Posts Tagged ‘bathroom’

I wrote this last week but totally for­got to post it so I will added this and a quick update on this week:

Not hav­ing the best week at the moment, it started off okay went to uni­ver­sity on Mon­day which this stu­pid cold but my mother was late pick­ing me up so instead of get­ting home at 4.30pm did not get home till 6pm. Tues­day I did not go in due to the fact I am run­ning out of money and half my lec­tures were can­celled, but I did man­age to get the web­site I have been work­ing on for the last 6 weeks to be com­pleted, it is a to-do list web appli­ca­tion made up of css, php, javascript, jquery and sql, I am really pleased with it and I hope I get a good mark

Wednes­day was a waste of a day had to go in for this stu­pid career devel­op­ment for a cou­ple of hours which was a com­plete waste of time and I do not know why we had to go, after this there was a protest at uni­ver­sity, 50 stu­dents had got into the man­age­ment build­ing protest­ing the cuts in infor­mat­ics, about 6 police vans, sev­eral police cars and a police dog later.  In the end 2 stu­dents were arrested and 6 stu­dents were sus­pended

Thurs­day to Sun­day my hus­band was off so the bath­room was being done and now it is nearly done, apart it from it need­ing to be painted.

I had a really embar­rass­ing time on the train this morn­ing, I was on the train, my stop was com­ing up so I stood up wait­ing for it to stop but it never came, the train went speed­ing pass and I ended up at a totally dif­fer­ent sta­tion 20 min­utes later. Lucky for me I already know that area quite well so I man­aged to get back to the uni­ver­sity stop.

I am sorry I haven’t posted other than green related top­ics, uni­ver­sity is so busy and they already have me choos­ing next years mod­ules.  It is a lit­tle too much right now, feel like I am going to explode with all these exams, group work, dri­ving, house and baby related items.

Saw an amaz­ing film this week, Valen­tines Day, so cute!

So after hav­ing all this work done on my bath­room, I thought I could go through ways of being green in the bath­room, I’ll slowly move to other rooms in the house when I chance of course.

The bath­room nor­mally uses a lot of energy also a lot of money due to the fact you can nor­mally have your wash­ing machine in there, all hair related items (hair dry­ers), toi­let and of course the bath/shower, any­thing that uses gas or elec­tric­ity. (NOTE,  Nor­mally plugs out­side of the bath­room also you might have a sep­a­rate clean­ing area for the wash­ing machine and laundry).

Clean­ing Products

First I would start with clean­ing prod­ucts bet­ter for the envi­ron­ment, some­times more expen­sive but they do reduce poten­tial aller­gens, and toxic clean­ing prod­ucts have been linked to child­hood wheez­ing and asthma. In the UK our main green clean­ing prod­ucts is ecover, which smells good, my par­ents have been using it for years, I have started to recently. What I find about the prod­ucts some­times you might have to scrub a lit­tle bit harder but other than that no difference.

Home-made solu­tions to clean­ing products:

Scrub­bing sinks, tubs, and counter tops with a paste of bak­ing soda and water effec­tively removes dirt rings and some stains; if that doesn’t work, try a paste of wash­ing soda and water, and be sure to wear gloves.

For clean­ing win­dows, fill your own spray bot­tle with water and either one-quarter cup white vine­gar or one table­spoon lemon juice to cut grease.

Pol­ish fur­ni­ture with a mix­ture of one tea­spoon olive oil and one-half cup white vine­gar, or look for solvent-free prod­ucts that use min­eral or plant oils.

Wash­ing Machines

Now we all know that wash­ing machines use a lot of water and even more so if you have a baby or a young fam­ily, now I have tried a few dif­fer­ent types to save money.
First one was this soap­nuts, now it says this about them:

Soap­nuts (Sapin­dus Muko­rossi) are grown in India and Nepal, har­vested in a sus­tain­able way in Octo­ber from 15m high trees. The soap­nuts are sticky and golden in colour when removed chang­ing to red­dish brown when dried. Soap­nut shells con­tain saponin (a nat­ural deter­gent) and when they come in con­tact with water they make mild suds. Soap­nuts are a nat­ural, organic, envi­ron­men­tally friendly alter­na­tive to soap, deter­gent and shampoo.

