The Manly Housekeeper reveals his secrets
May 10th, 2012
Following up on last week’s post about a stay at home Dad’s arsenal of appliances, this week we turn to the The Manly Housekeeper to see how he deals with tricky domestic duties.
The Manly Housekeeper is a blog by Mark Evitt. As he puts it, “Man. Evolved.” While his wife is at work as a lawyer, Evitt documents his escapades cooking, cleaning, gardening, and housekeeping.
Not only is Evitt a wealth of knowledge, he is excited by the novelty (to him) of it all and the enthusiasm presents well in the blog.
Evitt on whipping cream fast:
Which do you think would whip cream the fastest: a hand mixer, a stand mixer or a cordless drill?
Evitt set to the task to see which appliance/power tool would do the job fastest. I think secretly he was hoping the cordless drill would ace the ordinary old kitchen appliances, alas, the whisk attached to the cordless drill took the longest to whip cream. The hand mixer worked best, but then Evitt had had a “brain fart” and had been using the paddle attachment on the stand mixer, instead of the whisk attachment. As it turns out, the whisk attachment on a stand mixer beat the rest hands down.
On cleaning oil splatters:
A bit like fighting fire with fire, Evitt uses oil.
It will take a lot of soap and water (or any other type of cleaner) to get rid of oil splatters or oily dust. Instead, put a couple drops of mineral oil on a paper towel. Wipe the paper towel over the dirty surface, and watch the gunk come right off.
When you are done cleaning, simply wipe down the surfaces one more time with a new paper towel. This leaves the surface coated lightly in oil, which makes future oil splatters much, much easier to clean up.
And dreaded soap scums and hard water stains:
This soap-scum-plus-lime-scale combination presents a problem for traditional household cleaners. Most general household cleaners are alkaline (or have a pH level greater than 7). The foundation of many cleaners is bleach, and bleach has a pH level of 13. Soap scum needs an acidic cleaner to break up its minerals.
Evitt tested out a range of different cleaners and found that those whose purpose is to remove lime scale were most efficient at cleaning the soap scum from his glass shower doors.
He also tested out vinegar, a non-chemical alternative but found it to be completely unsatisfactory.
One important note: You should never use an acidic cleaner to remove soap scum from stone, like marble. The acidic properties that remove the scum will also degrade the finish on your stone. Opt for ammonia instead.
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