Category: home making

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a better world is possible home making reviews

Lotion Quest

get your minds out of the gutter

what’s up nerds, i said i was gonna post more here. AND also credit where it’s due, this post is actually ~inspired to my friend who said in my discord chat “oh are you gonna turn this into a blog post?” so thank you caitlin ❤

the backstory

it’s november of 2023. we haven’t yet been told that “this is the most important election of our lives”, but someone somewhere is mad at teen girls for enjoying something. we’re all living our lives, as we are wont to do.

in a turn of tragedy, i realize that every single “gold bond advanced healing lotion” (my Go To, Standby, Ride or Die lotion) now has aloe added. this means obviously that they have changed the formula — thanks for nothing, shareholders! this series of unfortunate events compels me to embark on a quest for a replacement.

of course, where is a lazy bitch to acquire a plethora of smallish testing-sized lotions? to jeff bezos’ warehouse of human misery we head, and purchase every reasonably priced (and literally all different sizes, truly madness) gold bond lotion currently available.

which is the context for this photo:Image

now its now

a few weeks ago a friend asked “what have you learned about the lotions” and i literally had so many thoughts i had to clear a half an hour in my calendar to organize them + type them up. lightly edited for clarity, they are below.

OKAY LOTION NOTES THOUGHT DUMP! Remember, if you will, from November, that the whole goal of ‘buy every gold bond lotion on amazon, which are for some reason literally all different sizes’ was to find as close of replacement for used-to-be-good, now-has-aloe-and-is-shit goldbond advanced healing lotion.

by this criteria, there are two clear winners. “overnight deep moisturizing body lotion” (dark blue) is the most similar to the previous formula, BUT it is immediately disqualified from being in my life because it’s fucking SCENTED (lavender, its nice, i just hate smelly lotion). because of the disqualification, the One True Winner was the psoriasis relief (green). It has the most similar feeling to the old lotion, although it is not as thick. but also it heals my knuckles that always get dry as shit, so that’s a win.

moving from left to right in the photo,

  • we begin with “ezcema relief” (brown) with oatmeal. this lotion is SLIPPERY. it feels very hydrating, but also like you’re gonna drop your phone for the next hour after you use it. I like it, though, and wouldn’t be mad to get it as a stocking stuffer.
  • Next up is “diabetic foot cream” (pink) — this lotion reminds me of a shea butter – it is essentially a solid. you have to WORK it into your skin, like with friction/heat/effort. but damn, i put some socks over my feet for as long as i could stand during sleep, and the next morning my lil feet were smooth as helllll.
  • we discussed psoriasis relief (green) and overnight (dark blue) above.
  • “pure moisture” (light blue) is very inoffensive, but it’s too watery – every time i get some out of the tube i get WAY TOO MUCH. it’s just too thin. it does absorb quickly, tho.

honestly none of these was a bust but the diabetic foot cream being just as much work as my shea butters im too lazy to use (it’s not bad, i just dont want to work that hard).

i dont have a real conclusion here, folks, and i wanna go smoke some weed on this friday evening, so. bye, best of luck on your :rainbow: hydration journey :rainbow:

stay safe, stay warm, wear a mask (covid real bad rn), drink water, if you have my number and you are reading this you are OBLIGATED to text me a funny meme (i mean if u want to, its a joke for the content).

OK BYE FOR REAL

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home making

Cleaning Content

I refuse to apologize for being away. Glad we addressed that. Sometimes I don’t feel like being a mouthy bitch online. And sometimes I do, but it’s all on that hell bird app. I don’t want to talk about it. We’re getting back to personal websites, and progress isn’t linear.

Anyway, this post was actually about to be a very long IG caption, and as I was typing on my tiny phone keyboard I had the thought “Why aren’t you putting this on your website?” so thank you technology spirits for that flash of insight.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and we all know that you need candles for romance. Do not @ me, this is not negotiable. For fire safety, I prefer battery operated. For laziness reasons, I prefer remote control. Lucky me I invested in a set of twelve of remote battery candles like two years ago. Unlucky for me, an unnamed person let the battery contacts get all fucked up (it was me).

Have you ever had something battery powered you love get messed up, with that weird battery powder all over the inside? If you are prepared with a few supplies and an excess of executive function, you can safely clean your beloved objects and restore them to working condition!

There are only a few things you need to know. One: don’t touch the battery powder, unless you enjoy your skin getting red and angry at you. Disposable gloves are your friend. If you do get battery stuff on yourself, run lots of cold-ish to lukewarm water over your skin (to dilute), then soap up and scrub like we’re three years into a pandemic. Two: don’t get battery powder shit all over your table – put down a plastic bag from your under-the-sink hoard, or some paper towels. Something you can throw away after you’re done.

Also fun fact: due to advances in battery technology (hello nickle-cadmium, eat shit alkaline batteries) battery powder is less toxic than it’s ever been – it’s still terrible, tho! Also, you shouldn’t throw your batteries away because they start fires at the dump. But do we as Americans have an easy way to get rid of batteries? LOL we don’t even have healthcare, of course we don’t have battery recycling infrastructure.

