Vinegar, Baking Soda, & Other Cleaning/Care Tips

[catsR4me]

Once again, these are some LOW conference tips that I learned this past week:

1. Cleaning fresh water tank: NEVER use bleach. Instead, use one cup vinegar, fill tank, open faucets and run until vinegar smell is gone.
2. Freshen drains: one cup each of vinegar & baking soda down the drains occasionally will keep the drains fresh.
3. Healthy black tank: Every 5th or 6th time, use one cup calgon in black tank instead of enzymes.
4. Care of hot water heater: Drain yearly and replace with new plug.
5. Use earthquake putty to anchor things in place. ("Quake Secure" at sunsetenterprises.com).

Cathy

[catsR4me]

One tip that I forgot to add that's a really great idea: use a flexible rubber spatula to clean food residue from dishes & pans before washing them. I was using paper towels to do this and the rubber spatula works ten times better and doesn't use all my paper towels!

Cathy

[Snowhawk]

Thank you, Cathy. I knew of a couple of your suggestions but since I leave hot water tank maintenance to Rich, I didn't know it should be drained each year. I suspect that is true of any hot water tank...SO... I must pass this on to my son whose electric hot water tank (of only 7 years) quit working on him. He never did any maintenance on it because he didn't know either.

[labmom]

From labmom: Dave and I discovered through friends of ours that an inexpensive cleaning product works wonders. It is called "Awesome" and you can find it at any Dollar General store. It is only $1.00 per bottle and works on everything, from outside to cleaning anything and everything inside the rig. I am always a little leery of using things to clean bathroom, etc. It is an amazing product.
As far as the day-night shades, given the problems that he have had with them, I am afraid to touch them, even to dust them. I let Dave do that. That way, if anything goes wrong it isn't my fault.
Keep on keepin' on. Betsy

[Waynem]

Remember ladies, Awesome is Citrus based. Birds love to peck on citrus based products trying to get to the fruit.

It is a great product.

[Ms McGyver]

Awesome makes a non-citrus version that is wonderful. NEVER use the citrus version outside as it weakens the glue on your decals! But the cleaner is great on black streaks, tar, and bug guts.

I get it by the gallon at Dollar General and purchased extra spray bottles at the home center store. I've mixed up different strengths and made a label for each bottle. I did this mainly because the label on the original bottle is very hard for me to read; the benefits of the new labels are obvious--I know which strength to use on what. I also included the mixing directions for each strength on the label. I'm math challenged as well so once I figured it out I won't have to do it again.