If you feast today, may your feast honor the dead and give joy to the living, recognize the past and provide a chance to strengthen yourself to keep on struggling toward a better future, and may you deeply appreciate and savor the good fortune you have to do it.

And if you don’t feast today, may you do the same.

Here’s what will be on the table at my house today.

Cheese Straws
Crispy kale
Green beans marinated in garlic-almond vinaigrette

Roasted turkey
Giblet gravy
Herbed bread dressing
Roasted root vegetables: parsnip, carrot, sweet potato, baby turnips
Sweet potato casserole (made by a guest)
Sweet corn (made by a guest)
Mystery Green Vegetable (made by a guest)

Jellied cranberry sauce
Cranberry and roasted garlic chutney
Orange, cranberry, and port conserves

Dinner rolls
Butter

Cranberry-Montmorency Cherry Pie
Apple Pie
Honey Cinnamon Vanilla ice cream
Bourbon whipped cream

Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale
Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin Ale
Boordy vineyards chardonnay

Gingerbread rum (homemade)
Candied grapefruit liqueur (homemade)
Lemon-ginger liqueur (homemade)
Rozes white port

Tip of the foodie hat and great gratitude to all the very hard workers at Trickling Springs Creamery (Chambersburg, PA), Maple Lawn Farm (Fulton, MD), Broom’s Bloom Dairy (Bel Air, MD) , One Straw Farm (White Hall, MD) , Baugher’s Orchard (Westminster, MD), Daisy Flour (Annville, PA), Boordy Vineyard (Hydes, Maryland), Hamilton Bakery (Baltimore), the Waverly Farmer’s Market, and the Baltimore Food Co-Op. With the exception of a few spices and drinkables, and a bit of orange zest, everything that will be on the table at my house today was produced within a hundred miles of where it will be eaten.

                          

And the not-so-wonderful thing about old houses is that when you buy an old house, or live in one, you are buying (and/or living with) every maintenance decision that anyone who has ever owned or lived in it has ever made, whether those decisions were good or bad.

This doesn’t just mean the decorative ones, although I have some choice words for whoever thought it was a good idea to coat the walls of one of the rooms in this house with a cobalt blue paint so dark and so ineptly applied that it took two coats of primer and two coats of paint to cover it and still in some lights you can tell it’s there.

No, it means the ones that go to the heart and the bones of a house as well: the decision to sister a joist with improperly-sized lumber, the decision to just keep adding more layers of roofing material rather than tearing off the old stuff first like you’re supposed to, the decision to use materials that were not quite to code when running an extension to a gas line, the decision to put drywall instead of waterproof backer board up in a corner where a shower will be installed.

I confess that I would rather deal with these kinds of problems than the problems of new construction.  The shoddy materials and bad engineering, huge amounts of plastic and outgassing and lightweight, flimsy stuff in new construction gives me quite literal skin-crawly sensations when I interact with it, as if some part of my hindbrain can’t trust that the whole structure isn’t going to come crashing down around me if I should happen to, say, slam a door.  (Not that you can slam one of the common hollow-core plywood doors you see so many of these days.  They’re too light.   The most you can do with one of those is close it huffily.)

And yet it’s hard, the upkeep, the constant process of figuring out what the next thing is about your old house that must be dealt with, inevitably at some cost, so that one thing doesn’t lead to another to another and to damage that is actually pretty catastrophic.  It’s a constant rear-guard action, a perennial mental and physical patrolling plus a continual background rumble of tasks that want doing and preferably sooner rather than later.

It is, I suppose, what comes of building a box out of wood and rocks and metal and stuff, and then putting that box out-of-doors in all weathers for simply decades and decades, and putting all kinds of horribly damaging things inside it as well — water, and water vapor, and heated air, and chilled air, and for heaven’s sake, keeping animals in it (two-legged and four).  I mean, what can you expect if you’re going to treat it like that?

I’m thinking about this today because we’ve just replaced our furnace and air conditioning system for the house.  It was badly wheezy and inefficient and, we discovered as the old one was being dismantled, pumping a not inconsiderable quantity of carbon monoxide into our cellar thanks to a broken exhaust manifold tubing.  This replacement was, as you may well imagine, not inexpensive, and not undisruptive.  I’m glad we got it done.  It kind of looks like Star Trek down there now, all sleek and clean and efficient and whatnot.

And yet…

And yet there is so much left to do on this old house, just to keep things in decent working order, just to keep things from decaying in bad ways, just to keep up.

It’ll happen.  And in the meantime if any of you have a fetish for tuck-pointing the mortar between the stones of old fieldstone houses, or perhaps for repairing and painting porches, do let me know.

                          

It is my devout hope that someone who is a born entrepreneur/euse will make my dream a reality, you see.

