sour towels, anyone?

I know you moms out there can imagine this with me.

Finally, a moment to yourself to indulge in a warm bath or refreshing (& I'd venture to say long-overdue?) shower. You lather your hair up and then rinse the bubbles away, breathing a sigh of relief as your stress seems to melt away with the disappearing suds.

Once clean, you reach for your fluffy white towel. (You may have to reach a little awkwardly if you're like me and forget to grab one in all the excitement.) Your first move? Press your face into the 100% cotton fluffiness and inhale deeply the sweet fragrance of spring rain ... mildew??

Are you with me? Have you been there?

Well, silly me, I just assumed that once a towel starting smelling like that, it was the death knell for the poor thing. Time for the rag bin, buddy!

But the other day it occurred to me, "I'll bet I could fix this! I want my fluffy towels back and I refuse to allow my skin to take on their sour odor one more time!"

Let alone my babies, my hubby... ew. Bad smell.

I don't know, maybe everyone doesn't smell it. But I've always had an extra sensitive shnoz. I can smell when babies are sick. And I don't mean the obvious throw-up smells. Anyway, I digress.

My first action was to march right to the bookshelf and grab my "Homekeeping Handbook" from the infamous Martha Stewart. Hey, she's good at what she does. And I love that Tiffany-esque blue she uses everywhere.

Alas, Martha merely told me how to fold and organize my towels in the linen closet! "Group by bathroom, then by size," she says. "Always use the towel on top of any given pile and put clean towels on the bottom to ensure even wear."

She did say something about spreading towels over two hooks to dry, or hanging them from rods, instead. Yes, but what if it's already too late to prevent the mildew??

I turned to the internet. Most of the solutions I found mentioned vinegar. Okay, good. I've got that. Also mentioned often was Borax. Don't have that.

So I took some of the tips I read and tried the following:

• hot water
• 1/2 the regular amount of detergent (I guess the detergent builds up in the fibers and can encourage mildew.)
• wait until the rinse cycle starts and add about 1 cup of white vinegar to the wash
• run it through the rinse cycle again to get rid of all vinegar
• tumble dry until they're completely dry

My first load smelled a little vinegar-y. But clean. The second load was when I thought to rinse it a second time. And viola! 

Oh my gosh, I was doing a happy dance all evening and pushing clean towels up to my poor hubby's nose. "Drink it in, Marilla!" (Points to you if you name that movie. Easier than my movie reference from yesterday, right?)

I don't have to buy new towels! I just need to give them a vinegar rinse when I start to smell that old familiar smell. Easy-peazy lemon squeezy. 

Added benefit, the vinegar softened the fibers, too, way better than fabric softener. Try it!

P.S. If you don't see your comment pop up right away, don't worry. You did everything right, it just has to be moderated (okay-ed) by me before it shows up on here. I'm crazy like that. Check back soon and you'll see it.


P.S. towel image from Pottery Barn. I mean, mine are better, but not like *that*!

5-Minute Kitchen Makeover

Okay, well I didn't make over the whole kitchen in 5 minutes! Lord knows it would take longer than that! But as I buzzed through the house cleaning up after we put the girls to bed last night, I was suddenly motivated to deal with this:

Yes, it is as you might fear. A year's worth of the best photos that have come to our mailbox. Well maybe all of the photos. Because everyone knows photo albums are pretty much dead to us...(I mean, who really gets their digital images printed and albumized anymore??) So where else would you save the graduation/wedding/baby/merry christmas! pictures from friends and family? Some might say "throw them away after a few months." But not me! We love to see and think of and pray for our loved ones (we live thousands of miles away from most of them) and it sure helps if you can see them right there in your kitchen!

But, really. The side of our fridge was adding serious eye-clutter to an already full stuffed tiny kitchen.

So in less time than it took me to write this post, I pulled all those pictures and magnets down, and found a new home for the pics.

It even seemed to make the kitchen brighter. Haha! But much easier on the eyes, wouldn't you say? And here's what I did with the prints:

A while back I'd hung those three BLACK-but maybe-I'll-paint-them-white-someday organizers, and I finally had a great use for the seagrass bulletin board one! So there our loved ones are immortalized in plain view. Just much less cluttered.

I just love 5-minute makeovers of any kind, don't you?

P.S. To any of you who noticed the leading tower of fridge... (it's...leaning. -- name that movie) That's an issue of its very own. We rent. It's not entirely our fault. But now that it's so white and clear and glaringly leaning, maybe we'll do something about it soon.

Sew...What should I do?

I have a perplexing situation: I feel like sewing. Well, that's not really the perplexing part. My hesitancy comes in the fact that were I to fetch my very old (my great-grandmother's) sewing machine from the attic and attempt to use it, I'll run into at least 2 hurdles: one, no manual and I have forgotten everything about it, and two, it will need a tune-up which will run about 50 greenbacks.

I have found small Singer machines on Target.com and Walmart.com for around 80 greenbacks. I don't need a very fancy machine, just one that works. So I could get a low-end one and be fine for the few things I wish to create.

Should I use my very old sewing machine ($50) or buy a new little one ($80)?

You'd be asking these questions, too, if you saw all the great non-homemade-looking sewing projects I've run across on Pinterest!

Here are a few:

 Up-cycled t-shirts!

 baby quilt LOVE

 baby bubble skirt. adorbs.

retro style reversible pinafore. gah!

A Fresh Start

Hello, again, blog-reading friends! It's been so long, I'm afraid I need to re-introduce myself! Just click on the "yours truly" tab to see who I think I am. Haha!

We are definitely in a new season of life here in Augusta. (I tried just now in my head to call it "HOT-gusta" like they do with "HOTlanta" but it just didn't have the same ring. Go ahead and try it.)

My hubby and I are raising our two girls, now 2 1/2 years & 10 months old, and just loving our daily monotonous-but-never-dull life! We've been in Augusta for exactly a year this week, and we're in a much better place than we were back then! We slid into Augusta on a wing and a prayer last July and since then God has provided for our every need in some pretty wonderful ways.

I would like to start blogging a few times a week. I'm not sure the flavor this blog may take on, but I have been feeling the need of it for a long time and I just know it's always a good idea to write. Publish or perish, right? I tend to forget important - and unimportant - things unless I jot them down. So I guess you can expect this blog to be filled with plans/things/events/creations/ideas I really want to remember one day.

The other day, I re-read some of my posts from the deployment and I was shocked to discover how much I'd already forgotten! It built my faith again to remember what God has done for us in the past. So that's another reason for this blog. I want to remember. I want my girls to know.

So thanks for joining me on my fresh start!