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woot! Incredible Estate Sale Coup

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So last week La Maya and I descended on an estate sale in an upscale central Phoenix neighborhood. The organizer had photographed and marketed effectively — and they had something good to market — so we got on the road by six in the morning. Numbers were handed out at 7:00 a.m., and we were numbers 32 and 33. Having secured our place in line, we went off to grab breakfast and returned at 8:00 for the opening.

Absolutely amazing! The client apparently was an affluent woman, living alone, who had a great deal of money and a great deal of idle time. Evidently she assuaged her boredom (depression?) with recreational shopping. The house was filled with goods of all kinds, from expensive kitchenware to expensive pocketbooks, that still had their price tags. Wads and wads of costume jewelry, piles of scarves, clothing, tchotschkes, artwork, on and on and on.

I snabbed one item that I won’t describe because it will make a nice Christmas present for M’hijito. Picked up some beads and fake pearls that will be good in the fake jewelry-making enterprise. And then on the way out, as we were standing in line to pay for our loot at the mobbed check-out, what should we find but a box of leather gloves.

Well, I’ve been needing a pair of gloves for my walking project — early mornings at this time of year can be kind of nippy. The other day I looked at Macy’s and almost fainted at the prices, which ran from $60 to $80. Finally ended up buying a pair of nylon things for four bucks at Costco, which do the job but aren’t very attractive.

La Maya grabbed a pair first, in a really beautiful gray leather. Then she noticed they were made in Italy and lined with 100% silk. I found a black pair and an ivory pair that fit, and, not inspecting them any closer, plonked down the $10 per pair to claim them.

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They were clipped together with spring-loaded office paper clips. When I got them home and freed them from the metal clips, I discovered that the black pair was still tacked together with its original little piece of thread — they had never been worn! The ivory pair had been used, but not much. And both pairs were labeled “Made in Italy. 100% Silk Lining”!

Also picked up a hand-made, fine leather wallet that similarly has no sign of ever having been used. My wallet is shot — had to replace the zipper pull with a safety pin — and I’ve been looking for something to take its place. Five bucks!

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Wow! How cool is that?

 

 

Got Parents? Keep an Eye on Them!

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It is freaking amazing how vulnerable we old folks get to scams and sales pitches as we descend the steps toward the grave. Lissen up,  you young pups: if you have parents, it is sooo incumbent upon you to quietly keep an eye on whatever financial mischief they’re getting up to. If not to protect them (as most of them did for you when you were too dumb to know better), then to protect whatever assets you might inherit or to delay the day, as long as possible, that the old folks become dependent on you.

Here’s what brought on that outburst: Semi-Demi-Ex-Boyfriend called, all hepped up about having dropped something in excess of five grand on an improvement to his 35-year-old tract house in Sun City, a venue that most Boomers avoid like it was radioactive. While the house is ideal for a single person who doesn’t live there year-round, Zillow believes it to be worth $6500 less than he paid for it in 2004.

Here and there around Sun City, you’ll see old masonry houses that recently have been clad in stucco. Most of these get a layer of insulation under the new mud, which in theory should save on power bills.

Welp, one of SDXB’s neighbors decided to do this. Curious, SDXB stopped by to inquire, and that gave the contractor an opportunity to offer him a smokin’ deal if he would just sign on the dotted line before the guy moved his crew out of the area. So now he’s all excited because he expects this will increase the value of his hard tent (his term: a guy with terminal wanderlust, he wishes to spend his dotage in constant motion, using the place in Sun City as a place to camp out during the winter, when the weather’s livable). And it is true that the houses modernized with a layer of stucco do look a lot better than those with naked slumpblock walls.

So now he’s saying maybe he’ll sell the place, taking advantage of what he thinks will be spectacularly improved property value, and upgrade to a better place on the golf course.

Well. This sounds grand, until you think about it:

a) During the winter, it’s a rare day when you’ll turn on the heater. Today as we speak we’re in mid-November and it’s 73 degrees on my back porch. Last month my power bill was $66; this month it will be less. Ditto SDXB’s.

b) In addition to her house in Sun City, New Girlfriend owns a lovely home in Boulder, to which she repairs at the first sign of undue warmth. SDXB either goes up there with her or soon follows, every spring. She stays there until October. He spends most of the summer there, when he’s not hanging out with his relatives at the Hood River in Oregon or visiting boyhood friends in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Thus, when my  power bills run upward of $200, he has exactly no power bills. None. Nil. Zero. Zip.

c) The two of them have developed a love of ocean cruises. They are merrily squandering their kids’ inheritance on wonderful cruises, and having the time of their lives! In summers past, they’ve been all over the Caribbean, to say nothing of the trip to Italy. And just now he’s got NG persuaded that nothing will do but what they must head for the South Pacific. Thus, between the summer home in the high country and the constant peripatetic mode, they’re hardly ever there!

d) SDXB has taken his neighbor’s word for it. He’s done nothing to check this contractor out or to get competing bids. This is SO out of character that it defies belief.

