Summer Clean Up

So you know what happens when my kids are home all summer playing and making messes?!

Yep this is what happens!!

My children have played hard this summer and in return our family room

looked like a hot mess.  

I finally got so tired of looking at it and decided to take action.

That meant going through ALL OF THE TOYS, organizing, throwing away, and donating.
The pile went from this...

To this...

And finally this!!!

That is one bag of trash and one full yard trash bag of donate down.

Not too bad for an afternoon.

Whew that's better!

And that's about as big of a project that I've gotten

done around here all summer.  

Now I have to start working on their bedrooms...

~  Kim :)

Yes I am still here... slipcover washing

  I'm sorry I missed last weeks "Inspiration Friday" post, I blame it on the kids still being out of school and I have no idea what day it is most of the time.  I have also been busy with my makeup blog at www.makeupbykimporter.blogspot.com if you want to check it out.  I haven't done anything new around the house the only thing was recently I decided it was time to finally wash the slipcover on our sofa.  You can read about the love affair with my new slipcover here.
  Our black lab, Zoe, likes to lay with her hairy self all up against the sofa and it was covered with black hair.  I had been putting it off for awhile because it is so big and I had no where to hang/lay it to dry.  But it had come to a point that it was really gross and the dog shedding was just awful.
  You can read about the awesome laundry detergent that I used here.  The only thing about that detergent is it really bleaches out whatever stains you are treating.  I left it sitting on one of the cushion covers for too long and it turned it white, so lesson learned, don't leave it sitting on the fabric.
  It is super easy to remove the cover, it's attached by Velcro on the sides and back but comes off with no problem.  I just pre-treated some areas and threw it in the washer.  When is was done washing I folded up in half and laid it on our guest bed, flipping it once, and by the next day it was ready to put on.  It is best to put on when slightly damp so it is easy to stretch and the wrinkles will come out easier.

Rowe Nantucket slipcover in Natural.

It took this many lint brush sheets to remove the mounds of dog hair at the bottom of the sofa.

This is the super cheap, and super effective laundry detergent.
It has removed blood in 2 seconds flat from a cushion cover!!

So now the sofa is nice and fresh again... I will never live with out slipcovered sofa again!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!

~  Kim :)

cheap and effective... I like it!

  So you know when something works so well that you just have to tell somebody about it?  Well I have this chair...

older picture of dirty chair

I bought it off of Craigslist for $150.  It's a Pottery Barn Comfort Square with down cushions and the price tag that was left on the leg said $899.00.  I felt like I had gotten a really good deal EXCEPT that the previous owner had let her large Husky dog hang out on it, and the arms were discolored compared to the rest of the chair.  It's a very comfortable chair and I love it, but I have no intention of paying the $449 to replace the current slipcover for a new one.

So the other day I doused the dark spots with Shout and stuck the slipcover in the wash with some bleach, and then I added some more bleach, just in case.  When I took the slipcover out of the wash to hang dry it.... it was YELLOW!!!

I was beside myself worried that we were getting ready for my son's 4th birthday party and I would be stuck with a yucky, yellow chair.  So I went into the garage to look for something to fix the problem and I discovered this...

A super duper cheap laundry detergent that I had picked up a while ago because it was 2/$5.00 and I felt like being cheap.  I read the instructions and it said I could use the liquid detergent straight from the bottle onto the fabric, so that's what I did. Praying the whole time that I wasn't ruining a perfectly good slipcovered chair.

And when I pulled the slipcover out of the washer it was clean... I mean CLEAN.  No yellow in sight and it had removed a lot of the discoloration that had been there before.  CLEAN.

So there ya have it... a cheap and effective product that can remove stains AND yellowing from using too much bleach.  I'm sold.

~  Kim :)

** I would have taken a picture of the clean chair but after 5 days, it's lookin' kinda grungy again.
White slipcover + (2) children = grungy furniture... time to break out the Sun plus Oxi!!!