You may, even if you are but a haphazard and occasional housekeeper, have noticed that many housekeeping tools and products are, not to put too fine a point on it, crap.  They don’t do whatever it is that they are intended to do very well.  They don’t do it in a way that makes your life easier.  They don’t do it effectively, efficiently, and directly.  They are, sometimes, more trouble than they’re worth.

I will not enter into a litany of these items, enumerating their various failings, because I’d be here for a week.

Instead I will point out, in a more cheerful vein, that there are also housekeeping tools and products that are very good indeed.  They are efficient and effective.  At their best they are also aesthetically pleasing in some way.  They produce the desired results without incurring any undesired side effects.

Finding out which housekeeping tools and products are which is a thing to which the thoughtful housekeeper –or merely the housekeeper who likes it when things actually work the way they’re supposed to, thus lessening the amount of time and effort required to keep the house — pays a fair bit of attention.

But finding your way to what works is difficult and time-consuming and often frustrating.  To say nothing of the fact that along the way one ends up doing a lot of  frustrating, less-than-optimal cleaning with substandard products because it’s wasteful not to use them up.

I know a fair number of thoughtful, devoted, and diligent housekeepers.  Each and every one of us has our favorites.  Our favorites, in turn, have a fairly high amount of overlap.

Would it not be a public service to make such favorites available in one centralized, purpose-driven location?  Would not someone stand to make at least a moderate income selling stuff that actually, y’know, worked?  Stuff that made keeping house more pleasant and more satisfying and thus more likely to be done on the regular?  Stuff whose quality and sense of purpose honored the often invisible labor of the people who do the housework that keeps us from living up to our nipples in boggy morasses of our own filth?

I for one would drop a fair chunk of change with a vendor who took my housekeeping as seriously as I do and offered products chosen with the same amount of care that I choose them.  I can’t think that I’m the only one.

I would, for instance, love a one-stop-shopping resource where I could acquire:

• Milsek furniture polish
• Hand-bound, high-quality brooms
• Barkeeper’s Friend
• Fels-Naptha
• Washing (laundry) soda
• Tibet almond stick
• A really good dustpan
• Fuller Brush Company’s cobweb brooms
• a well-made spout brush for cleaning tea and coffee pots
• well-engineered, well-built, durable rubbish and recycling wastecans
• Linen kitchen towels
• Lint-free cotton flannel cloths
• Microfiber dust mop pads and dusting cloths

And so on.  You get the picture.  Please, if you decide to make this a reality, feel free to let me know.  I’ll consult in exchange for product.

This post brought to you by the fact that I spent much of my day today cleaning my house and thus thinking fondly about many of the tools and products I use to do this, and less fondly about all the trial and error that went into figuring out which ones those would be.

                          

Pie is no exception.

This pie has a total of 10 ingredients.  11 if you count water, which traditionally doesn’t get counted in recipe-writing. Your pie could have even fewer, potentially, and still be glorious.

Pie crust should not scare you.  If you own a food processor it is so easy it’s almost embarrassing.  Even if you don’t own a food processor it’s not exactly juggling spent nuclear rods whilst rollerskating down the Filbert Steps.

Here is the ratio you need for a good basic sweet pie crust, sufficient for one 9 inch double-crust pie or 2 single-crust, with a little left over for baking in little strips as a snack.  Because snacks are important.

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 16 Tablespoons unsalted butter (or vegan margarine), chopped into quarter-inch cubes
• 4 Tablespoons nonhydrogenated solid vegetable shortening

Have your fats ice cold and by ice, I mean put them in the freezer for 12-24 hours.  Having your flour be cold is also a good idea.  I store mine in the freezer.  The colder the ingredients the flakier and nicer your pie crust will turn out.

When you’re ready, make yourself up a big measuring cup or small bowl of ice water.  Pack it with ice cubes, then fill with water.  Stick a tablespoon measure in there so you have it ready when the time comes.

Place the dry ingredients in your food processor.  Pulse once or twice to combine.  Add the fats and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.  Not sure what that means?  Well, if it looks like wet sand looks when you stir it up with your toes, that’s about right.

When you get to this point, pour this mixture into a large mixing bowl and grab a fork.  Sprinkle 7 Tablespoons of ice water over the top and begin to stir it in.  The mixture will clump, which is what you want.  You want to encourage the clumps to get bigger and to incorporate more and more of the flour/fat.  This takes some strength!  Some force!  This will not come together like iron filings clumping onto a magnet, you have to push and mash.  But do use a fork, because the heat of your hands can toughen the dough. Work quickly.  Pie crust making is a brusque and short process.  Don’t think you have to baby it.

Sprinkle on another tablespoon or two of water once you get to the point where no more will incorporate easily.  It should take no more than 10 T total (and may take somewhat less) to get all the dough to come together.

