Even though the one purpose of the refrigerator is to keep your food safe – by chilling it enough to slow bacterial growth and rot – it actually poses some risks to your health! When you think about it, it makes sense: it’s one of the few places you go in and out of multiple times per day. When you do, you’re typically moving around food, in the middle of cooking (hello, yucky hands!), or putting away new packages (which have picked up who-knows-what along their way).
While there are a few spots you would probably guess are gross and germy (like the door handles), the worst spot is pretty surprising.
The dirtiest spot is actually your vegetable drawer! This may come as a surprise, because veggies seem sort of innocent. Yes, you’re supposed to wash them, but they aren’t as obvious a risk as chicken or other raw meats. But in a series of tests, experts have found germs like Salmonella and Listeria, as well as yeast and old, in the veggie drawer. The problem isn’t veggies themselves but that they become cross-contaminated with other items, including meat juices, in your shopping cart, grocery bag, and other food handling. Most of us are very safe when it comes to handling meat, but we just don’t think about it the same way.

How to Fix It

What’s the fix? Start using Nellie’s Fruit & Veggie Wash to clean your produce as soon as it’s home from the grocery store or farmer’s market. It leaves no taste behind, but cleans all pesticides, contaminants, and preservatives. Plus, it’s gluten free, vegan, and biodegradable so it’s safe for you and the planet. Next, take out the veggies and wash the drawer in the sink with your favourite One Soap and some hot water. Either let it air-dry on your counter or pat dry with paper towels before replacing it in the fridge. Easy peasy!

Like most things in life, laundry can come with a learning curve! If you’ve ever shrunk a shirt in the dryer or discovered detergent residue on your favourite jeans, you know what we’re talking about. What’s the deal with laundry detergent stains? Keep reading to find out!

Can Detergent Stain?

Technically speaking, no. Laundry detergents are formulated to leave clothes clean (some with more chemicals than we think necessary, you can read about that here). However, some detergents can leave spots or residue on clothes, especially with improper use. The good news is you can get those spots out relatively easily if you wash the garment immediately!

How to Remove Detergent Residue from Clothes

If you have a detergent mishap and the spot doesn’t come out after re-washing the item, you’re not hooped just yet. Try this six-step routine:

1. Rise the spot under hot water to remove as much residue as possible.
2. Gently wring out the excess water from the item and lay it flat.
3. Apply household rubbing alcohol to the spot, being sure to cover the entire affected area. We recommend spot-testing on an inconspicuous spot of the fabric first though!
4. Let the spot soak for at least 10 minutes. The longer the better!
5. With warm or hot water, rinse the fabric. This should remove the spot. If not, repeat the above steps!

How to Prevent Laundry Detergent Stains

The short answer – switch to Nellie’s Laundry Soda! Thanks to our highly-concentrated and quick-dissolving formula, you're not likely to run into this kind of issue. If you're still using a conventional detergent, here's the long answer: while laundry detergent doesn’t technically ‘stain’ clothes, the spotting that comes with overuse or washing issues is totally preventable. Using your detergent, whatever brand, as intended is the best route. For complete instructions on how to best use the Nellie’s Laundry Soda, click here.

One sheep, two sheep, three… Introducing the brand-new Flyerballs! Sheep all over New Zealand are lining up to strip down for the newest addition to the wool dryerball family.
Soft, silent, and undeniably adorable, Flyerballs are the wool dryerballs you know and love, reinvented. Made of pure New Zealand wool (as always), Flyerballs have added wings to float through your dryer and help separate fabrics, cutting down on both static and drying time – saving you money and looking cute while doing it!

How to Use

After washing with Nellie’s Laundry Soda, place three Flyerballs in the dryer with your fabrics. Nellie’s Flyerballs shorten drying time, soften fabrics, and reduce wrinkles, all without the use of nasty chemicals. Separate natural fabrics from synthetics to help reduce static.
No sheep are harmed in the making of the Flyerballs or Lamby Wool Dryerballs.

By spending just 15 minutes a day, you can have a presentable house pretty much all the time! It’s almost like your home will clean itself. We’ve created a weekly cleaning schedule that will help you out majorly, but first we’ve got a few rules to make it work…

Good Enough is Great

Don’t be too thorough. Aim to keep each task to just 15 minutes. Do what you can in that amount of time. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you’ll get to it again next week! Just get it done.