Well. IMHO if you plan to spend the entire year in one of those hard tents and if you believe you’re going to live in it until you croak over, this stuccoing scheme may not be a bad idea. Although God only KNOWS how many years it will take to recover the cost if only utility bills are taken into consideration, SDXB’s slump-block home is fully painted. A new paint job, if it’s done with a decent grade of paint, will cost him two or three thousand bucks. Newer forms of stucco come dyed to the color you please and, in theory, never need to be painted. So assuming that’s true and assuming he lives, say, another 15 to 20 years, he could save as much in paint as he spends on mud. In that case, whatever savings he realizes on the air-conditioning (which could be non-negligible, should he ever break up with NG) would be gravy.

But as a practical matter, SDXB has no intention of EVER spending another summer here in the Valley of the We-D0-Mean Sun. So that leaves us with the question of

W

T

F

???

IMHO, this is a case where a competent family member — a son or a daughter, for example — needs to be on hand to keep an eye on big-ticket decisions for an aging parent.

Of course, none of us wants to give over our autonomy to the younger generation (or to anyone else, for that matter). And naturally, none of the young folk wants to have to take on the responsibility of riding herd on an increasing frail (and so increasingly annoying) parent. However…it must be recalled that, after all, those parents shouldered 18 years or so of responsibility for the pups. Or, less altruistically: our assets are their assets. Whatever we refrain from squandering will help to keep our kids in the middle class, to the extent that a middle class survives in this country.

So. Keep an eye on us old buzzards, you young thangs.

😉

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I. JUST. HATE. THIS. STUFF!

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Day from Hell #1,247,80: Attempt to get through what looks like a pretty benign list of things to do.

Well. It would be benign if it weren’t for the five stacks of paper to plow through, residing on the office floor.

November 15, 2013. To Do:

√ 7:00 a.m.: leave for estate sale with La Maya
Read 4 more chapters of client’s copy; return edits to him
Write blog post
√ Cook batch of chicken for dog
Chop chicken in food processor
√ Clean up dog-chicken mess in kitchen
Make bed
Water plants
Go for exercise walk
Walk dog
√ Pick up office floor
√ Do bookkeeping
…√Reconcile credit union accounts
…√Enter debits in budget spreadsheet
…√Enter debits & credits in Quickbooks
MAKE PHONE CALLS!
…√Bosch/Sears: why won’t cycles operate?
…Dermatologist: appointment
…√Cardiologist: appointment
…√Radiologist: appointment
Repair broken nail
√ Fill new wallet
√ Remember to put opera tickets into purse for tonight
√ Make tomato soup
√ Make cucumber soup
Pick up house
Dust
Sweep
Mop

Notice how a) I haven’t gotten to the paying work and b) I haven’t gotten to the pigpen clearance.

6:15 a.m. Phone rings. La Maya: if we leave a little early, we can hit another sale before the one we’d planned. I’m in the middle of fixing breakfast but say OK.  Hurry. Produce dishwater-weak coffee, something I abominate. Should’ve known: it was an omen.

6:40 a.m. On the road to Scottsdale.

7:00 a.m. Hit the first sale. It’s in an old house on McCormick Ranch, once Scottsdale’s crown jewel of “planned communities.” Stick-built stuccoed houses do not age well. Original owners must have aged in place, never updating much: cocaine-white 12-inch tiles, dark wood parquet floors…meh. Apparently the residents petrified along about 1986. Neither of us sees anything we want. We leave, feeling smug about how much better-built and nicer our center-city homes are. We revel in our reverse snobbery.

Shortly before 9:00 a.m. Reach second sale, slated to open at nine. Line of bargain-hunters goes down the street. This one is organized by a company that treats customers poorly; normally we would not grace this outfit with our presence. But on their web page, La Maya has seen a few small tables that interest her.