When it has come together and you have a nice big heavy dense mass of dough, turn the dough out onto a floured surface.  Cut it in half.  Pat each half into a disc about as wide as your hand from heel to fingertips.  Pat the edges so that there are no big cracks.   Work quickly and handle the dough as little as possible, because again, the heat of your hands can toughen the dough.  It doesn’t have to be pretty!  Wrap each one in plastic and put it in the fridge.  The cooling off time will let the flour absorb the water without creating gluten (which would toughen your pie crust).

So you have a pie crust.  Now, what to put in it?  This time of year in the northern hemisphere I strongly recommend some kind of apple situation.  Here’s what I put in the one pictured above.

Apples — I used Bramleys, which are an outstanding cooking apple.  Any good cooking apple will do.  Cooking apples are tart, dense, and hard, not the crisp sweet things people look for as eating (dessert) apples.  Some possible varieties: Pippin, Empire, Northern Spy, Pink Lady, Gravenstein, Hubbardston.  Some apples normally used as eating apples, like Granny Smith, will make a decent pie.  But others, such as Honeycrisps or Red Delicious, do not make a good pie at all.

I usually prep my apples for pie this way: quarter, core, and peel, then slice across the quarters the short way into thin slices (7-9 slices per quarter apple).  This lets them stack evenly in the pie, increasing the likelihood that your filling will be dense, which is both satisfying from an eating perspective and architecturally preferable to ones that run all over when you cut into the pie and have to be served with a spoon.

Dried tart cherries — entirely optional, but nice.  You could as easily toss in a few handfuls of whatever other dried fruit you liked, chopped into small bits if required.  Raisins are good, so are chopped unsulfured unsweetened dried apricots.  But you can also just have apples.

cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice — these are the classic seasonings for an apple pie.  Heavier on the cinnamon than the other two, and you’ll be using them in a powdered format.  Season to taste.  I’m also fond of Penzey’s premixed Apple Pie Spice, which is delicious and convenient.

a little sugar — if your apples are super tart, or you just like a sweeter pie, add a little sugar.  A few tablespoons, no more.  It doesn’t matter what kind of sugar you use.  White, brown, maple, whatever you have that you like.  But you don’t have to add any sugar at all if you don’t want it.  And sometimes you don’t.

Mix your prepped apples, dried fruit (if using), spice, and sugar in the same bowl you mixed your pie crust in.  Don’t wash it first, you want the remnants of flour and butter to get mixed in with the apples to help thicken the filling.  If you did wash it already, just toss in about 2 Tablespoons of flour when you mix the apples/spice/sugar, then dot the top of the fruit with a few small pats of butter before you put the top crust on the pie.

OK, so now what?

Now you roll out the pie crust.  Get your rolling pin out, and the pie plate you’ll be using.  You’ll need a big flat surface to roll on, and some flour to dust the surface with so the crust doesn’t stick.

Roll one half of the pie crust out so that it’s in a rough circle (this is not geometry class, don’t stress) that is about 3 inches bigger around than your pie crust.  It should be evenly thick.  If it tears, moosh the torn edges back together and pat them down gently.

Transferring the rolled crust to the pan can be tricky unless you know how.  I’ll tell you how.  Loosely and gently roll it up around your rolling pin, then lift the pin and the crust over the edge of the pie plate, then unroll and drape the crust across the pie plate.  Gently tuck it down into the pie plate so that the crust conforms to the shape of the plate.

Fill the pie!  With most fruit pies you want the fruit to stack pretty densely.  For apple pie, this means that most (not all, you needn’t get all obsessive about it) of the apple slices will lie on their flat sides.  I also believe in filling a pie fully, which for fruit pies means that they need to appear slightly over-filled when you put them in the oven because fruit cooks down.

Obviously, the amount of fruit will vary depending on the size of your pie plate and the size of your fruit pieces: larger pieces take up more room, smaller ones can be compacted into less space. For a 9-inch apple pie, though, I usually end up using 7 or 8 apples.  More if they’re tiny, fewer if they’re huge.

Pat the fruit gently into place to ensure that it is happy.

Roll out the top crust the same way as you did the bottom crust.  Place it over the top of the pie with the same rolling-pin transfer method.  With a paring knife, trim both bottom and top crusts to the same size, leaving yourself an inch or a little more of seam allowance — where the crusts touch at the side of the pie — all the way around.

Pinch those “seams” together and fold them up and in toward the center of the pie to make a rim of sealed pie crust.  You can get decorative if you like, with pinching little divots into it or whatever, but that’s totally optional.

