Hi All! I think I may have mentioned this before on this Forum. But if not here goes. How to keep stained hands clean? Do your best not to get them stained from the beginning. How? Rubber Latex Gloves. BJ's sells them by the box at a nominal cost and to cut down on that cost, you can use them over and over again even when they get holes. When the holes get to big or the cuff might rip when pulling them on because of stress it's time to discard. What I do before taking them off is spray them with a garden hose or wash off the dirt just the same as washing your hands in a bucket of rain water. Then I quick dry them with a dry cloth or rag. But the most important thing is having a large container like a 34 or 39 oz coffee can with a plastic lid. Put a fair amount of inexpensive talcum powder or corn starch in the can. Then before I take off the gloves, I rub the powder on the outside. Then I slip the gloves off and put them in the can. Then I put on the lid and shake vigorously to get the powder on the damp or wet inside of the gloves making them dry. Some of the powder will reach into the inside also. You can easily put several pairs in the can as there all the same size and there's no left or right. So if a hole gets in the stronger left or right hand side of the wearer you can put that glove with the hole on the opposite hand. When I take the gloves out of the can obviously the outside has the most powder. I turn the gloves outside inward and then blow a little air into the cuff and then squeeze to pop the fingers out. Now the powdered side is inside and this helps to generally make the gloves slid on quite easily. Hope this info helps someone. Jim

I had a problem very similar to yours. My vase has a very narrow neck, and fans out at the bottom; it is etched and the coloration is similar to carnival glass, so I didn't want to pitch it. Same type of milky looking residue as you had, too. Here is what I tried, with little to no success: 1-2 tbsps of CLR (calcium, lime and rust) remover, then filled vase with hot water; vinegar; hot vinegar; dish soap and hot water; and rubbing alcohol. Then I bought a very handy tool at the grocery store, which made a big difference. Lysol brand sells a 4-pack of drinking straw cleaners. They are very thin and long brushes (similar to baby bottle brushes, but much thinner). These cleaning brushes are commonly used to clean out the harder plastic straws, which come with some lidded water bottles. You can bend the wire if needed, to get the bristles of this tool, right up against the stained areas of the vase. So first, I bent the straw cleaner tool to get it up against the main mineral stain in the vase. Then I pulled it out and dipped it in dish detergent. Put it back in, and the bristles "scrubbed" most of the stain off. But, not all of it. Repeated this 2X, but some of the stain remained. Then, I poured in 3/4 cup of plain salt. Added very hot tap water to the very top. Went to run errands, and forgot about it. 2 hours later, I dumped out the salty water and rinsed a couple of times. I was AMAZED at the difference! Not only was the stain completely gone, the entire glass vase was the clearest, and the cleanest, it has ever been!

I thought you had said you did not like those janitor carts. It would have been the first thing I would have suggested. We use those in restaurants. They are lightweight and hold just about everything. You can whip around a big dining room and clean as you go doing everything in one area at a time rather than running around doing mirrors and then running around to go grab the grease cleaner and then....... Being plastic they are easy to keep clean and don't make any noise or leave marks or damage, if they bang into furniture or walls. You can hang tools and brooms from the notches on the side. As longtime posters here already know, I often suggest going to a restaurant supply house to find useful or oddball items not sold in stores as a solution to a household dilemma. Regarding broom handles leaving marks on your walls, just spray the ends with some clear poly coat and they won't leave paint marks anymore. This solution won't be as bulky as the other options you suggested. You could also coat them with liquid latex but that is much more expensive. Another suggestion to consider; Instead of drilling holes through the broom handles and using a leather shoelace loop to hang them, just drill a hole in the top and screw in a *screw hook*. You can then hang them by using only one hand without fumbling with the shoelace to get it over a nail or hook on the wall or what ever you hang them on. Its the 'little things' like that, that make housework less frustrating. I put screw hooks in all my brooms and dusters and hang them for storeage. You can even get them vinyl coated if you are worried about the screw hooks leaving marks on you walls. Or spray then with clear coat. If you don't like the pointy part of the hook exposed so much take a pliers and squeeze it shut. They also sell ones that are already closed but I don't know what they are called. They look like an *O* on a stick with threaded screw tip. The are harder to find in the stores. http://www.larsonhardware.com/prod/screw-hook-round-ceiling.html Here is a link that might be useful: Example of Screw Hook

What a fun thread! All this talk of cleaning toilets brings me to contribute my favorite toilet cleaning tool: a toilet mop. DH first used these in college when he cleaned the 3rd floor dorm bathrooms as his work-study job. (The guys loved him, they had the cleanest bathrooms in the whole dorm!) He begged me to find a toilet mop when we were fist married, but I only found the bristle styles in stores. He said the mop style worked so much better. A few years later I heard about toilet mops in Don Aslett's cleaning books, but, again, I could never find one locally. Then I was swayed by Flylady hype and ordered "rubba swishas," and sadly, hated them for their intended purpose. After waiting for the scrubba to die, grumbling each time I used it, I finally broke down and looked for toilet mops on Amazon, and came across the Fuller Brush model. It works great, and I really like the flexible plastic cover that can be used to squeeze out the excess water after using it. I plan to put a command hook on the side of the tank and hang the mop by the hole in the handle. (I also tried a mop with a nylon type fluff head and didn't like it nearly as much as the Fuller Brush one.) Fuller Brush Toilet Swab Now I see Amazon has a Don Aslett model, but I've not tried them.