9:00 a.m.: Sale opens. The bastards let people in two, three, four at a time. We stand and stand and stand and stand and stand and…

9:30 a.m. Recycling pick-up truck arrives. Driver flies into rage at all the cars parked up and down the street, blocking the recycling barrels (it’s illegal to block a recycling barrel here in lovely uptown Arizona). In frustration, he sits there and LEANS ON HIS HORN. Ever here a garbage truck horn? It’s amazingly loud.

Finally he has to get out of the truck and move trash cans out onto the street so his machinery can pick them up. House is on a cul-de-sac. To maneuver with every square inch of curb parked up by shoppers’ cars, he has to back and fill with his gigantic rig. Vast HONKING horn blasts intermittently, an automatic thing when the vehicle is in reverse. That notwithstanding, he very nearly runs down several line-standers who refuse to give up their place so as to get out of his way.

About  a quarter to ten: After a good 45 minutes, during which the idiot at the door lets in one or two people at a time, we finally get in the door. Of course, the tables in question are already marked sold. They weren’t much, anyway — images on the website were deceptive. This is another old, tired tract house. But tireder, much tireder than the last one. It’s dirty, and there’s absolutely nothing of any interest.

About 10:30, we arrive back at La Maya’s house. La Bethulia is conferring with a financial planner in the living room. La Maya makes coffee and then she and I slink out to the front courtyard, so as not to disturb them and so as to take the morning air. We gossip for quite a while. She describes current antics at GDU…what a place! I am soooo glad not to be working there. She would be very glad not to be working there, too, but needs an income. I think she could do handsomely by marketing her increasingly professional-looking artwork, if only she knew how to market it.

Around 11:30: Return home. Call Bosch customer service. Learn, after about ten or fifteen minutes of experimentation carried on over the phone, how to make the machine’s various cycles operate and why the “reset” function hasn’t been working and how to make it work.

Make a fairly amazing tomato soup (recipe pending). Eat lunch. Put dog meat on to cook.

Call the cardiologist. After long slog through punch-a-button maze, reach a receptionist who says I don’t need to make an appointment until December. I say it’s already almost December. She says all their December appointments are filling up fast — would I like an appointment in December? Thanking god she can’t see me roll my eyes over the phone, I say “sure.” She proposes to schedule me smack in the middle of the comparative mythology section’s final exam.

Call radiologist. After long slog through punch-a-button maze, reach a receptionist who says I’m not in their records. Spell my name (interminable and unpronouceable) and repeat my birth date again. Eventually they allow as how they kind know who I am. Make appointment for 7 o’clock in the damn morning next weeek.

Noonish: Enter office and begin wading through deep piles of paper.

Grow increasingly frustrated while trudging through endless series of profoundly disliked chores. Enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers…can’t find entries I know I made; can’t find entries I never made, can’t figure out where they went. Reconcile four accounts. Can’t find file folders in reorganized file drawers whose arrangement I imagined would be so crystalline clear. Enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers, enter numbers…

Realize the $44 I paid for two Bach concert tickets could not POSSIBLY cover four tickets, two for me and two for my friend. Call. Get shunted to the director’s day job. Get past the gatekeeper. Reach the director, who also happens to be our choir director. He says no problem, I should just pay him on Sunday. This means a) I can’t charge them to AMEX and collect a kickback, and b) I’ll have to bring a checkbook, and c) therefore I’ll have to drag my goddamn purse to choir on Sunday, something I never do because I do not want that extra hassle.

Purse….purse… Need to put tonight’s Lyric Opera ticket in purse so I won’t leave it behind when I race out the door.  Where’s my purse?

Yes. WHERE’S MY PURSE?????!!!???????

Think I’ve left it in La Maya’s car. Call her. Of course, she’s not answering the effing cell phone. NO ONE answers cell phone calls. Send high-priority e-mail. Totally FREAK OUT!!!! Every credit card to my name is in that PURSE! As are the checkbooks for my personal bank account AND my business account!!!!!!!!!

Holy sh!t.

Realize I’ve left the chicken sitting on the counter all afternoon. Cover it with tinfoil, lift up the plate and…slop GREASY CHICKEN LIQUID ALL OVER THE COUNTERTOP AND DOWN THE CABINETRY AND ALL OVER THE FRONT OF THE DISHWASHER AND ALL OVER THE FLOOR!

Scrub the counter, scrub the cabinetry, scrub the dishwasher, scrub the floor.

La Maya calls. She’s on the way to the school to pick up the grandchild, of whom she and La Bethulia have custody. She says she’ll bring the purse by.