The last steps, before you slide this bad boy into a preheated 350F oven, are two: steam slits and a cookie sheet.  Steam slits are the slits you cut in the top crust with a sharp knife to let some of the steam escape while the pie bakes.  Otherwise the top crust will end up soggy instead of flaky.  You can make these decorative or you can just stab the thing a few times and call it good.

A cookie sheet (preferably one with a rim all the way around — jelly roll pans are great for this if you own one) is what you put the pie plate on before you put the whole thing in the oven, so that in the not unlikely event that the pie oozes some juice out of the pie plate, it doesn’t end up on the floor of your oven.  It’s easier to wash a cookie sheet than it is to clean your oven.

Then you bake your pie.  How long?  Until the top crust is sweetly golden all over.  Not brown, just gold.  But definitely not pasty white.  The small amount of browning is crucial — the crust tastes better, the texture is better, and the additional cooking time it takes to get the pie nice and golden is a good way to make sure your fruit is thoroughly cooked.  Usually this takes about an hour, maybe a little more or less depending on your oven and whether you’re cooking anything else in the same oven at the same time.  You’re allowed to start peeking to see if doneness has been attained at around 45 minutes of baking time, but remember that every time you open the oven to peek, you let heat out and so it will actually take a little longer than you think.

If you do this a lot it becomes second nature and you can whip out a pie in barely more than 2 hours start to finish including the time it takes to make the crust and peel the apples.  And during that second hour, you can clean up the kitchen and still have time for a cup of tea and some quality time with a crossword puzzle.  Or Minecraft.  Or your cat.  However you roll.

p.s.  The leftover scraps of pie crust?  Collect them, moosh them into a ball, roll them out thin, cut into strips, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar,  and bake for about 15 minutes while the pie is baking.  When they are golden brown, pull them out and let them cool a little, then eat them with that cup of tea.

                          

So I had my dear wonderful brilliant talented gorgeous (and, gentlemen, single!) friend Elizabeth Tamny turn into amazing calligraphy-art a little love poem I wrote for my Belovedary a few years back.

It’s so gorgeous I couldn’t wait an extra day to give it to the Belovedary.  Or to share it with all of you.

Words by Hanne Blank, Art and Calligraphy by Elizabeth Tamny. Click to embiggen.

Happy Birthdayversary to everyone.

                          

On the left, a fez. On the right, a Fez.

Since Mrs. Calabash’s death, our younger cat, Fez, has become extremely demanding about attention.  When Callie was alive, Fez bullied Callie for affection multiple times a day.  There was a great deal of forcible ear-washing, back-of-neck washing, and snuggling.    She’s an odd little cat, this spotty little creature, one who will come and scream at you for twenty minutes without letting herself be touched, only to collapse into an ecstasy of purring and kneading if you later come sit down next to where she has ensconced herself on the bed or the couch and give her some skritchies.  I don’t think this is so much getting the hang of seeking attention from the monkeys as it is an expansion of earlier patterns and habits… she’s always done it, to a lesser degree, with her monkeys.  (This is a cat who has always been a few bubbles off plumb.  She also sings to her litterboxes.  Not while she’s in them, just while she’s deciding which one she wants to use.)

One thing Fez seems to appreciate a great deal in the absence of the Elder Statescat, is the presence of the BeloveDad, who spends fairly lengthy periods sitting on the couch or in an easy chair, and can thus be colonized for catkind with relative ease.  She has taken to sitting with him once or twice a day, often snuggling up against his leg when he sits on the loveseat in his bedsit.  For his part, he will crook one arm around her and with the other hand stroke her head and rub her ears and nose, which she loves, and together in this way the two of them can pass quite some time.

Occasionally, the BeloveDad falls asleep during the cat-loving process, sort of halfway slumped over the cat, who seems quite content with the arrangement.  He had done so just the other day, when I went to wake him to tell him that I was leaving the house to run an errand, since I didn’t want him to wake up and be alarmed to find himself all alone in the house.  I said the BeloveDad’s name loudly, but got no response.  This is not unusual, since he has poor hearing, so I laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

One of the BeloveDad’s eyes opened just a tiny bit.  He gestured with one finger at the cat snuggled beneath him and, in a very firm whisper, said “Sssh, the baby is sleeping.”

I am relieved to know that our new household priorities are firmly in place.

                          

I do not cotton to this whole idea that the product you use makes or breaks your beauty ritual.  There are a few cases in which I have a moderate amount of brand loyalty, to be sure, but what brands I am attached to I like simply because they do exactly what I need them to with a minimum of doing things I don’t need them to.  For example, I do not need a moisturizer that makes me smell like a teenaged girl after a session at the perfume counter at Macy’s.  I merely need a moisturizer that moisturizes.  I do not require a razor blade that leaves a slathering of what I can only assume is meant to be protective mucus all over my legs.  All my razor blades need to do for me is shave the hair off.

