great history of washing machines and detergents, which I can no longer find. US and Asia were inclined towards top-loading agitators, while Europe and everywhere else used front-loaders. Because a top-loader could be opened at any time, the US went with chlorine bleach, adding it during the rinse agitation cycle, whereas–before they figured out the tray affair–front-loaders had to mix detergent with bleach, which was oxygen bleach, as it was in contact with the clothes much longer and oxygen bleach would not eat the clothes, like chlorine would.
I have always felt that my clothes got cleaner in Germany. I am back to a top loader here, and having to worry about spots and stuff again..
re: musty/moldy odor in washing machines:
Run an empty load (large, warm/cold) but instead of soap or bleach, pour a cup of white vinegar divided between the detergent and bleach dispensers.
I should point out that I use oxygen bleach detergents, which are superior, and only use chlorine bleach on the dish and bath towels and cloths. It probably doesn’t need it, but it’s an old habit.
I recall this link Chuck refers to. It was about that time I bought the front loader, and my purchase was influenced by it. Of course, now the front loaders are huge mouthed affairs, whereas I must deal with a porthole sized door. Sigh.
In other news I finally bit and got the Dyson DC-43 “Animal” vacuum, which is perfect for my purposes. The bagless design is great, and can be done in such a matter that it is virtually dust free. Certainly no messier than the bagged version I have.
Hah. Vinegar is 5% acetic acid. Girly stuff. I have glacial (100%) acetic acid.
Okay, good to know about the Dyson. I find out next week whether my Kenmore, made by Panasonic can be repaired. If not, I may go for the Dyson, although I just know that bagless thing is going to be more of a hassle than my absolute zero dust from taping the bag opening closed before removing and disposing.
This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the bust of an 8 year-long pirate radio station operation in Indianoplace. Bunch of my high school and college classmates ran its several incarnations before they got pinched. In that era, only 1 radio station played rock music, and that station had a very tight playlist, refusing to give new artists any exposure. The pirate operation played practically none of the traditional top 10, but specialized in album cuts (before it became a format for FM stations), psychedelic artists, and just about any new record with a good beat and some musical creativity. It broadcast only on weekends, and what did it in, was that it finally was ranked #2 in the ratings, which really p.o.’d the other lower-ranked radio stations in town, who contacted the FCC, which–after several years of attempts to find the pirate operation, finally succeeded on St. Patty’s Day 1972.
A few of the principals of that operation put together about 60 hours of airchecks of the bootleg station, and have passed it around for us to listen to this weekend, as a memorial to the operation. Many of the people involved were teenagers, who actually did a better and more creative job than the pro’s in town.
Amazing what you can find on the Internet these days. Here is one of the songs they played by a Chicago high school group whose song only made it to #96 on the Billboard charts. Most of the sales were probably in Naptown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyfVk22FDNQ
@thompson: Hah. Vinegar is 5% acetic acid. Girly stuff. I have glacial (100%) acetic acid.
yes, but you just want to kill mold, not eat the guts of the machine.
My washing machine is about to have its 27th birthday. Seriously. It makes a few loud clunks on occasion but doesn’t smell or look like it’s about to die.
And another song played by the pirates, written and performed by Ray Bloodworth and Larry Russell Brown. Hmm. Which one took the girl part?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMo2P6odJI8
This was before Brown wrote such songs as “Open Up Your Door” by Richard and the Young Lions (now a garage band cult classic), “Sock It To Me Baby” for Mitch Ryder, “C’mon Marianne” for The Four Seasons, “Knock Three Times” for Tony Orlando, and a bunch more.
Man this is obscure stuff. And I thought we would never see these songs again after Napster was shut down.
RBT wrote:
“I have yet to meet a woman who really understands that most guys (including me) form deep and abiding relationships with our clothes. They’re kind of like our dogs, except that they live longer. Women are ruthless and utterly emotionless about clothes”
Ha, Barbara sounds like my mum. She and my father used to visit twice a year for three weeks at a time, and on one visit she said she needed some cleaning rags, and asked could she use two of my old, much loved but rarely-worn-any-more t-shirts. Of course I said NO, quite emphatically, so one day when I was at work she took matters into her own hands, ripped them up and used them as cleaning rags. I was furious, of course, but what could I do?