That is, assuming it’s still in the car and hasn’t been stolen.

Time passes. Continue trying to track down phantom and unexplained bank account entries; continue entering data in spreadsheets.

Around 4:00 p.m. La Maya shows up. She’s found the purse, but not until after a brief scare. When she went out to the car, it wasn’t in there.

OMG, thinks she: someone has already taken it out of the car!

Then she realizes the car is still locked and none of the windows are broken, so it’s not likely the purse was stolen out of her vehicle. This means she has to trudge back into the house, dodging two dogs (one of which wishes for nothing more than to slip out the door and head for Yuma at a dead run) and search for the purse. She finds it on the kitchen counter. Neither one of us can remember my having carried it in there. Relieved, she delivers the satchel to my house.

By now my hair, not surprisingly, is sticking out all over like a witch’s. In mere minutes, I have to be ready to head out to dinner with a friend, thence to a lyric opera musical play.

Plug in hot rollers, throw on a few clothes while they’re heating. Roll hair. Brush teeth. Paint face. Unroll hair, comb hair — not bad, for an old hag!

Exhausted, sit down in front of computer and start writing this post.

5:00 p.m. Phone rings: my friend is outside in the front driveway.

We had a very fine dinner at La Grande Orange, one of the stylish Phoenix-based Portofino restaurants. We decided to try their alleged gluten-free pizza, just for the helluvit, and were delighted to find that it was very delicious. In fact, the thin, crisp crust was actually better, in both of our opinions, than a regular soggy pizza crust. Toppings were outstanding.

So was the wine. But then it should have been: one glass of the house wine cost more than a whole bottle of the plonk I buy at Costco.

11:30 p.m. The musical was fun, long, exhausting. The dog was not fed before I raced out; tossed down some food for her and now will have to wring her out before climbing into the sack, lest she decide the servant should get up at two in the morning to let her out.

And so, to bed, there to hope for a little less craziness tomorrow…

What Happens When You Don’t Keep Up with the Incoming Paperwork at the Funny Farm

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AUUUUUUUGGGGHGHGHGHGHG!!!!!

Just LOOK at this!!!!!!!

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Over the past two or three weeks, I’ve been not feeling on the top shelf. Not only that, but every time I sit down at the flicking computer, I get up so damn spavined I can hardly stand up. So, as you can imagine, I’ve been putting off whatever I could, because I don’t want to sit at the computer any more hours than absolutely necessary, because it hurts to sit at the damn computer. Everything that can’t be put off goes on the front burner, and that includes nothing more than what someone is paying me to do — and not even all of that. The rest of it gets put off for another day.

See that thar, above?

FIVE FLICKING STACKS OF INCOMING!!

• We have stuff to file.

• We have stuff I need to do something about, ASAP.

• We have transactions (in some cases unending lists of transactions) to post. These annoying pieces of paper will then be moved to the TO FILE stack.

• We have the mounds of incoming paper related to the latest identity fraud attempt.

• And we have piles of sh!t that I don’t even know what to do with!

That doesn’t even count the MOUNTAIN of junk that goes directly from the mailbox to the recycling barrel.

And it’s just come in over the past couple of weeks, while I really, truly, haven’t felt like dealing with it.

Am I the only one who feels harassed by the need to keep up with incoming pesky paperwork (or online statements) and overwhelmed when even a week or two goes by without constant upkeep?????

Go ahead. I dare you to click on the photo to see exactly what all those five mounds of paper entail.

How to Make Your Own Yogurt

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P1020618It worked! Yesterday, in a great flashback to my hippy-dippy days, I took it into my shaggy little head to try to make some yogurt. This was very popular among the back-to-the-earth set in the 60s and 70s, mostly because home-made yogurt allegedly would contain fewer contaminants than what you could buy in a store, and also because store-bought yogurt wasn’t the greatest. Nevvermind that you couldn’t get organic, antibiotic-free milk unless you had a cow in the backyard. As a practical matter, homemade yogurt tasted a great deal better than what you could get in a supermarket, where the best of a mediocre lot was Mountain High.

Today the yogurt you can buy is much, much better. However, the rage for Greek-style yogurt has taken over the world, and now you can’t easily buy plain ordinary boring yogurt. Sometimes you’d like the thinner product, though, to make soups like xergis and for blended drinks. Also, organic yogurt isn’t cheap, whether or not it’s been strained to resemble Greek yogurt.