This results in a certain catholicity in product use.  Many of the things I use are drugstore products, many of which work quite well and are available in formats that do not have unwanted bells, whistles, and cheap nasty perfumes.

Now that I am north of 40, taking care of my face means washing with Cetaphil and following it up with what used to be called Oil of Olay and is now apparently called just “Olay,” except that everyone I know still calls it Oil of Olay.  You can get Olay stuff in unscented, hypoallergenic versions, which I recommend unless you want to smell faintly of grandma.

Once or twice a week, I scrub my face with Queen Helene’s Cocoa Butter scrub.  It’s an exfoliating scrub but it’s not too harsh.  If I run out, I just use some oatmeal mixed with warm milk or an egg yolk, which is kind of goopy but gets the job done and leaves your skin feeling nice.  In general I believe that nothing that lathers really belongs on your face.  Most soaps are too drying and many are too harsh.  Clean oil will take dirty oil off just as well, and a little friction can’t be beat.

I am a big Queen Helene fan, incidentally.  I do know a few people who look down their noses at this brand because it’s cheap and tends, at least around here, to be sold in downmarket beauty supply stores.  These people are fools.  Queen Helene products have been around for 80 years for the very good reason that they do what they say they will, and they do it without selling anyone a bill of goods.  (Try the Cucumber Massage Cream.  It’s fantastic as a cold cream. Or schmear on a thick coat, wait a few minutes, wipe it off with a warm wet washcloth.  Babies’ bottoms wish they felt as smooth and soft as you.)

I am also an enormous fan, speaking of economical beauty secrets, of the Salux exfoliating washcloths from Japan.  You can get these at Asian markets for about $3, and they hold up very well to regular use in my experience.  What this is: about a yard of a foot-wide strip of loosely-woven scrubby fabric made of nylon.  They are long enough that you can grab both ends and scrub your back easily, they generate tons of lather from a small amount of soap or shower gel.  Every week or so I try to spend some quality time with my Salux cloth and give my whole epidermis a general resurfacing: this, kittens, is DIY dermabrasion of the kind you’ve experienced if you’ve ever gone to an old-school bath house where the attendants scrub you into a whole new skin.  You need not be quite so aggressive unless you choose.  I feel that If you tingle a little as you step out of the tub/shower, you’re doing it right.  (Masculine people, incidentally, tend to adore these things.  I encourage this because nice soft exfoliated masculine people are a treat to smooch on.)

Less bargain-oriented, but still on the exfoliation tip, I cannot recommend highly enough the scrubs by Villainess called “Smooches” — they’re oil-based scrubs with phenomenal scents.  The balance of scrubby to unguent is nice, and although they do, as all oil-based scrubs do, leave a film of oil on the tub/shower that leaves you with the need to scour out the shower/tub afterward, they also leave a film of oil on your freshly-exfoliated hide which obviates the need to lotion yourself down afterward.  Timewise it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, but maybe you can talk someone else into scrubbing the tub.

These are particularly good on feet and knees and elbows, I find, though I also enjoy them as whole-body scrubs now and then.  The fact that you can get scent-coordinated body creams (called “Whipped“) with a great texture is a plus.  In some cases you can get the perfume oils by themselves, too.  I am partial to “Scintillating,” “Chloroform,” and “Jai Mahal” of their regular scents, but they do a lot of special seasonal scents that I have also enjoyed.  ”Pipevine Swallowtail” was one of their summer scents, and it’s fantastic.  Smells like tomato plants and cut grass.

What else has been fueling my Urban Femme Renewal?  Butter London nail polishes.  Argan oil, which is great for your hair and helps keep summer frizziness down.  Bumble & Bumble Sumotech, which I mix with a few drops of argan oil for the perfect summer blend of de-frizzification and a little bit of control.  Oh, and the gorgeous handmade spritzes made by my herbalist friend Jenny, who brews them up from scratch — I currently alternate between a Green Tea/Jasmine/Rose/Orangeflower one and a Spearmint/Sage.  A few spritzes in the face feel fantastic, smell blissful, and do nice things for my complexion.

So there you go.  Product recs out the wazoo.  Not the usual sort of thing for this blog, but then again, the weather’s been a little out of the ordinary too.  And in closing, I note that all of these things may be used with pleasure and benefit by non-femmes, too.  Enjoy!

                          

And speaking of laundry, I realized as I began to deal with Mount Washmore today that while I’d listed a couple of sets of housekeeping principles, and two guides to the frequency with which I tend to think various kinds of housework should be done, in a few earlier posts, I hadn’t really touched on laundry except for a brief bit on stain removal.

So.  In the spirit of “Let me make it easier for you,” here are some First Principles of Having Laundry Day Go More Smoothly.

