Motherless Mothers

I lost my mother at a young age, and growing up my father did his best to fill in the gaps with amazing women in my life.  My fondest memories of a mother-figure are of my old babysitter who would play with me.  I have vague recollections of my mom playing with me, but my sitter was just awesome.  She would get down on the floor with me to play Barbie and My Little Pony and even sewed clothes for my toys.  Another woman my father dated was very much a Susie Homemaker who enjoyed sewing dresses for me and baking all sorts of delicious treats.

The woman my father wound up marrying is the polar opposite of all the mother figures he'd placed in my life to nurture me.  She's an amazing woman, intelligent, kind, and loving, but we didn't bond until I had my second child and was a grown woman.

Since I never truly had a mother-daughter bond, or really experienced (to my memory) how a mother bonds with her children, I've always felt as if I'm missing something or not doing enough for my kids.  Quite often, I feel like I'm just going through the motions of motherhood and doing what's expected because it's what I think moms should do, or because it's what the mother I wanted would have been like.  I'm not sure.  It frequently feels fake or hollow, and it's hard to put my finger on exactly why.

I strive to be the Perfect Mother in all ways, but I so very often fall short, and it kills me inside.  I want to be Mother Bear from the Little Bear books, kind and gently loving while making all sorts of yummy goodness to share with my offspring, but the reality is me yelling at the kids, pushing them away, and hiding from them when I get overwhelmed by all the expectations I hold myself up to.

Several times I've attempted to find online support networks for mothers without mothers, but I've found that the groups are either older women who lost their mothers as adults or people who just want to vent and find support dealing with their grief.  I've been unable to find women who can help me relate to being a mother without any motherly guidance in her life.  So I wing it, and I go it alone.

While I do mourn the loss of my mother and feel the emptiness inside from time to time, I feel that it happened so long ago that it really doesn't impact me anymore.  Save for the anniversary of her death, I don't feel much sadness or sorrow, and it really is just a fact of life.  I don't have a mother and I don't remember much of the mother I had.

I just fear that I'm not a good mom.  People tell me I'm an awesome mother but inside I'm thinking that I've completely pulled the wool over their eyes because I feel like I'm nothing more than a farce.  I have no example to hold myself up to in my mind and not having someone in my life to model leaves me feeling a bit lost.  I need a mentor, a person to compare myself to, but I lack that inner guidance because I never had the experience of a real mother in my life.

So I keep muddling, and I keep wondering.  I can only hope that my children turn out okay and I don't cause their therapy bills to be through the roof in their adulthood.

Dirty Dishwashers

I wipe my dishwasher down with hot soapy water and scrub along the door, the seals, and the bottom about twice a month.  Monthly I will put a small mixing bowl filled with white vinegar in the bottom rack and run a  heavy duty cycle to keep it clean and fresh.

Even with all of that I'd been noticing my dishes coming out dirty.  It was small at first, usually just a little particulate in my coffee mugs, but it progressively worsened and today I had the time to take the machine apart and give it a good, proper cleaning.

In my past life (before divorce), I could afford to hire someone to do this.  Each year I had someone out to maintain all my appliances: fridge, dishwasher, washer, and dryer and it was worth every penny.  I also do routine maintenance at home regularly, but obviously it's not enough.  Given the fact that I'm living in a rental property, I'm sure that the appliances weren't well maintained by previous tenants, and few people have my standard of cleanliness so seeing what I saw when I got the machine dismantled wasn't necessarily a surprise, but it was disgusting.

This is an image-heavy entry, but it does show how to properly do a deep clean on a dishwasher.  Warning, these images are DISGUSTING.


This is my dish washer before.  It doesn't look bad honestly.

I pulled out both top and bottom racks to free up workspace.

It didn't look bad at first glance, but I've seen the dark matter under the sump cover and knew something wasn't quite right.

I removed the spray arm by pressing a butter knife into each catch.  It came out easily.

Then I took my handy dandy hand socket set and removed the bolts holding the sump cover in place.

