Window Washing

On Friday, I returned from work and announced that the time had come - it was time to wash the blinds. Apparently we are the first ones in the history of this house to have even considered the idea of having clean blinds because it was difficult and gross. It turned out that soaking them in the tub with cleaning agents (I can't recall what he used exactly) and then spraying them with the hose worked. 

It was dark by the time the blinds were clean but they're still not perfectly clean - they just don't have major dirt, dust or stains. Aside from buying new blinds, I'm pretty sure this is the best we can hope to have. It seems lighter inside to me now.

I'd also forgotten how many windows this house has. Our last apartment had five windows. We have fifteen here (I think... I didn't want to get up to actually verify that) - there were a TON of blinds and we didn't think to label them before washing, so figuring out which blinds went to which windows was an added adventure.

You didn't ask for them, but here are some tips for washing your blinds:

- Have lots of time on hand. Patience would be great too.

- Try for a sunny day where you can both hose them off and dry them outside. 

- Label the blinds as you take them off. You'll be thankful.

- Rinse them with the hose in case that's all they need, soak them for 15-20 minutes in a tub, then rinse them off again. 

- Carson tried wiping them off individually but that would have taken forever, plus it didn't work so well. If you'd like to try this, maybe try dusting them beforehand - might work better.

- put towels down between your tub and wherever they're going to dry or the floor will be soaking.

- I looked up how to clean mini-blinds online and one of the websites had the best suggestions that I found: it suggested basically taking down the blinds, measuring them, throwing them away and then purchasing new ones. We couldn't afford it, but if you're looking to save time and patience, and money isn't a huge object, replace those suckers. 

As an added bonus, the tub got a really good scrub after this.

We discovered that the person who did the trim on the windows didn't believe in using painter's tape.