Keep Supplies Nearby

We’ve talked about this on our blog before. The trick to a quick clean is having things nearby and in-reach. If it takes you 5 minutes to gather up all your cleaning supplies, you’re wasting time you could be using to actually clean! Keep rags and cleaning products in each bathroom so you can easily grab and clean, and house kitchen cleaning supplies under the sink. Use an inexpensive caddy to keep it all neat and tidy.

Plan Strategically

In addition to smartly storing products where you use them, save time by thinking about how you use them. For example, if you whip out the WOW Mop to clean the floors in the bathroom, make that the day you mop all the bathroom floors.

Keep Yourself Accountable

Make a lamenated list and cross of items, use a tracking app, or simply create a list on your phone. However you do it, just make sure you know exactly what you need to do every day, and you’ll feel accomplished crossing items off.
Now, here’s our cleaning schedule! Use it as a starting point, and within a week or two you’ll have a good sense of where you’ll need to make tweaks and adjustments.

Schedule

Monday

Vacuum bedroom carpets
Wash bathroom towels
Clean common area floors

Tuesday

Master bathroom
Dust surfaces and clean glass doors

Wednesday

Clean common area floors
Outside pruning, sweeping, etc.
Wipe kitchen chairs

Thursday

Guest and kids’ bathrooms
Deep clean fridge, sort through fridge

Friday

Clean common are floors
Pick up desk, laundry room, mudroom
WOW Mop the kitchen

Saturday

Strip beds and wash linens
Pick up closets

Sunday

Rotate toys and books

We all make mistakes – it’s just human nature! However, a mistake isn’t valuable unless you learn from it, and we’re here to help you learn from your cluttering habits! Minor gaffes like forgetting to change your car’s oil or common laundry mistakes can add up to a major problem. The same goes for clutter! Some organizing mistakes can be unavoidable in the moment, but acknowledging that these lapses are creating a bigger mess is the first step to finding a simple solution.
Watch for these little clutter mistakes in your life and prepare to be wowed by what a few shifts can do to stop clutter build-up!

Not Folding Clothes

The accumulation of clothes – clean or dirty (or in between – hello bedroom chair!) – outside closets and dressers is a leading cause of bedroom clutter. Sometimes, putting clothes in their correct place or washing them immediately isn’t always possible, but not folding these in-the-open clothes makes the problem look much worse than it is. A pile of clothes on the floor sends a chaotic message, whereas a neatly folded stack in a corner or on a chair says you’re a tidy person… even if you’re actually not. The next step, of course, is to put clothes where they belong right away.

Letting Clean Dishes Sit in the Drying Rack

Anyone without a dishwasher or with a large assortment of hand-wash only dinnerware knows that drying dishes is a pain. Enter the drying mat or rack: a clean place for dishes to air dry, no dishcloths required! Of course, if those clean dishes don’t get put away once they’re dry, there will soon be a clutter problem. Drying every dish may be a tall order, but putting away dry dishes the next morning or before your next meal is an easy, quick fix. Tidy up the rest of your kitchen by keeping your sponge squeezed out of excess water on the side of the sink, and tuck away your favourite Nellie’s One Soap to an easy-reach spot.

Buying Extra Supplies

Planning ahead is usually a clutter-buster, but when it comes to surplus toiletries, cleaning supplies, and more, planning to far ahead can encourage clutter! Having an extra roll of paper towels on hand in case of a big-time spill is smart… having 18 extra rolls is a little excessive and can strain storage space!
Avoid buying more toothpaste, toilet paper, and other household essentials until just a few days before they’re actually needed. If buying in bulk is a necessity, set aside a specified storage spot for overflow.

Allowing Mail to Pile Up

This one goes for magazines, newspapers, and other recyclable paper-based reading materials. Setting aside bills, greeting cards, and other important mail items for the weekend or a slow night is to be expected. However, letting these to-be-dealt-with items pile up for weeks or even months at a time with the promise to read them eventually encourages a mess. Set aside time each week to flip through the mail and cut down on subscriptions that aren’t being read.

Leaving the Shoes Out

Taking off shoes at the door is smart. Leaving a pair at the door for quick trips to the corner store or walk the pup is even smarter. But letting the entirety of your shoe collection pile up in the entryway, garage, mudroom, or kitchen is a habit to kick! Make a household rule that only one or two pairs per person is allowed in the space, and encourage everyone (including yourself!) to take extra pairs to their permanent spaces, even if that’s at the bottom of the closet, at the end of every day.