Once, as she and my father were about to return to Adelaide, I sprung her trying to nick several shirts and pairs of trousers that I didn’t wear much. (She was taking them home for my father and brother to use.) There was a scene, of course, with much yelling and screaming on both sides, well, mostly hers. I think I was able to retrieve some but she got away with most of the haul.
And kleptomania runs in the family, I’m afraid. Well, on the female side.
When my sister got married in 1972 the professional photography agency screwed up. My sister ordered colour film but the bimbo on their reception wrote B&W on the order form. When she got the photos in B&W she was incandescent. with rage. I was convinced that bodies would be found floating in the Torrens over the matter. She considered re-shooting the wedding in colour, but eventually decided to just beg borrow or steal (literally, in my case) any colour prints and slides taken by guests. She asked to borrow my slides, of course I lent them (I was only 13 so pretty innocent and naive) and she decided to keep them.
Her rationale went like this: “You didn’t pay for the film or processing, mum and dad did. So the slides aren’t really yours, so I can take them.”
No, I don’t understand the logic or morality of this either.
I don’t have a firm attachment to clothes, but my wife has made me throw out my beloved microwave and vacuum cleaner, both Kenmore brand. Hey, don’t laugh, both were over 20 years old, and still worked more or less. Not to mention the Heathkit H-89 that still worked perfectly the last time I plugged it in that didn’t make the move to our house.
Well, even though I’m an arch hoarder I’m finally learning to chuck stuff out that I no longer need or use. Just this week I binned a couple of HP scanners, bought in 1998 and 1999. Now I only have one, an Epson bought in 2005. It’s probably time to chuck my Celeron 366, bought in 1999, I haven’t booted it for five years or more.
I try not to hoard, but sometime it just happens. I just realized that I have six perfectly functional computers sitting around not in use. They are anywhere from 4 to 10 years old. The more recent ones would be perfectly fine business machines. It pains me to just hand them over to recycling, but I really don’t have any better ideas.
Then there are books, but I am slowly getting better. Books that I haven’t opened in 20 years or more I can slowly bring myself to throw away. Well, some of them, anyway…
Heathkit H-89 that still worked perfectly the last time I plugged it in
I had one of those machines. Modified it a lot to bring the CRT logic board to 2mhz, increased the memory to 64k, which required updating the power connector to the CPU board, which required a larger fan. Then I sprung for the soft sector controller to get more storage. The memory increase also came with an address mapping ROM that would allow CP/M to run in a full 64k. When I booted HDOS I had a self written driver to handle my Epson MX-80 (with Graftrax). Also had some code that I wrote that would patch itself into MS-Basic that supported custom options for the Epson printer (wprint, bprint, dprint and some others I don’t remember). That was back when computers were fun.
This reminds me how long it’s been since I had the chance to smell some glacial ethanoic acid. One of the nicest smells I’ve ever encountered…
Talk of hoarding leads me to ask: have any of you managed to overcome or reduce your hoarding? I’m ruminating over the idea of selling/donating nearly all my old paper books. Has anyone done that, and if so, have they ever regretted doing so?
The partner of one of my pals referred me to an anti-hoarding website, can’t remember the details though. (That’s one piece of paper I didn’t hoard…)
Two couples I know go through all there stuff every year. Everything that hasn’t been used in the last year goes. Another couple I know kept only the plastic bracelet attached in hospital from their daughter’s early years. Everything else was ditched/recycled. I couldn’t possibly do that. (I still have my notes and some textbooks from first year at Adelaide Uni in 1976.)
I’ve managed to dump about half of my books, three out of six bookcases. Two of the bookcases were books I had accumulated in twenty years of parenting, and 12 years of home schooling. They went to the younger home schooling families as gifts. The other bookcase was recycled as best I could, hard cover books need the cover and spine cut off, which I didn’t bother with. There’s a couple of books that I’ve gone to reach for and no longer have, but no real regrets.
I also divested two decades of computer bits and pieces, which was quite impressive if I say so myself. It took two mini van trips, but that included a one each 32″ and 37″ CRT TVs. I have NO regrets.
Of course, I retained everything that I thought might cause future regrets. On the whole I’ve eliminated about one third of the “stuff” I have in storage. I have empty cupboards and closets for the first time since I was single. 😀
I have one regret. We have replaced our main TV in the living room with a 46″ LCD TV. That is not the regret. The regret is that I moved our old 32″ CRT TV upstairs to our bedroom. We should have gotten a smaller LCD TV for upstairs. It’s a great big pain in the neck to move a 32″ CRT TV up a flight of stairs. And it will be a slightly smaller pain in the neck to get rid of when the time comes.