When I took out the sump cover I actually recoiled in disgust.  There was this skin of scum and dirt covering the top of the cover, it peeled off after soaking in the sink. Vile.  I took a toothbrush and scrubbed out the arm and sprayed it clean with my sink's hose attachment.  It really wasn't too dirty, but there was a blockage in one of the holes.  The cover soaked in a sink of HOT HOT water with bleach and soap (sorry guys, I sold out to the chemical man and went with bleach on this one).  Then I scrubbed it with a toothbrush several times.

This is what my dishwasher looked like when I got the spray arm and cover out.  I put the chopstick in there to help fish out the gunk, it wasn't found in there...though a q-tip was (gag).

Once I got everything apart and out, I scrubbed the unit with soapy water, going easy on the soap.  I did use some baking soda to scour the very grimy spots, but this was an elbow grease job.  I poured a goodly amount of bleach into the unit, closed the door, and ran a heavy duty cycle.  This was about five minutes into the cycle.

Then I did it again.  This is about five minutes in as well (and it was clean).  The sump is actually stained from all the years of filth.  I've looked online and it seems there really is no way to remove the staining.

After I felt the inside was clean I unscrewed the door cover and removed it from the machine.  This is the base of the door cover where I can't reach to clean properly when its in place.

And this is the inside of the door cover, the part you never see.  There was actual mildew on the styrofoam cover for the door vent.  I removed the screws and took this out.  If you do this, be sure to remember how it goes back together.  Then I wiped down the entire door with my all purpose spray and a rag.

The door vent was pretty grotty so I sprayed and wiped it out well, using a tooth brush in the corners.  Then I washed the actual vent in the sink with hot soapy water.

I reassembled the machine and ran another cycle (still running or there'd be pictures) and considered the job a success.

This is what came out of my "clean" dishwasher.  Just goes to show that even clean people have filth in their lives.  I'm hoping this means my dishwasher will clean the dishes again.

The WTF finds were an intact carrot slice UNDER the sump cover (I have no clue how it would fit?!), a q-tip, a foil cover for a drink, and an old rusty nail.

This deep deep clean will be added to my every six months cleaning list.  I'd say it took me a good four hours between running the three wash cycles and taking care of kids in the mix.

Hand Wringing

I'm a worrier.  I obsess.  Within my social network I have been dubbed the Official Hand Wringer.  I'm the one in the background wringing her hands and muttering to herself that such and such is bad, this or that is going to happen, and on and on.

You could tell me I inherited a billion dollars from a long-lost relative and I would find something to worry about.  Taxes! Litigation from bitter would-be heirs!  I'll end up like all those lottery winners you read about, drunk and destitute in five years!

See?

Tuesday snow started falling again.  It was pretty, and I truly enjoyed it, but I knew we were in for worse things like the ice storm bearing down upon us.  I did a quick evaluation since I knew I was stocked in regards to consumables and whatnot, and realized that I was missing some very key essentials like water, batteries, and candles.  I just haven't purchased any emergency candles since I moved into this house, no specific reason why no besides the fact that the weather has been very mild the past two years.  As for the batteries, well I blame the children for eating them or something.  The water was easy to explain, the local utility company has been working on the system a street away and last week they dropped something on the water main causing the water to slow to a trickle and then run cloudy for several days.  I burned through all my water supplies since the water tasted awful and looked awful.

I took my very reluctant chihuahuas out for a walk and there were just a few flakes drifting down peacefully.  After they finally did their thing I took them back in and headed to the local WalMart for the few things I needed.  By the time I'd driven two miles to the main road I could no longer see the lines in the road.  By the time I left the store (it took over an hour thanks to only six open check out lines) there were about two inches of snow on my car and the ground.

What is a ten-minute drive on a bad traffic day took me over thirty minutes because the roads were so bad.  Adding fuel to that fire was the fact that few people can drive in this, and there were all sorts of foolishness on the roads.  One person was driving 15 mph in the middle of the road and causing back ups.  Other people were driving on the shoulder (and going all over the place), tailgating, and just driving like total jackanapes.  It was terrifying.