Which I thought would be an amaz­ing idea, and I was keen on them, I tried them so many times but they did not work for me which was really dis­ap­point­ing.  I per­son­ally think it was because my hus­band (who I adore) is a lit­tle overly sweaty.
At the moment I am try­ing ECOZONE — ECOBALLS which are two balls con­tains these nat­ural pel­lets, they are hypoal­ler­genic and only cost 7p a wash.  So far with these I have had clean smelling washing.

Some other home-made solu­tions to wash­ing machine clean­ing related:

To remove stains from cloth­ing, try soak­ing fab­rics in water mixed with borax, lemon juice, hydro­gen per­ox­ide, wash­ing soda, or white vine­gar. Or, look for “non-chlorine bleach” made from sodium per­car­bon­ate or sodium perbo­rate, avail­able from Bio Pac, Ecover, Nat­u­rally Yours, Shak­lee, or Sev­enth Generation.

Fab­ric can be soft­ened by adding one-quarter cup of bak­ing soda to the wash cycle; this recently worked on sev­eral pairs of catalogue-bought cargo pants made of a cardboard-stiff cot­ton that lit­er­ally scraped a teenager’s skin. A quar­ter cup of white vine­gar will also soften fab­ric, as well as elim­i­nate cling.

Toi­let

It was not until I had an issue with my toi­let that I realised how much it costs me to run my toi­let about £500 in six months just from the toi­let alone, it was leak­ing day and night.

Now I would rec­om­mend to every­one that you get what is called a hippo bag they are nor­mally free from your water com­pany, you place them in your toi­let inside the cis­tern under the ball­cock and fill up with water while you are flush­ing, this saves about 3 litres of water when flushing.

Bathing/Showering

As they always say to save money and water have a shower, we had one fit­ted recently and it is amaz­ing how much less water you use, I am hop­ing that the bill will show how much it is sav­ing plus it takes less time and the water stays hot the whole way through washing.

Ideas around this one is to have a low-flow shower head and if you have a shower cur­tain use a vinyl one instead.

Paint

Now see I didn’t think of this one so much it wasn’t until I was research­ing that I came across this one, accord­ing to it you should use paint with a low volatile organic com­pounds (VOC) label as it is not so toxic.  I guess I will have to try this one out when I get around to re-painting the bathroom.

Also another idea is the nor­mal one replace light bulbs with energy sav­ings ones.

Links of interest:

• http://www.ecozone.com/
• http://www.twinkleontheweb.co.uk/
• http://www.hippo-the-watersaver.co.uk/

Whoa long post, okay next week I’ll move onto the kitchen area.

So the bath­room is nearly done, so about 80% done right now, we have bath­room choco­late brown floor tiles, they look so pretty, but it will be 100% once my wash­ing machine area isn’t done yet!

Hus­band took of the wooden bath side because he wants to pro­tect it was the shower water so we have to paint it Saturday.

Cats are not impressed by these tiles, I think they find it cold on their paws.  Oh that is Arthur btw

They are great tiles though

Oh and I did get a quote for my kitchen and it was this much:

Seri­ously!!! How much, this is just crazy, most of it is peo­ple com­ing and fit­ting it, £700 for just unpack­ing the boxes and build­ing the units, I think we are going to look else where but this is my favourite bit the designs! I love so I will show a pri­vate kitchen fit­ter and another diy store.

How pretty is it?? I want it!! I love it, it would change my life Ha ha my hus­band was like we will get your kitchen before the sum­mer we are just look­ing for a cheaper price, hope­fully for about 3grand, fin­gers crossed.  Do you like it?

I got a nice present from my mother-in-law, a slow cooker, I have wanted one for ages, so I am so pleased with it.  I am find­ing this blog hard to write since two of my cats have decided I MUST cud­dle them right this second.

I got excited news from my dri­ving teacher thinks I should go for my test at  the end of April which way ear­lier than I thought, so I am so excited!  The issues with uni are being sorted out at the moment I have to go for my meet­ing next Fri­day, I know who else is involved and I know the story behind it now so I am pretty sure that I am not going to get into huge trou­ble but now typ­ing that I will get into HUGE trouble.