After hearing about Ray’s $100+ toothbrush, I recently bought one of the same brand. I think I got a less expensive model than the one Ray has, but it was still over $100. No, I won’t start collecting expensive LED flashlights next.
I donated about 300 paperbacks to the base library soon after my first tour in the Army. I have a few regrets. I had all the “Doc Savage” collection and loved that series. Fortunately, some lovely people put the whole collection up as a torrent.
I recently paid a premium for a copy of “The Godwhale” by T.J. Bass and “Escape Across The Cosmos” by Gardner Fox through Amazon. For some reason they both got stuck in my head about a month ago. They were both donated of course.
Dave B complained: “And it will be a slightly smaller pain in the neck to get rid of when the time comes.”
Oh? Do you have a window in that room that the TV will fit through? I’ve always wanted to do this with a TV, and had a great opportunity as I once lived on the 10th floor of an apartment building. Sadly, I never did drop the TV as reason prevailed. Damnable reason! Always so… so reasonable!
My Sci-Fi collection was not on the hit list. Too many possible regrets. You gave away the entire Doc Savage collection? Are you mad?? 🙂
I think the windows are probably too small for the TV to fit through. I’d hate to damage the roof and gutter in front of the window, especially since they are new.
DaveB, I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Alas Doc Savage. At least it wasn’t a mint collection. I had many with half the front cover torn off. I still have to go through the torrent. There is probably a lot of cleaning up to do.
Regrets.
The most minimalist person I ever knew was my uncle’s (mom’s sister’s husband’s) sister. She was an RC nun who ran hospitals all over the US. She had some stuff on her office desk and the dresser in her room; clothes, of course, were minimal, as she wore habits her entire life. The stories about her moves around the country made her legendary. When she received a new assignment, she was packed and ready to go in 20 minutes, with all her worldly possessions in 1 suitcase. I’m trying to get down to that. Did pretty good going to Germany: we each had a backpack and 2 suitcases. I came back with 2 backpacks and 5 suitcases (some ferried back by my kids). Since we sold everything we owned here, I returned to nothing, but have acquired a fair amount of kitchen stuff in the meantime. Still living like Steve Jobs by only furnishing my bedroom/office and the kitchen–until Tiny House is sold and I move somewhere closer to work, and more educationally and culturally hospitable.
Books? If they can’t be on the Kindle, I can’t use them. Already had over 2,000 books of my parents hauled off to the dump after they passed. (Yes, if I had known I would be back, I might have done it differently–but who knew the housing market was going to collapse and Tiny House would therefore not sell?) No regrets, though. My kids will only have an electronic life to dispose of, not 3 households of furniture in storage, plus 1 lawyer’s office, 2,000 books not including the law books, and 14 guns to get rid of. The firearms brought many, many times over what all the rest did–including combining our 4th household of all the stuff Jeri and I sold before moving to Germany. Even if I had a hankering to own guns, the ones left to me were not at all what I would keep.
Fire, Chuck, fire. Get a disposable cell phone and start phoning in threats to your home phone. Report the threats to the police, and then torch the place.
Only problem with that, is that the Fire Department’s chief inspector for determining the cause of fires, lives directly across the street from Tiny House. He already caught the people down the street who tried that.
The after dinner speaker at a conference I once attended was involved in the insurance industry and regaled us with a number of cases where people tried to rort the companies. One couple were seen by their neighbors to be moving lots of furniture and other stuff out of their property. The next day there was an accidental fire that destroyed the house. They claimed, the insurance company talked to the neighbors and refused the claim. The unfortunate couple didn’t try to pursue it further.
Since Chuck doesn’t hoard stuff he could just walk out one morning. Perhaps he could become “friendly” with some Hells Angels. Don’t know if this still happens but if someone went into certain Sydney pubs and slammed the car keys down on the bar this was the signal that he wanted his car stolen and torched, and someone would approach him, and for a commission, do the deed.
People’s responses strengthened my resolve to declutter. It would be great to get down to one suitcase, but I’d be satisfied paring this mess down to three suitcases. Impressive minimalism from that nun.
