Angela Says's Profile

The floors are the first thing I would clean. I like to walk around barefoot but won't if the floors are nasty. Plus, cleaning the floors first means you can start moving stuff into the apartment and not worry about your stuff getting gross from the floor.

I like to use q-tips and alcohol. Mine get cruddy just from being in my ears. :)

It doesn't look too bad. I have a front loader and they have more places to hide grime. But I essentially use the same method to clean out mine. I wrote about cleaning my HE washer here. The best and worst part about taking photos while cleaning mine was seeing all of the hidden grime. The water hose had hard water buildup, which I couldn't see until I snapped a random picture of it. Vinegar took care of that easily.
Anyways the washer probably needs to be cleaned every 6 months or so.

My husband and I were watching my friend's kids, 3 year old girl and 5 year old boy. The three year old wanted to help make the pizza for dinner, so I pulled up the step stool, washed her hands (and mine) and we kneaded the dough together. I would knead for 10-15 seconds and she would then squish the dough with her hands leaving two little hand imprints. That was one of the funnest things we did that night. Could she knead the dough perfectly? No, but we could together.

If kids want to help, let them help and kindly guide them and teach them the proper way to do the chore. The point of letting the child do the chore is that they are trying and they want be with you, not how well the job was done. With the child's age and understanding you can say something like "Oh go get that spot" and when that spot is clean "Good job!" Praise them for what they did, not criticized them for what they missed. Children love to be praised. As they grow older, they’ll get better at it and you can show them kindly what they missed so they can get better.

Letting kids help clean when they’re young helps to build expectations for them to do chores when they are older.

I tend to collect papers with random notes that I wrote. Sometimes it's meaningful and other times it's a leftover grocery list. Most of the time I end up tossing it because I can't stand too much paper clutter. Although I'm finding that I may want to keep some of them so my new solution is probably scan them or keep them in a little box.

My favorite is having freshly baked cookies in a clean kitchen. I tend to clean as I go.

Try unscrewing the stopper (if it can). More than likely there's ridiculous amounts of hair stuck to the stopper (not for the easily grossed out). We've had a few attached stoppers and they easily unscrew.

I agree with adora, dish soap is awesome and I use it clean most things. Vinegar is my favorite as a fabric softener. Since I've switched my clothing feels cleaner and softer.
Check out my blog post for on vinegar and it's uses. http://angsays.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/the-wonders-of-cleaning-with-vinegar/