A new type of furniture polish

I knew that title would grab you. I mean, who doesn't want to read about furniture polish? Anyway, I do have a new idea that will allow you to reuse a product, keep you healthy, and save you money. What's not to like?

The bottle shown above is from a Bobbi Brown product that I use. I recently ran out of the product and was wondering what I could do with it. The bottle is actually quite nice - very heavy, solidly constructed - and I thought it was a shame to put it in the recycling bin. At about the same time, I was reading Home Safe Home by Debra Lynn Dadd, and she had many recipes for homemade cleaning products. One, for furniture polish, consisted of 2 parts olive oil and 1 part lemon juice. So I mixed it up and put it in the bottle. It worked quite well, and you don't need much to clean a few rooms. Regular furniture polish contains a surprising number of toxins, so I consider this a win-win-win.

Think about it next time you're throwing a nice container in your garbage or recycling bin - set it aside and see if you can find another use for it.

18-Year Mystery Solved

It's an adventure living with someone who is a) an engineer, and b) determined to make our home as energy efficient as humanly possible. The past couple of weeks the adventure has revolved around the shower. Tom has been turning down the heat on the hot water tank to save energy, and for the most part it has been a great idea. Our shower, however, has been cooler than I like, and so Tom has been tweaking the temp ever so slightly to determine the exact threshold that will satisfy my need for a warm shower and keep the dial turned low. Last week, after 4 days of goosebumps, I had a conversation with him, specifically asking him to run this experiment next summer. But once on a mission, he is hard to deter.

As the conversation progressed, I could see that Tom was puzzling over the fact that the shower temp seemed cooler than any other faucet/shower in the rest of the house. Of course, I said - it has always been this way. How long, he wondered? Why, since we owned the house - 18 years, I said. Apparently I had never communicated this fact to him, and since he never uses hot water in the sinks, he never knew this. I had assumed that this is just one of the mysteries of our house, one of those vague little things you never question, and just accept.

So Tom made a quick call and found out that shower heads, when installed, are set at a cool temperature to prevent scalding. When we turn our shower on, we are getting a mix of hot water from the tank and cold water to cool the water down. And, of course, we turn up the hot water in the tank to get it warm enough. Seems crazy.

So Tom adjusted the thermostatic mixing valve in our shower (5 minutes) and went downstairs to turn down the hot water tank. Success! Now we're not overheating our water, but have enough for a warm shower on a cold winter day.

And it only took 18 years.