But in that moment, I felt no fear.  No nervousness.  I kept myself gathered and calm, kept both hands on the wheel in the 10 and 2 o'clock positions, and I drove cautiously and carefully.  Even when my car skidded off the road I just went with it, let the car do its thing, and then gradually pulled back onto the pavement.  I made it home in one piece and didn't even feel a slight shaking of my nerves.

Of course once I got home I obsessed over weather reports and started wringing my hands because we're at a high risk for power outages.  Instead of sitting there making myself go into a worry death spiral I got the Man dressed and out the door to bring wood from the shed, feed the chickens, and secure the house as best we could.  Then I got into the kitchen and started cooking and preparing food in case we lose power.  I have a grill and I'm as prepared as can be, but I wanted to have food in case it was too bad to grill outside.

Man got on the phone and started calling friends in the area to make sure they were all ready and surprisingly no one had done much of anything.  A short while later, notifications started popping up on facebook as friend after friend we'd contacted started to brag about their storm preparedness.

So I guess my hand wringing isn't all for naught, there is a need for a worry wart in everyone's lives.  I guess I'm The Robot to all my friends but I don't do the arm waving or holler "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!"  I sit in the background whimpering and muttering while wringing my hands until someone notices and listens, then shares what I've said.

Natural Cleaning Products

I own a small cleaning business that uses only natural cleaning products I make myself.  My main ingredients are vinegar, water, baking soda, soap, and essential oils.  That's it.  I do make furniture polish as well, and those ingredients are a little more dear (beeswax specifically) but only one of my clients actually has fine wood furniture that requires waxing/polishing and my stuff is mostly IKEA crap, so I don't have to mix that up very often.

I started using natural cleaners shortly after I was pregnant with my son.  I'd become more interested in natural living and honestly, I was sick of cleaners that irritated my sinuses and eyes, not to mention my skin.  Over years of fiddling and messing around with ideas I found online, I finally found a system that works for me.  When I stopped using harsh cleaners like Pine Sol and bleach, I realized that I just felt better.  I didn't have sinus issues following a deep clean of my house and I began to appreciate things smelling clean by a lack of scent, not an overpowering smell of an agent.

For most everything I clean, I use my all-purpose spray.  My spray consists of vinegar, water, a dash of dish soap (Dawn, sorry, I use nothing else), and tea tree essential oil.  It cleans everything except granite and marble.  For granite and marble, straight rubbing alcohol is my go-to.  I simply spray, let it sit for a minute, then wipe and go.

If there's tough grit or cooked on food on the stove top or inside the oven I make a paste of baking soda and soap, rub it in, and let it sit while I clean the rest of the kitchen.  Then I go back and scrub with a scrubby sponge and wipe away with clean water.  I finish it off by spraying down the surface with my vinegar based mixture, this usually helps finish off the film/residue.

For bathrooms I use straight vinegar with tea tree oil and a dash of soap in the toilet. I only scrub toilets on my hands and knees with a dedicated toilet sponge.  I also wipe the walls, cabinets, and floors around the toilet to make sure it's really clean.  The tubs get a baking soda/soap paste to scrub and scour away any residues or build ups, I love love love my clients that have clear glass shower doors because it is so satisfying to leave a cloudy glass door looking brand new and shiny again.  Of course I'll never own a glass shower for that specific reason, it's a LOT of work keeping glass looking that good, but I do admit that when kept up with properly, glass doors are attractive.

The ace up my sleeve for my home and business is elbow grease.  I get very aggressive and scrub hard when cleaning.  I always laugh to myself because I lost over 50 lbs when I started up my business.  Cleaning an entire 2000+ sq ft house in 4 hours is better than one hour at the gym.  Even at my most gym-rat stage of gym rattiness, I never got such a good workout for such a consistent period of time.  The only thing I can think of that's a better workout is a 10 mile hike in rough terrain (and I am eagerly awaiting warmer weather so I can start up hiking again).