Sort by color. Clothes should be sorted before they are washed.  Dark colors with dark colors, medium colors with medium colors, light colors with light colors.  Generally whites can be washed along with light colors, but if you have enough whites that they can comprise their own load, it’s not a bad thing to do them separately.  And while you’re sorting by color…

Sort by fabric weight and delicacy. If you put very delicate fabrics, like chiffons or georgettes or even very lightweight linens, through the wash with very heavy rough fabrics, like denim or toweling, you may find that the delicate fabrics get damaged in the process.  Watch out for items with lace  as well, since lace can easily snag on rougher fabrics.

Sort out new items and wash them carefully. New clothes should be washed with extra care at least the first time or two.   If they are bright or dark in color they must be washed with items that are of a similar color, because the dye may very well bleed on the first few trips through the wash.  (Neglecting to do this is how one ends up with formerly white underwear that are now that unappealing shade of grey-pink.  Enough said.) Yes, this is all still true if you wash in cold water.  Ask me how I know.

Check your pockets. Unless you enjoy putting your cellular phone through the washing machine or picking endless tiny pieces of shredded facial tissue out of your laundry or trying to remove the stains left by a lip balm that went through the wash undetected until after it melted in the dryer, just take the minute or two it requires and check your damn pockets.

Zip your zippers, manage your drawstrings, remove extraneous bits. Because the pulling and tugging that garments undergo in the washing machine can wreak havoc on bits that can get tangled, caught, or pulled on, it is wise to zip up all zippers and tie drawstrings into a loose overhand knot (double them up first if necessary) before you wash them. In the same spirit, remove things like shoulder pads (if removable), belts, and so on from garments before you put them into the wash.

Read your care labels. If you are in any doubt about how a garment should be washed, read the care label.  That’s what it’s there for.  If your garment doesn’t have a care label, or if it is illegible, consult a good laundry reference like Mendelson’s Laundry.

Invest in a delicates bag. If you have a thing for hand-washing, by all means go to town and enjoy yourself.  If you don’t, however, a delicates bag is a godsend.  Use this for all water-washable things that can’t really take the punishment of a normal wash cycle on their own: lace, lingerie, knits, washable silk, etc.

Pre-treat stains as soon as possible. Even if you won’t be doing laundry right away, treating stains ASAP can make all the difference in terms of whether you have a chance of getting them out.  Do not wait until laundry day to treat stains.  Time is never on your side with stains.

Things to Never Put in the Dryer: Any item can be air-dried, but not all items can be tumble-dried.  There are some things you should never dry in a machine dryer both because of the exposure to heat and because of the effects of the friction and tumbling.

• Elastic and/or Spandex are not friends with the dryer.  Heat accelerates the deterioration of elastic and mechanical action accelerates the breaking of elasticated fibers.  So, when you have garments that are either a) made entirely out of elasticated or stretch fabric (like Spandex) or b) depend on functional elastic for their structural integrity (like brassieres), do yourself a favor and wash them in cold water and do not put them in the dryer, ever, full stop.
• Wool is another fiber not to put in the dryer.  Not only will heat shrink it, possibly even to the extent of felting a knitted or woven fabric, but even in pre-shrunk woolen items, the friction and heat accelerate pilling, which looks dreadful and is also bad for durability.
• Washable silk can sometimes be dried in a dryer, but you should check the label.
• Cotton that is not pre-shrunk must be dried with some care.  Air-dry if possible, or dry on low heat (or no heat) in a tumble dryer so that you don’t shrink the item.

Things Not To Wash In Machine Laundry:

• Hand-knitted and hand-crocheted items should not be washed or dried in the machine.  This includes high-quality lace and other very delicate trims.
• Silk, unless the care label explicitly says it’s machine washable.
• Leather, latex, rubber, and PVC.  There are some rubberized items that are exceptions to this rule.  The care labels will tell you explicitly.
• Items with beaded, sequined, or other small, hard, sewn-on trim items.  The mechanical action can easily rip these off.
• Items with buttons made of wood or bone, as water, heat, and detergents are not kind to them.

Wash Temperatures: Most washable things, most of the time, can be and should be washed in cold water.  It’s easier on the fibers and easier on the energy bill.  Most modern detergents are formulated to work well with cold water washing.

Hot water can be used to help sanitize very durable fabrics like bedsheets, bath towels, kitchen towels, and so on, if that is desired.   Be aware, though, that the hotter the water the more likely you are to damage or shrink fabrics… for the very same reasons that very hot water helps kill germs and other unwanted houseguests.

Promptness Counts: Promptly getting wet wash into the dryer (or onto the line, or however you’ll be drying your items) means that nothing will linger damply for long enough to grow mildew or any other fungal excitements.

