Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Cleaning glass

I promise that this will be the last post about wood and fires until next season... but before I forget, here's a helpful hint for anyone who has a fire and sometimes needs help getting the glass cleaned.  Despite letting our wood dry for 2 years (George - we get all kinds of wood from different sources....) there are times that we have to close the fire down while it is still roaring, or when the wood is not 100% dry and therefore leaves a huge blackened mess on the glass.  I have tried zillions of ways of getting it off and usually hard elbow grease and a combination of baking soda or vinegar is the only way to get it off, unless I want to resort to strong chemicals (which I don't!).  
This year I did a bit of researching and saw a few people saying that using the ash from the fire worked well, so I sceptically tried it and discovered it was a miracle cleaner!  All I needed to do was wet a paper towel, dip it in ash, rub it very gently on the window, wipe it down with some dry newspaper and voila a perfectly clean window with almost zero effort.  The fire just feels and looks so much warmer through a clean window!
Now that the fire season is over it must be time to start thinking about the garden again.  I'm almost too scared to go and see what state it is in.....



4 comments:

  1. Fantastic idea! I'll give it a try. Who would have thought ash could clean glass. Thank you.

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  2. Anonymous9:16 pm

    you know it's going to get cold again now that you've declared the end of fire season...how much of your wood is given to you/foraged, and how much do you actually have to buy?

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  3. What a neat tip! I so much want a wood burning stove! Hubby is afraid we'll burn the house down. He did have a point about gathering wood here....might be a problem. I wonder how much it would cost to buy wood verses kerosene?

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  4. Want a job? Or hints for cleaning windows?

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