For floors I sweep and then vacuum with my dyson on the hard floor feature.  I use the wand to get corners and baseboards (though sometimes those need wiped down), and I try to hit the ceilings about once a month with my brush attachment to make sure cobwebs are kept down.  Carpets get sprinkled with a baking soda/essential oil mixture to reduce carpet odors and leave them smelling fresh.  I put this down before I start cleaning anything, it's my first cleaning step, and vacuum before I walk out the door.

Hard floors are steamed with my haan floor mop that has reusable and washable pads.  In my home I just use it without any oils added to the pads, but my clients enjoy pretty smells so I'll put several drops of essential oils onto the pad prior to starting it up and as it steams it produces clouds of lovely smelling vapor.

And that's it:  water, vinegar, baking soda, soap, and essential oils.  Those are my keys to a clean, healthy home.

More Reusables

I'll attempt to keep this from becoming a big TMI fest, but it is about menstrual products so beware.

I was a tampon girl since I first got the hang of it.  I always hated pads, hated hated hated them.  That bulky feeling and just knowing that everyone could see the outline through your pants was horrible and humiliating.  It was also probably one of the big contributors to diving head first into the punk/goth scene and embracing JNCOs and other super baggy jeans.

After I had my first child I realized that pads were an evil with whom I had to come to terms.  So I wore them, and I wound up with skin irritations because of the chemicals they contained.  I wound up using some of my son's newborn cloth prefold diapers, specifically for that purpose, they were not mixed up with his, and it was a super bulky relief.

Once I regained my fertility I started searching for alternative options to tampons because while I had some cloth pads, I was not fond of the bulk or the laundry.  It just wasn't a pleasant thing to empty out menstrual pads into my washer, even coming from the dirty hippie chick...it was just gross to me.  I saw menstrual sponges but nixed them because I didn't feel they'd be clean enough and then I found a Diva Cup.

Back in those days, you know the ones, when online shopping wasn't a huge thing and the "green" living hadn't quite caught on...life was tough back then...I had to order my Diva Cup through a private seller, similar to Avon or the like.  Today you can find them in any health food store, but back then I ordered mine from a woman online and it arrived in a lumpy, yet discreet, yellow manila envelope.

I squealed, got excited, and didn't menstruate for another nine months since I was pregnant.

Most women will tell you that the secret to getting pregnant is to order a menstrual cup.

So cue the cloth pads again and months of lactational amenorrhea and finally I got my period again. I wasn't fond of my Diva, it was just too rigid and uncomfortable.  The suction sometimes felt like it was trying to suck out my uterus.  So I hit the internet again and came across what I consider a training cup, Insteads.  They were much more flexible and user friendly, but they leaked.  This is where my handy dandy cloth panti liners came in.  I'd ordered a ton of them years prior and used them, but they were put into full rotation.  So I still had my cup and I was now putting those flannel panti liners to use.

A few years later I got an IUD placed and had to let the Insteads go since they can potentially dislodge an IUD.

Finally, I got my tubes tied and decided to purchase a Lunette cup since I no longer had any fears of hearing that metal *tink* into the toilet bowl.  It was a total impulse buy, I just happened to see it in a natural parenting store while buying laundry detergent, but when I held it I was impressed with how flexible and contouring it was.

I fell in love with my Lunette.  I rarely have issues with leaking or that sucking out my innards sensation and the stem is short, but not too short, so it isn't pokey, and I don't have to...well...fish to pull it out.

Some time ago I realized that all my flannel panti liners had gone by the wayside, I only had one old faithful left.  Then, a month ago, a pagan friend of mine invited me to her twin daughter's womanhood ritual.  They're officially women so they're going to celebrate with a ritual and bestowing gifts that women will need in their lives.  I contacted her with the idea of sewing them some panti liners and she gave me the green light so off I went to the fabric store with coupons in hand and sat down to sew.

A quick picture tutorial on making cloth pads:

I started out by laying my last remaining liner on the fabric, folded in half, and then simply cut around it.  I modified it to be a little bigger, but stayed true to the shape.

 I cut them out (remember, two layers of fabric so they match perfectly) with my amazing rotary cutter.

Lined them up, ready to sew.

