clean dreams friday does not always come in white.
Sometimes it’s black or very dark brown. By now, we hope that your kitchen is closed for the week. And clean. Just in time for New Year’s Eve.
kitchen porn via the kitchen designer
Soaps and detergents are both surfactants. Surfactants give soaps and detergents their cleaning power.
Soap is a word, widely used, and frequently misapplied. While it is generally acknowledged that laundry products are almost always detergents, liquid dishwasher soaps found on countertops are frequently not soaps, but rather detergents as well.
Why? Because the ingredients [...]
Nothing greasy or oily can be cleaned by using water alone. Since much of the dirt in our home involves grease or oil (the kitchen for instance), we need the active participation of surfactants.
SURFACTANT: SURFace ACTing AgeNT
Say “surfactant” three times, quickly. It is impossible.
Clean+istry is taking the opportunity, while away on holiday this week, to launch a feature that we call “definitions”.
In the early days of Clean+istry, we frequently encountered words and phrases in the course of instruction that remained ambiguous or murky in meaning.
For instance, what exactly IS a liquid detergent? Taking it one step further, [...]
Tord Boontje, a Dutch industrial designer, created a rug using die-cutting to form the shapes of flowers and leaves–six distinct shapes in all. The material is felt and it is a soft brown, even though it is technically green. His concept was to bring “the experience of walking through a meadow into an [...]
Clean+istry discussed cleaning granite countertops earlier in the week. The New York Times takes a swing at it today, recommending a protocol similar to ours. The article covers the water beading test for determining when it is necessary to reseal the stone.
By the way, gloves are not generally required for cleaning countertops.
Clean+istry believes in white mugs for coffee, which can be reasonably maintained as white mugs over time. Coffee stains are for teeth.
Teroforma is a maker of classically designed mugs and pots in brilliant white bone china. Each mug is accompanied by a felt coaster, and you know how we feel about coasters
But [...]
As the holidays approach, disguise your anxiety that crazy Uncle Bill will confuse your walnut countertop with a cutting board by using this…cutting board.
The Colorful Rings Cutting Board, by Antony Joseph, provides your most thoughtless “dear” relative a bull’s-eye that cannot be missed.
It is made from tempered glass. It is non-porous and stain- and [...]
Since our last post on washable silicone basting brushes, we’ve become mildly/SOMEWHAT/EXTREMELY obsessed with them. We’re even giving them as presents to our more culinarily minded friends. Why? Because basting brushes with traditional bristles are difficult to sanitize.
Here are three more, all quite counter-worthy, dishwasher safe, and just in time for the [...]
Art, perhaps? We go soft in the knees for a groovy garbage receptacle.
tip can, by Konstantin Grcic in molded recyclable plastic,
via apartment therapy
or for one from simplehuman that shuns fingerprints,
or for one that is just…perfect.
VIPP, available at unica home