Still Waters

Well, first off, the good news—we’ve had an offer our house, and if all goes well, we’ll be moving in a few weeks!  I’m so glad the process of cleaning-the-house-to-make-it-salable every day lasted only a week. While it was wonderful to have everything pristinely perfect all the time, it’s so unrealistic while you’re trying to live and pack to move.

After weeks and months of getting the house ready to put on the market, we agreed with our realtor to have an open house.  With all demand of other things this past year, my time was limited to sorting, packing, and clean-out rather than fix-ups on the house.  That was my dear hubby’s department and he did a marvelous job.

But some things we just had to forego—certain yardwork projects, fresh paint in every room, etc.  The big project I had to let go was stripping the wallpaper in my new kitchen and giving it a new look.  I just couldn’t pull it off.  So we did some touches of new paint and décor to go with the wallpaper colors, and I pray…

While packing up some books, I came across this old household tips book.  I almost tossed it in the thrift store box when I remembered it had a great window cleaning recipe.  Sure enough, there it was, so I mixed up a batch for my first go-round at the windows.  It's fantastic!  Really, the best solution I've ever used, better than store-bought.  A lot cheaper, too.

It uses just three ingredients, mixed in half a bucket of warm water:

1/2 c. white vinegar
1/2 c. ammonia
2 tablespoons cornstarch

Wash a window down with the solution first. I used a cotton washcloth. Then, wipe the excess wetness off with a cotton towel.  Finish with paper towel or newspaper for a streak-free finish. The windows dried so quickly that I used very few paper towels.  Nice.

Voila!  Dazzling windows.