Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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It was a lot of work but it was worth it

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Have you ever done something that seemed difficult at first? Perhaps you didn’t want to do it … but then when you finished you got an immediate reward? There’s lots of things in life that are just like that and I just did one of them.

I just finished peeling and chopping up a fresh pineapple and when I was finished I tasted the “fruit” of my labor. Delicious!

I’ll bet that’s not what you thought I was going to tell you about.

My husband and I went to Costco yesterday to do a little shopping and while we were there I noticed that they had fresh pineapples from Costa Rica on sale for $1.99. I decide to buy two, but I dreaded peeling them. I think I’ve only purchased a fresh pineapple once before and that was a long long time ago!

So I approached the kitchen a little a while ago with trepidation, knowing I had to deal with the pineapples. First though, I did an internet search on how to tell if when a pineapple is ripe (and discovered that mine didn’t look all that ripe because they had a lot of green in them) and of course, how to peel one properly.

Armed with my new knowledge I grabbed one of the pineapples and decided to start peeling one. Turns out it’s fairly easy. Note that I didn’t say it wasn’t messy. My hands were covered in what felt like a slimy coating and there was pineapple juice on the cutting board and the counter. Good thing I had my new promotional hand sanitizers to clean my hands off with afterwords!

Our dog sat nearby tasting the occasional piece of pineapple that fell to the floor or that I’d toss to her. She loved it.

I think the one pineapple will last us three or four days. The cut up chunks filled a storage container right to the top. We’d better eat it fast since we have another pineapple waiting!

I’ve been trying to eat more fruit and things like pineapple lately. Trouble is with my Crohn’s I can’t eat a lot of fruit or raw veggies. However, since pineapple is supposed to be good for digestion, and it’s a natural anti-inflammatory I’m experimenting and hoping it will help. At least it tastes great.

Do you ever buy fresh pineapples? Don’t you love them?





Static Eliminator dryer sheets – natural , no chemicals

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My husbands off work today and it’s shopping day. Usually we get our groceries and anything else that we need on Mondays, his usual day off, but this week he’s off on Tuesday.

Chris is great about doing things around the house and doing the shopping. In fact, when he does the grocery shopping he’s pretty good about sticking to the list we make in advance so as a result he spends less than when I go with him! When I go I find a few other things to add to our groceries, usually things on sale that we could use during the week or in the near future so the bill gets a bit higher. LOL

Right now he’s at a friends jamming on the guitar but when he gets home we’re going to go to this HUGE health food store called The Big Carrot. It’s a store that sells organic groceries and other products like natural herbs, vitamins and natural weight loss supplements and so on. They also sell a lot of green products.

The reason we’re going there is to buy something called the Static Eliminator. I just found out about it last night. It’s basically a dryer sheet that can be reused about 250 times. We only do about 12 loads of laundry a month so that means a Static Eliminator dryer sheet would last us close to two years!

It has no chemicals on it, it’s hypoallergenic, eliminates static in the laundry and softens clothes. It basically does what a Bounce dryer sheet or any other popular fabric softener dryer sheet is supposed to do, but without all the chemicals. Plus it doesn’t leave any residue on your clothes or inside the dryer so it’s better for the machine and your clothes. It’s also better for the environment without all those chemicals and when you consider that you aren’t throwing out dryer sheets each week.

Now that we have our new washer and dryer and we can use less laundry detergent (and have it rinsed out better!) I’m experimenting with using more natural products to clean our clothes and soften the laundry – like vinegar, baking soda, Borax and hopefully that natural dryer sheet.

Hopefully we can find the Static Eliminator dryer sheets at the Big Carrot. If we do, I’ll let you know how it works for softening clothes and eliminating static compared to name brand dryer sheets.

We’re getting a new High Efficiency front load washer dryer set

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My husband and I spent a lot of money this past weekend! We finally bit the bullet and bought a new washing machine and Dryer – High Efficiency models no less.

Not that we can really afford new appliances!

As you might remember our ancient washing machine broke down in August (along with a few other things in the house) much to our dismay. We couldn’t afford to replace the washing machine so we’ve been taking our laundry to a nearby laundromat for the last five months.

Two things happened that caused us to decide to make this big purchase.

One – my husband got a call from the bank last week. Apparently he’d used his banking card at a store that was being investigated for debit card fraud so they’d limited his card and wanted him to come in and get a new card. While he was talking to someone from the bank on the phone he found out that he was pre-approved for a personal line of credit. Since we’d never taken out a line of credit for our house we decided to accept the personal line of credit that the bank was offering. Not really intending to use it, but it’s nice to have just in case something happens like the furnace breaks down or something.

Two – once we had the line of credit we thought – “hey, the stores are all having January clearance sales right now … maybe we should look at washing machines and see if we can get a deal?”

So I spent a few days last week checking out all of the major stores that sell appliances in the Toronto area and did some research on washing machine brands. I eventually found a great deal on an Inglis HE washer and HE dryer set at Leon’s. $999 – can’t beat that price, especially for High Efficiency washers and dryers!

We couldn’t go to the store on Saturday because Chris’ parents were visiting, plus in the morning he helped a friend from work move … so first thing on Sunday we were off to the store. Now usually when a sales person approaches me in a store I start looking around for the nearest exit signs but this time we were interested in talking to the sales people about their washers and dryers – we wanted to find out if they’d had any complaints or returns for the models we were interested in and just as importantly if they had any in stock! LOL

Do any of you have High Efficiency washers or dryers? Front loaders? I know that they can have some problems with mold and mildew growing inside them. That was a turn off when I was looking into buying one, but at least we know about the potential problems and what we can do to help prevent them like keeping the washing machine and soap dispenser open when we’re done with a wash, running a cleaning cycle at least once a month, not always using just cold water to wash our clothes and so on.