Promptly getting dry wash out of the dryer or off the line (etc.), and either folding or hanging it promptly on a hanger means fewer wrinkles and no cats nesting in your nice clean laundry.

A Trick For Avoiding Wrinkles: Remove the clothes from the dryer (or off the line) when they are still just very slightly damp.  Hang them on plastic or wooden clothes hangers (avoid metal since it may rust or leave marks) and smooth any wrinkles out with your hands.  Let the items continue to dry in a place without any brisk breezes that might ruffle or flap the fabric.  Most things will dry up nice and smooth this way.  It is especially effective on trousers, which should be hung by their cuffs from a pants hanger, and on plain button-front shirts, which should be buttoned up to ensure that the plackets lie smooth and the garment hangs correctly.

                          

This is not about decor, or even about organization.  I could care less what the inside of your house looks like from an aesthetic perspective. It is an issue of health and safety and appropriate care of your belongings so that they do not become irreparably damaged.

In the category of things that need to be cleaned up now, there are two further subdivisions, namely,

Things That Really Do Need To Be Cleaned Up Now, No, I Mean RIGHT NOW Now

and

Things That Really Do Need To Be Cleaned Up Now, For Somewhat Liberal Values of Now

The first category is fortunately fairly small.  Things That Really Do Need To Be Cleaned Up Now, No, I Mean RIGHT NOW Now are largely the result of accident.  If it is noxious, toxic, likely to injure someone, or likely to damage property, it is in this category.  Broken glass?  Vomit on the floor?  Spilled wine on the carpet or water on the velveteen upholstery? Pet urine where no pet urine should be?  Box of thumbtacks fell off a shelf and the lid popped off, scattering thumbtacks everywhere?  Dropped an egg on the floor?  Fumbled a pill that might be found and eaten by a toddler or  household pet? Something inside the refrigerator smells like the sludgy bottom of an August dumpster?  Do not delay, do not pass GO, do not attempt to collect $200.  CLEAN IT UP.  COMPLETELY.  RIGHT @#%!@# NOW.

Occasionally, there are things in the RIGHT NOW category that are not the result of accident.  If you’ve let things pile up for a long time without doing any meaningful tidying or organizing, things sometimes turn into immanent health and safety hazards.  Piles of books that are so tall or voluminous that someone could get hurt if they toppled, for instance.  Not that I would know about those.

And once in a while there are things that are in the RIGHT NOW category just because they are noisome: cat litter boxes overdue for a cleaning, garbage pails whose reek greets you the instant you open the front door.  They might not be hazardous, but they sure aren’t something you want to be around, either.

In the second category, Things That Really Do Need To Be Cleaned Up Now, For Somewhat Liberal Values of Now, are most other messes that are either a) large in size or b) organic in nature.

If it is likely to present an obstruction to your activities because it’s big enough to get in your way, you’d be best served to clean it up soon.  That mountain of clean laundry on your bed, in other words, really ought to be put away before bedtime.

If it is organic in nature, it is likely to decay.  When organic messes decay, they rapidly move into the RIGHT @#%!@# NOW category.  Feel free to delay doing the dishes until after dinner, or until after the guests have gone home.  But delaying doing the dishes until, say, your next day off?  Not a good plan.

The second category also includes things of a time-sensitive nature, like stains.  Most stains can be removed if you get to them in time and deal with them using appropriate techniques and materials.  Usually you have a somewhat elastic window of time to work in, although it depends on the nature of the stain and the material that it’s on to some degree.  But in general, the longer you let a stain sit without treating it, the less likely it is that the stain will come out.  Sure, the little blood splotch you got on your khakis when you scraped your arm will wait until you get home and can soak it in cold water.  But don’t let it sit in the laundry hamper for a week and still expect you’re going to get it out.  Same goes for that lipstick smear on the marble countertop, and that spot where you stepped on a blueberry and now there’s a blue ghost of it on the tile floor.  Deal with it within a couple of hours and your chances are much better.

Ditto things that are wet.  Mildew isn’t immediate, but once it takes hold, it’s a pain in the butt to get rid of.  If there are wet things, dry them.  Or wash them.  Or something.  Hang them up over the back fo a chair.  I don’t care.  Just don’t let them sit there in a dank soggy lump until they grow fungus.

Minor repairs are similar.  The old phrase “a stitch in time saves nine” is true.  Repairing something while the repair is still small usually means you don’t end up with a big repair later.

Most other things you can put off if you need to.

But not forever, ok?  As the legend on a rhinestone-encrusted belt buckle worn by a charming young lady gas station attendant I once met put it, “It Ain’t Gonna Lick Itself.”