Out came my old Laurel’s Kitchen, the standby of hippy-dippy vegetarian chefs. Laurel’s recipe for yogurt involved adding powdered milk — and not the instant kind. Not having any of that and having no idea even where to buy it, I moved on to the Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Cookbook, another back-to-the-earther standby. They would allow you to use instant powdered milk.

I have no use for the stuff and am not going to go out and buy it.

Those folks with the yaks on the high steppes, I figured, did not have powdered milk hanging around the yurt. It simply had to be possible to make yogurt without recourse to an industrial foodoid.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I picked up a half-gallon of hormone-free milk and a package of Green Mountain Creamery’s finest organic Greek-style yogurt. And here’s how the caper came down:

You need

• ½ gallon milk
• ½ cup good-quality commercial yogurt

Read the ingredients on the yogurt container. Be sure the product contains “live culture,” meaning the critters that turn milk into yogurt — and benefit your innards — are still bouncing around in there.

Gather Your Gear

• a large saucepan or small dutch oven, with lid
• a spatula or wooden spoon
• a candy thermometer or some decent common sense
• a wire whisk
• an oven that will heat to a very low temperature and that has a working light, or a heating pad, or a refrigerator that exhausts warm air in a place where you can place a stoneware bowl (in which case you will need a stoneware bowl large enough to hold ½ gallon of milk
oven thermometer, if you’re using the oven
• a sink or large clean pail
• ice
• cold tap water
• optional (see below): clean bath towel and large stoneware bowl
• clean containers to store the finished yogurt

•  Step 1: Heat the Milk

In your saucepan or Dutch oven, heat the milk over medium heat to right below boiling. On  a candy thermometer, this is 200° Fahrenheit. You really don’t need a thermometer, though. The milk has reached the right temperature when it begins to show a skiff of light foam on the top, especially around the edges of the pan — tiny bubbles form on the surface at this stage. Gently stir the milk as it heats to make sure the bottom doesn’t scorch and the milk doesn’t boil over. This step is necessary to prevent the yogurt from separating later on. (As usual, click on the image to see the details.)

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Step 2: Cool the Milk

Dump a bunch of ice into a clean kitchen sink or clean bucket large enough to hold your pan. Pour in enough water to reach almost up to the top of the pan. Set the pan directly into this cold water. Stirring steadily with the wire whip, let the milk cool until it is just hot to the touch, 112°F – 115°F. It should feel more than lukewarm, but not scalding hot.

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Step 3: Inoculate the Milk 

Drop ½ cup of  yogurt into the warm milk. Whisk it in well using the wire whip. Blend the two ingredients smoothly, leaving no lumps of yogurt behind.

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Step 4: Incubate the Yogurt

Now you simply keep the  mixture warm until it sets up into yogurt. The trick is keeping the milk around 110°F until it has set, usually four to eight hours. You can do this easily in a commercial yogurt maker, but it’s not at all necessary.

If you have an oven whose temperature will stay low enough, by all means use that.

If your oven maker’s idea of “warm” is somewhere around 200 to 250 degrees, you can still use it but you’ll need an oven thermometer. Once the yogurt is cool, put the lid on the pan and wrap the pan with a clean towel to insulate it. Place the oven thermometer inside the oven and turn the oven to the lowest heat offered. When the temperature reaches 115 degrees, turn the oven off and turn on the oven light. Place the yogurt into the oven, close the door, and go away. If the temperature in the house is fairly cool, you may need to turn the oven back on briefly to maintain the temperature — but be sure to keep an eye on that thermometer.

Alternatively, you can get a large stoneware bowl and pour hot tap water into it, to warm it through. Then transfer the milk into the bowl. Wrap it in a clean bath towel and then set it in the oven with the oven light turned on, or set it in the warm exhaust of a refrigerator, or set it on a heating pad set to “low” or “medium.”

My oven, however, will hold at about 100 to 115 degrees. So, if you have an oven with a “warming” feature like this, heat it to about 100 to 110 degrees. Place the pan in the oven, close the door, and go away. An oven thermometer is useful to help you keep an eye on the heat, but if you don’t have one and you don’t trust the oven, simply prop the door open slightly during the incubation. If the pan is very full and you have any concern at all about spilling milk in the oven, place a cookie sheet under the pan. I’ve found this is unnecessary, but just in case, it could avoid a clean-up.

Be careful not to jostle the milk too much as it’s incubating, so that it will set properly. This process will take from four to eight hours, depending on how tangy you like your yogurt.

