Friday 11 September 2009

Letting off some steam


The inlaws are coming tomorrow so I've spent most of the morning doing chores. Michela was eager to help, but remembering last time I trusted her with a dustpan, I pacified her with her favourite snack 'apple and nana in a bigger bowl' [her own words] and nearly new paper [some redundant one-sided photocopies] on her drawing table.

So while she was busy chomping on fruit and drawing circles all over the paper and table, I scrubbed my dirty cooker, loaded the dishwasher, washed up the items that are not dishwasher friendly and hung the wash out to dry.

I was about to relax and make myself a cup of tea, but the sight of the kettle made me reach for the descaler. I don't know what is in the water here in the Midlands but the inside of my plastic kettle is brown. I have never seen brown limescale before - the London equivalent was a more appealing golden hue.

A sachet of Oust and 15 minutes later my kettle was sparkly white, the metal coil as shiny as silver. Having tried alternative methods before I have never experienced such a satisfaction and no elbow grease needed! I have tried to be green about it, using vinegar once and soda crystals plus raw potato another time but the results were far than satisfactory as I don't descale that frequently and there is always a good build up inside.

And don't start me on steel kettles! I used to have one that looked great on my kitchen worktop, except it was a pain to descale. I remember emailing Oust to enquire why their wonderful product was not doing the job and being told that steel kettles are a magnet to limescale so I'd need to buy a special product, which, of course was not stocked at my local supermarket. So after a lot of scrubbing, the steel kettle ended up on Freecycle and we purchased a plastic one. There you go, you have been warned about steel kettles!

My top tips: if you want to be green, there is some good advice on Times Online and if you have a descaling fetish, why not browse my Google Search? There is even a video about the subject. Happy Descaling!

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