Our new washing machine and dryer will be delivered this coming Saturday. I can’t wait! This will actually be the first washing machine and dryer that I’ve ever bought. Our current non-working washing machine and it’s matching dryer came with the house. When we moved in we were told that they were about 35 years old … and we’ve been here for 9 years now so that means our washer and dryer are 43 or 44 years old! Can you believe that? They’re older than my husband and I!

Needless to say I’m sure our old washer and dryer are/we’re energy hogs. I also never found that the washer cleaned all that well and the dryer .. well, sometimes we had to put a load in twice to get it dry so I’m sure it cost us a lot more money to use than our new machines will. HE front load washing machines are supposed to use something like 40% less water and 60% less energy and since the washing machine spins the clothes so much better than a top load washing machine the clothes should dry faster in the dryer.

If you guys have any tips for me about HE front load washing machines and dryers I’d love to hear from you. For example – what’s the best HE laundry detergent to use (keep in mind we have very hard water here in Toronto). Do you use a fabric softener and have you had any problems with it causing residue in the machine or dryer? Any tips like that would be much appreciated.

Now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else breaks down. So far so good, but we’ve already had two scares in the last month. On December 20th our furnace started making a really high pitched circular saw sound when it turned on and we had to wait two days for the maintenance guy to come and check it out. It turned out that the bearings needed oiling. Sigh of relief!

Then, last Thursday night after my husband went to bed the TV froze … I thought it was the PVR, but it was the TV because it froze again two more times after I shut the TV off waited a bit and turned it back on … We have DLP HD TV and apparently that TV screen freezing symptom could be a sign that the DM board is failing. Since that night the TV hasn’t acted up at all … but we did take a look at new TV’s when we were in the store buying our washing machine and dryer – just in case! At least we have an idea of what TV models we liked (An LG Plasma or a Panasonic LCD made the top of our list).

I know the death knell is probably ringing for our TV, but I hope that it will keep working for a few more months. Seriously we just can’t afford for any more things to break down!

Anyway .. if you do have an HE front loading washing machine and or HE front loading dryer let me know what you think of it and if you have any tips for using them please do pass them on!

I’m trying out my new steam cleaner with mixed results

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I know that I keep writing about how we don’t have any money to spare, but there was one purchase that I just couldn’t resist making recently.

On Saturday my husband and I went out and got a Shark Steam Blaster. It was on sale at 50% off it’s regular price at Canadian Tire and I’ve wanted a steam cleaner for ages!

I realized how much I needed something to make cleaning the house easier over the holidays. We have a tiny upstairs bathroom – the tub is along one wall and the sink and toilet are on the opposite wall with only about a foot and a half walking space between the tub and sink/toilet combo … so you can imagine how hard it is to clean the tub! Especially when your back has decided to get worse! You can’t even crouch properly between the sink and tub to do some good scrubbing, instead you have to stand awkwardly bent over to give it a good scrub.

So I figured a steam cleaner would make the job easier, plus I could clean the grout and the stainless steel taps much better than with chemicals and all the hard time consuming scrubbing.

I tried the steamer out yesterday in the kitchen. For some reason the last people that lived in our house not only put tiles behind the sink as a counter splash, but the whole kitchen – all four walls have tiles from the base of the wall up to about 2/3’s of the wall height. You can probably imagine how dirty that grout gets!

Unfortunately the steamer didn’t do the miraculous cleaning job that I’d hoped it would. The grout is going to take a lot of scrubbing with the scrubbing attachment on the steamer … or I might have to use some cleaning chemicals on the grout first, rinse it off and then go to town with the steamer. Either way … I’d hoped that it would instantly clean the grout between the tiles in the kitchen and well … it does look better but it’s not sparkling clean.

where the steamer did live up to it’s name was around our sink and on the outside of our stove and fridge. You know how dirt and grime builds up around the edges of the sink where it meets the counter? Well the steamer just blasted that gunk out of there. It also did a nice job on our semi new Danze faucet that we had to replace sometime last year when Chris broke the old faucet.

I’m hoping that if I use the steam blaster on the tile grout a few times that it will gradually get cleaner and cleaner.

Do any of you have an all purpose steam cleaner? If you do – how do you like it and what brand do you have? Does it work well or do you have hit and miss results like I did on my first use?

One thing that I do like about the steamer is that it has lots of attachments. We can use it to steam mop the floors (and walls), squeegee the windows and other glass clean, clean grout and other dirty grimy areas and I’m sure I’ll find some other uses for the steam cleaner.

It’s been an expensive holiday season!

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I’m so glad that the holidays are almost over! It’s been expensive for us! Expensive at a time when we can’t afford to spend one extra cent. Arghhh!

Chris is on a two week lay-off from work. He’ll be off again for a further two weeks each in March and June thanks to the hospital where he works being over budget and temporarily doing rolling lay offs to make up for their lack of money.

So money is tighter than ever … perfect time of year for it. Yes I’m being sarcastic.

Even though we’ve been trying to not spend much money it feels like we spent more this year than last. Every time we go in a store we seem to come out with more than we planned to buy … ie groceries for Christmas day and house guests this week etc. I just stare as the barcode scanner adds up our total and hope it’s less than I think it’s going to be. LOL

Have you had an expensive holiday season as well? Are you happy that it’s almost over because you’ll stop spending all that extra money soon? And … are you dreading January’s credit card bill? LOL

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