The longer the yogurt sits, the thicker and more tangy it gets. After about four hours, open the pan and taste the yogurt. It should be creamy, like a barely-set custard, and the flavor will be tart yet milky. If you like it at this stage, pull it out and refrigerate it. If you’d like it tangier, leave it for another hour or two. I left it in the oven for about six or eight hours, producing a thick, zingy yogurt.

Step 5: Cool and Store the Yogurt

Leaving the yogurt in the pan or bowl you used for incubation, place it into the refrigerator. Once it’s completely chilled, transfer it into air-tight containers and store it in the refrigerator, where it will keep about two weeks. Sometimes you’ll find a layer of watery whey on top of the yogurt, just as you may find with organic grocery-store yogurt. Stir it back into the yogurt or, if you prefer, strain it off.

Et voilà! That’s it. The five-step process makes this sound time-consuming, but in fact it’s not, because most of the time the live culture does the work while  you go off and entertain yourself with something else.

Since yogurt is getting kind of pricey these days, making your own has become quite cost-effective. After you’ve made it once, you can use your own to start future batches, meaning you never have to buy another expensive container of yogurt again. All you’ll ever have to buy is the milk.

Hair Conditioner as…Bathroom Cleaner???

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Faucet_in_a_bathroom_sinkHang onto your hats, folks: here’s a truly weird household hint. Diluted hair conditioner works, quite nicely and pretty efficiently, to clean the brightwork in your bathroom. Matter of fact, it’ll clean the sink and countertop, too. And probably the bathtub, if you’re in the mood to experiment.

The bizarre factoid came my way by pure serendipity. By accident, as a matter of fact.

As you may recall, I like to make my own glass cleaner, fabricating it with the same active ingredients that Windex uses. The product, which is clear as water, resides in a Home Depot industrial-strength squirt bottle in a bathroom cabinet. And not so long ago, I learned to pre-condition the dog’s fur before washing her by spraying her with diluted hair conditioner and working it into her fox-like pelt. Yesh. Supposedly if you do this, it somehow creates magnificent results.

Well, it doesn’t. It serves mostly to enhance the degree of canine annoyance at the dog-bathing experience. HOWEVER, this much-diluted hair conditioner (about 1 part conditioner to five or six or more parts water) does have a salutary effect on the human’s fur, when the weather in the low desert is so dry that static electricity makes it stand up all over one’s head like you stuck your finger in a light socket. A very light misting of the stuff instantly eliminates the hair-crackle, and, as a bonus, enhances one’s natural curl. Assuming one has that to start with.

This clear stuff also resides in a Home Depot industrial-strength squirt bottle in the bathroom cabinet.

So, as you may now imagine, the other day when it was past time to clean the bathroom, I reached under the cabinet and hauled out the spray bottle of DIY Windex. Squirted it all over the faucet and sink and tile countertop and…thought well, hell!

I’d managed to douse everything with hair conditioner. This, the train of thought continued, is going to be one big, gloppy mess to clean up!!!!!

Hauled out the paper towels, figuring to soak up the worst of it and then scrub, scrub, and scrub again with Simple Green to get the rest of it off.

But…nooooo!

It wiped off the hard surfaces like a freaking dream! It left the faucet clean, bright, and shiny. Did the same to the tile.

I expected it just looked that way, so attempted to rinse what I imagined was the rest off with water.

Nothing. No glop, no suds, no slime.

WTF?

Cautiously, I squirted a bit of it on the kitchen faucet.

Polished the thing right up.

Okay. The acid test: I apply my powdered mineral makeup in the back bathroom, where the light is adequate. The stuff settles on every available surface, merrily staining the sink and countertop a lovely “medium-beige” puce and requiring some serious cleaning to keep the place more or less presentable. So it was off to the back bathroom with the squirt bottle full of diluted hair conditioner.  If this doesn’t make the mess from Hell, I figured, nothing will!

Apparently nothing will. It cleaned the back bathroom sink and faucet right up, just as bright and shiny as if I’d washed it down with Lysol or Simple Green. And it smelled a lot better.

I have no idea what on earth the chemistry behind this phenomenon might be. We do know that some women have taken to washing their tresses with hair conditioner, having developed, for reasons incomprehensible to personkind, an abiding suspicion of shampoo. And we also know that a very light skiff of olive oil or other vegetable oil will polish chrome faucets quite prettily. But…but…hair conditioner as bathroom cleaner?

Dunno. All I know is it worked.

Image: Tomwsulcer. Faucet in a Bathroom Sink. Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.