I have been watch­ing TTC vblogs on youtube and I would like to do this when we start in about 8 months time, count­ing down and all that, we are super excited, we refer to our non-baby as Daisy as that is what we would call a lit­tle girl if we have one or Jessie for a boy.  My hus­band would really like a girl, we were dis­cussing if we would want to know the sex and at first we didn’t want to know but now I think it would be a good idea if we did but the hus­band still doesn’t want to know but I am sure he will change his mind when the sit­u­a­tion appears

Oh but I have been check­ing my cycles and ovu­la­tion, I am test­ing on the 19^th of this month just so I know how to go about it when we do start try­ing in 8 months, I want to be a pro at this when we get down to the “baby dance”.

Other than that I have been work­ing really hard on my uni work, so that is pretty much an update for me this week

My bath­room is still being upgraded so to speak, the floor tiles are going down on Mon­day, as the moment the car­pet has been ripped off and the hor­ri­ble sticky back plas­tic floor in the mini hall­way has gone, the tiles have been cut but we have had issues with the wash­ing machine, my step-dad and me could not find a way to move it through the door as some idiot before us had painted the pipes and we can’t get it off but lucky for me my step-dad came around again today and man­aged to get them loose.  All I have to do is move a few more bits and we can get it out of the bath­room so it can be tiles, hur­rah!  Might be fin­ished at the end of next week So excited!!!

View as you look into the bathroom

The mini hall­way floor

No bath side

Pipes free of paint!

Also I have no bath­room or air­ing cup­board doors, oh joys!  Other excit­ing news, the kitchen fit­ter man came about an hour and half ago now and took the mea­sure­ments for the kitchen, so I should see how much it is cost­ing and have a pic­ture will I will show you, I am so excited!!!

End of Jan­u­ary Goals Update

So these are my goals a month after start­ing, main one is money, and it going well so far, I have already paid for 30 hours of dri­ving lessons so now it is car fund as in the car itself and the test, very excit­ing!! I would like to be up to a grand by now in the sav­ings, it should be my the end of the week or so once I have cleared some cheques.

Present

Shiny PSP!!! WOOOHOOO!

My hus­band got me this sur­prise present the other day as ran­dom gift It was a PSP, I have wanted one for so long as the hus­band has one and I wanted to watch TV Shows on the way back from you I love it, needs a big­ger mem­ory card.

Other than that I have had this hor­ri­ble cold, first I went deaf then I had this hor­ri­ble cough and runny nose, now I keep going to faint and dizzy… urgh I want it to end.  And I have started my project on php for uni it is a to-do list and I am rather enjoy­ing it ha ha! OOoooh and I have brought back my flickr account, yay!

Sorry I haven’t posted for awhile, loads of things are going on right now and I can’t really dis­cuss them on-line, but they are not bad in any­way but won­der­ful if it all goes to plan, I have an interview/meeting regard­ing one on Tues­day so please keep your fin­gers crossed for me, the other things well I am sure I’ll dis­cuss it when I have talked about it with my par­ents and a few oth­ers. Even at 24 years old, I still worry what my par­ents think of my decisions…

But I do have some good news that I can talk about, the kitchen is def­i­nitely going ahead!!! I have been wait­ing to hear from my mother-in-law about it, she came over today and asked me how I wanted my kitchen and where have I been look­ing for cup­boards and things like that, I am not sup­pose to know that she is pay­ing for it as the hus­band was not sup­pose to say but he can’t keep a secret to save his life! But I am so excited about the whole thing that means the bath­room and kitchen will be done soon Other news, I start my dri­ving lessons on Wednes­day, I am hop­ing to pass by Sep­tem­ber this year as I really need to learn to drive asap!

What else is new? Well the money sav­ing is going well but I think we are hav­ing to put our total up to £6,500 after June for a cer­tain rea­son (am I bug­ging you about these secrets yet? I am sorry I wish I could talk about it, I will tell you all), we made £210 from ebay today and we have a spare £285 so the sav­ings and car fund are going to look even more impres­sive, I am so pleased with it.

I am mak­ing cup­cakes at the moment so I am off to take them out oth­er­wise they burn