I recall a comic from the late and lamented OMNI magazine of a couple returning home to find only a mat on the floor and a vase with a stick in it and the caption was “We’ve been robbed! No, wait, we’re Japanese”. Minimalism taken to an extreme.
I’ve never been down to one suitcase, or even three, but I used to base my possessions on the ability to fit everything into my car. That was a very long time ago.
I like sparse. Whenever I get pictures from Germany (no matter from whom) their rooms have a minimal amount of furniture, and no junk whatever, anywhere in sight. Vacuuming floors is an easy task, because there is nothing to move–just navigate around the legs of the furniture, and you are done. Once in a while there might be some seasonal flowers to decorate a table for a party. Otherwise, everything has a place, and everything is always put away.
The one thing I could not take, was their method of filing. Here, we usually use file folders, which are just a container for loose documents. In Germany, everybody stores the paper of their lives in these
http://www.normansoffice.co.uk/images/products/zoom/1270551459-89694800.jpg
Just take a look at bookshelves next time you see a picture from Germany, and it will be lined with those “Ordner” (“binders” we call them). To use these, you have to have a special 2-hole punch, that is similar to what the legal field in the US uses. If you file all your bills (which every good little German does), then every one you get, you punch holes in, then put it IN CORRECT ORDER in the binder. Now get this. I had students who brought one of these binders to class, along with a 2-hole punch, and punched them and put them in the binder, right-away as I handed out materials for the class.
So much easier to just open a file drawer and throw them in an American file folder, than to get the binder out, punch holes into your paper, flip through the binder to the correct place, open the binder, insert the paper, close the binder, and put it back on the shelf. Both Jeri and I were unhappy campers with this method, and regular file folders were not constructed the same as in the US, and cost many times over that of using the binders. Jeri once had a conversation with an office manager about it, and the she responded that they used to have loose file folders, but when they were dropped, everything spilled out as one big mess. Thus the binders prevented messing up the order of the files.
Well, I was forced to take lots of organizational and time management courses by my employers over the years. The time management experts used to say never to sort within folders; just throw the next item on top, and you will basically be in reverse chronological order. If the day ever comes that a folder must be sorted for some reason, you can sort it then. Over the course of years, that will save immense amounts of time doing sorting work that most likely will never be required.
What do these American file folders look like? I generate a lot of paperwork from lecture notes, exams, etc. Currently I put these in plastic wallets, then file those plastic wallets within lever arch files. This avoids the need to punch holes in everything.
We call those wallets “page protectors” over here. They were really cheap in Germany (unlike here, plastic is environmentally friendly there), about a penny each, and instead of punching holes in everything, we dropped all paper into a page protector and put those in the binder.
Our most common US file folders look like this:
http://www.marketwest.org/store/media/products/smead_22546.jpg
The most common ones are manila-colored (but the colors show depth better here). Tabs at the top are usually one-third cut. You can get 100 of them from the office stores for just a few dollars.
There are two other common methods of filing in the US: hanging folders and wallet folders. Rather than put in more links, which means our host has more work to do, go to staples.com or officedepot.com and search for “file folders”. That will give you pictures of both.
The hanging folders have a metal blade that extends all across the top of both the front and back of the folder, and then out to a hooks on both sides. Those fit into a metal frame that you construct in a file or desk drawer. I never much liked those, because they are hard to deal with if you have to take a folder with you to a meeting. In the offices where those were employed, I just used the hanging folder to drop in one of the regular tabbed folders. Hanging folders are usually wider, too. We used to have this paper size called “legal” over here, which was 8.5” x 14”. That was used by the government in courts, and for any legal document. Courts abandoned that size a couple decades ago (nowadays, they will not even accept a document unless it is “letter” size of 8.5” x 11”), and it is therefore rare to even find legal size paper or tablets. But you could place a legal-size document length-wise into hanging folders, without it sticking out over the edges. There are smaller hanging folders, but I have never seen them in the offices where I have worked.
The other type of folder is the “wallet” or “accordion” folder. Just as the word “accordion” implies, it expands out, so it can hold just a few or many, many papers. I see those every day that I have a video job. The lawyers come in with anywhere from one to a half-dozen of those, each crammed full of papers that they will use as exhibits during the questioning. The men lawyers carry all those in; women lawyers have those roll-around briefcases, like the pilots use.