I turned the fabric to face itself (wrong side out), being sure to keep the corresponding sides together and then sewed all but the top edge with a basic straight stitch.

I then flipped them right side out (you can see the one that's been flipped and the rest are still waiting to be turned).

Time to sew the top closed.  Simply fold it in to form a 1/4" seam and then topstitch it closed.  Continue the topstitching all the way around the liner to give it more structure and a more finished look.

Place snaps either using a press or a hammer, I used hammer snaps.  Hammer snaps are my preferred for this since my press tends to punch through, but do be careful lining them up properly, I ruined two with misfires and fixed a couple by separating and rebending the prongs to try again.

They're cute!  They're soft!  And they're totally reusable.  The one I used for a guide is probably 12 years old, if I recall correctly, and still kicking strong.  I'm looking forward to my new, cute cloth panti liners, and I hope the gift for the twins will be appreciated.

I'd say the cost for the materials was around $20 at my local big box fabric store (with coupons), and I made 24 (including the two screw ups).  The snaps were the most expensive items and if I make more I'll be ordering online next time.

Reuse It

I'm really big into reusable products.  I usually have a single roll of paper towels hidden under the sink, but I have a big drawer full of washcloths, hand towels, and cloth napkins that are in constant use.  I am not a huge fan of disposable paper products, I feel that they are wasteful, not only of resources, but of money.  While cloth items are a bit of an up front investment, they have saved me so much money over the years.  

I tend to keep an eye out for clearances, specifically at the end of holidays, for things like cloth napkins.  It seems those are the hardest for me to replace since I prefer cotton and cotton napkins are pretty expensive.  In fact, I've been scouring lately but haven't seen much.  I've lost a good stack of napkins in the past six months to company and kids, it seems people feel that a dirty napkin should be thrown away instead of washed because it's gross.

One of my favorite reusable items is my reusable lunch baggies.  They're just a laminated fabric that's moisture resistant, they have cute prints, and they've lasted me about four years now.  The ones I have are a bit faded, but still kicking strong, but of course I've lost many over the years since the kids throw stuff away on accident or they just get left behind at the lunch table.

Since my budget is strict, and I don't have much money for extras like lunchskins and other big brand reusable products, I've taken to researching into making my own.  I have purchased the needed fabrics, of course finding the time seems to be the hardest task of all.  I do enjoy sewing, but it seems that those around me are not as fond of the idea of me getting lost in the machine for hours on end.  Snacks, homework help, attention, cuddles, and fight mediation are highly sought out in my home and peace is a thing I know very little about.

About two months ago, I lost my trusty Kleen Kanteen that has seen me through two pregnancies and five moves.  I know I've gotten my money's worth out of my investment, but the thought of spending That Much money on a reusable bottle makes me feel a little sick.  So I've gone out and bought one cheaper version after another only to find that the quality and durability is minimal compared to my KK bottle.  Considering the fact that I drink water and coffee, with the rare treat of a fountain coke here and there, and I'm desperately trying to avoid energy drinks, I need another water bottle.  So I sit here, perusing their online store, and quailing at the thought of spending $20 (not including shipping), but I'm going to do it because my KK really was my favorite thing ever and I have noticed a marked decrease in my water intake and an enormously marked increase in my energy drink consumption.

Of course I use reusable grocery bags.  I went a bit hog wild and purchased a ton of envirosax and chicco bags.  While they're great bags, I've found that the bigger ones, similar in size and design to a traditional paper bag, sold at my grocery store for $.99/ea are my favorites.  They're sturdy, washable (a few times), and last quite a long time.  When it comes time to throw them away, well, it was only $.99 and I got at least a year of regular use for groceries and traveling (they make a great night away bags for the kids and myself) out of each one before it's time to let it go.  It doesn't hurt as badly.

I use other reusable products in my life and home, but I'll save them for another post.  Suffice to say, reusable products are great, and I love the fact that I rarely run out, and if I do I don't have to run to the store to pick up another roll of paper towels.  I do still use toilet paper, though I did briefly dabble in "family cloth."  It was a brief foray, I assure.