                          

The Basic Methods of Cleaning Things: There are really only so many ways you can remove dirt from things.  In rough outline, they are as follows

• Suction: sucking up loose dirt, dust, hair, etc., for instance with a vacuum cleaner hose
• Absorption: using an absorptive item to soak up liquid (which may contain particles of dirt, etc.), for instance, when you wipe up spilled coffee with a paper towel.
• Dry friction: using the friction between two dry objects to dislodge and move dirt to a place where it can be collected.  For instance, dusting a cabinet top with a soft dry cloth, or sweeping a floor.
• Wet friction: using the combination of wetness and friction to dissolve or loosen, and additionally to move, dirt, for instance scrubbing a floor or a sink.  The dirt then must be either collected or rinsed down a drain

These are often accompanied by the use of

• Solvents and surfactants: using various substances (often along with water, which is a very good solvent all by itself) to dissolve, loosen, or lift dirt.  These include soaps, detergents, and cleaning oils.  These are usually combined with one or more of the above mechanical methods.
• Abrasives: using rough substances to grind away dirt and/or stained surfaces.  For instance, stiff scrub brushes, scouring pads, melamine sponges, scouring powder, steel wool, and sandpaper.

Deciding which one to use is the key thing.

Best Methods for Porous Materials: Porous materials are, in general, anything that is made of an organic substance.  Wood, paper, leather, ivory, bone, natural fibers, cloth and carpets generally speaking, and so on.  Porous materials can absorb water or other liquids, like oils, and this may damage the item.

Some types of stone are also considered porous — notably marble, sandstone, and limestone — because they absorb liquid much more readily than others and can be more easily damaged by it.

So for porous materials, you want to stick to dry cleaning methods as much as possible.  Sweep, dust, vacuum.  Beat or shake out small carpets.  Stubborn dirt can be attacked with a damp — not wet — cloth or if absolutely necessary, with some sort of solvent or surfactant that you have carefully selected for its compatibility with the material in question.

In relatively rare cases, you might have recourse to an abrasive.  One example of this is the use of pencil erasers to remove marks from walls.  Another is the use of very fine-grit sandpaper to remove a small stain from a marble surface.

Some porous materials, like wood (especially unvarnished/unpainted) and leather, do very well being cleaned with oils and waxes, which leave behind a film that helps maintain the humidity level in the wood/leather so that it does not dry out too much and crack.  Wooden floors and furnishings can be cleaned with a mild solution of Murphy’s Oil Soap; if the floor/furnishings are not lacquered or covered in polyeurethane (rare these days) they will need to be oiled or waxed periodically. Wooden cutting boards, similarly, should be cleaned periodically with beeswax or food-grade mineral oil or a combination of the two.  Leather items benefit from occasional once-overs with a high-quality leather dressing (you need not resort to saddle soap unless things are truly filthy dirty — keeping water away from leather is always preferable).

Best Methods for Nonporous Materials: Most nonorganic and manmade items can be considered nonporous.  Porcelain, enamel, metal, most plastics, glass.  Some paints, varnishes, sealers, and lacquers are nonporous, or at least relatively enough so that they can be treated as such so long as there is no evidence of cracking, chipping, or peeling.

With nonporous materials, you can feel free to use wet cleaning methods although dry cleaning methods are fine if they are adequate to the task at hand.  Solvents, surfactants, and soaps are also fair game, although you should still be careful what you use and how you use it since some are harsh and can damage finishes.

Disinfecting: Nonporous materials can be disinfected with virtually any disinfectant you like.  A few, including bleach, may cause damage to finishes (read the label, test on inconspicuous spots if you want to make sure), so be careful.

Nonporous materials can also often be disinfected with heat, for instance, immersing the item in boiling water or running it through a dishwasher on the “sanitize” setting.  Some plastics cannot handle high heat, however, and in general, rapid shifts from one temperature extreme to another are not a good idea for many nonporous materials as they can cause structural stress leading to breakage.

Porous materials are often difficult to disinfect.  Many fibers and types of cloth can be disinfected — although not without the possibility of damage to many — with hot-water washing and/or the use of bleach. Read the care labels on clothing to find out what risks you run of damaging the items in question, and/or consult a reliable fabric care guide like Cheryl Mendelson’s book Laundry.

Wood and leather, as well as carpets and other such items, sometimes cannot be properly disinfected without damaging or ruining the item.  Fortunately, such items, with the exception of carpets, also are not usually too prone to retaining a lot of potentially infectious substances.  If you end up with a situation where a biohazardous substance is on a difficult-to-disinfect porous material — for instance, blood on a carpet — your best bet is to clean it as thoroughly as possible, to remove as much of the material as you can, then to dry it as thoroughly as possible.  Many infectious organisms cannot survive in the absence of liquid.

Stay tuned for a doubtless riveting dissertation on the subject of “things you should clean ASAP vs. things that can wait.”  Lord, the things I do to procrastinate copyedits.