Getting back into it – three: isopropyl alcohol is the tool for the job. A cotton ball, cotton swab, or even folded up paper towel dipped into iso will dissolve the solid of the battery powder, making it a slurry that is absorbed by the paper product you’re swabbing with. This shit also shouldn’t touch skin or eating surfaces – throw it away. Isopropyl alcohol dries incredibly quickly, meaning that you don’t have to worry about the battery contacts being “wet”; air dries iso faster than your hands and a towel dry a big pot. Trust me, I have a fucking chemistry degree and my first work study job was cleaning test tubes.

Don’t immediately put new batteries into the contacts – wait until the battery opening looks dry, and if you’ve done a good job cleaning, you can test with your fingertip (now that there’s not nasty battery shit everywhere, you can use the power of touch to verify dryness).

If there’s lots of battery powder in the springy part of the contact, a cotton swab is perfect. Dip it into the iso, then insert the swab into the circle of the spring. Turn to the right and left, using just a bit of force to ensure that the isopropyl alcohol on the swab is in contact with the metal of the springs.

A couple of girlfriends a few weeks ago were like, “Lani, how do you KNOW THINGS?” and the answer is “my dad grew up poor and is cheap as hell!” I did a lot of child labor on this type of chore – cleaning fucked up battery contacts, holding funnels as my dad poured various chemicals from one container to another, loosening and tightening screws in narrow places that require tiny hands, being yelled at for letting the flashlight wander because I was both helping with chores and trying my best to read, et cetera.

But it was all worth it in the end for this knowledge. And since I’m planning on keeping this uterus host free, I feel compelled to share the tricks and tips I was forced to learn as a youngling. Now go out there and clean your electronics safely.

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home making

Routines

I am a creature that enjoys even a false sense of security. I like to plan, list, schedule. In addition to a work digital calendar and Google calendar, I also use a paper planner (#pashfam for life)! Knowing that different things work for different folks, I thought I’d share some of what I’ve been using pre and post COVID to order a senseless world.

Cooking: We cook twice a week. We used to supplement cooking with pretty regular restaurant sojourns 1-3 times per week, but I don’t really want to dine in a restaurant until we have Medicare for All, so I know my cooks, bartenders, and wait staff can actually get medical care if/when they get ill. The pre-pandemic routine was one big cooking project on Sunday, like a soup or stew or braise or casserole, that we’d eat for a few weeknight dinners. Then a weeknight meal, usually cooked on Wednesday, but flexible to account for leftovers. That meal needs to be a recipe that comes together in under an hour. We would usually grocery shop some time on the weekend, so food planning would happen on Friday or Saturday.

Post-pandemic, much is the same. Still a Sunday/Wednesday cooking schedule but with a less flexible Saturday grocery shopping trip. We get takeout/delivery on Fridays, because one day a week I like to think about food but not do any labor for it. I’m glad we had figured out what works for us pre-pandemic because otherwise I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through a lot of last year.

The other thing I’ve worked on a routine for is cleaning. Without a cleaning routine, I always think “oh, I should clean” as a running worry. Tasks, ideas, chores, pretty much everything needs a container, and that’s wisdom straight from people who know a lot more than I do. I grew up with a chore schedule (three kids, three sections of the house on rotation, kitchen cleaning was always the worst – read, most work), so I figured we ought to try out a cleaning schedule for our current living situation.

We currently have a one week cleaning, one week nothing setup. We call the cleaning weekend “chore weekend”, and it’s often a time that I feel motivated enough to do another project – for example making a large Costco run, cleaning out a closet, puttering around outside to sweep up leaves and the like. The non-cleaning weekend is lovingly referred to as “degenerate” or “degen” weekend, nomenclature courtesy of the hilarious show Letterkenny. This is our pre and post pandemic setup.

The weeks we clean, we always hit the most heavily used portions of the house: the kitchen and both bathrooms. Anywhere that collects food or hair draws my eye and needs as much love as I can stand to give. We have a cadence to clean those heavy hitters + something else. In rotation, the something else is “the upstairs”, “the downstairs” and “everything”. The everything weekend is “deep clean weekend”, which happens about every six weeks.

Since we’ve been at this spot for a while, I know that on normal cleaning weekends, the chore takes about two and a half hours of my partner and me working together. The deep clean is a four to four and a half hour project (dusting is so much damn work). It feels good to know the weeks that we’re cleaning, I can block out a bit of time on Saturday mornings to absolutely blast music (this last weekend: Ari Lennox) and give my living space the attention it needs to feel safe and homey.

There are other micro routines I have (e.g. how I use my calendars, how I wind down at night, how I schedule calling my various family members) but this post has gotten long enough. I can share in the future if there’s interest! But I’m curious: what routines do you have? How have they changed with the pandemic? How do you evaluate if something is working for you or needs to be tweaked or tossed?